News

No complaints as Erick says thanks to the army

November 29, 2005

A LEADER from a Kenyan tribe visited the army to say thank you for delivering much needed clothes from Britain.

Massai elder Erick Ole Kasana flew from the Mukogodo in Kenya to thank the Royal Army Medical Corps in Aldershot on on the Friday before last.

Four months ago the Hartley Wintney-based charity I Will Not Complain collected boxes of clothes and books for orphanages in Kenya but could not afford to transport them.

But the 4 General Support Medical Regiment, of the Royal Army Medical Corps, stepped in and offered to fly the boxes to Kenya.

The regiment also raised £1,000 to help the Massai tribe.

Charity founder, Sandy Foster, 50, of Hartley Wintney said: “The Army was just wonderful. They worked in the local hospitals, helping to decorate, and they had an open clinic for everybody. They helped hundreds of Kenyan people with medicines and treatments. It was the beginning of what I hope will be a relationship.”

The charity was set up four years ago when Mrs Foster visited Kenya while working for a computer company where she taught leadership development and cultural change.

In Kenya she met Erick Ole Kasana and Mrs Foster has since helped the Massai tribe with building schools, supplying water tanks and providing education ever since.

Mrs Foster, who runs the charity with husband Peter, 46, said: “I thought I would go over there and teach them but they have been doing it for hundreds of years. They’ve got big hearts but no money.”

She said the the charity was called I Will Not Complain because of the resilient nature of the people it helps.

“It’s because the people over there, they laugh, they smile,” she added. “They’re in such poverty and they have so little but they just don’t complain. They just get on and live. We have got so much here but people moan all the time.”

I Will Not Complain provides education for youngsters and the charity has paid for a boy to go to university, a boy to attend college and 12 children to go to school.

Picture: Maj Willie McKean RAMC and Sgt Gavin Robinson RAMC of 4 General Support Medical Regt at Browning Barracks, Aldershot with Massai elder Erick Ole Kasana.