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How much is enough?

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minamanda

My husband and I give to a family in Nairobi.  What is a fair amount that a family of 5 adults and 2 children would need?  We're not talking about setting them up real fancy, but enough for them to take care of basic needs.

Longonot62

How much do you give now?  Food prices are rising steeply, due to the global trend, plus local drought, so you need to factor that in too.

minamanda

$400.00 (U.S) a month.  He tells us his village is near Thika. Mwihiko? not sure about spelling.

skyblu

well $400 a month would certainly go a long way to ensuring that they didn't feel the need to earn a living too.  That is about twice what the average domestic worker around Nairobi earns who is also supporting a family. It is great to want to help but do be careful not to be taken for a ride.  There are plenty of people who can't work whether they be too old, young or disabled and they need all the support they can get.  What is the reason this family needs support?

editing to add that I have just seen the post you made on the same subject in December last year.  I'm afraid that you are definitely being scammed.  stop sending the money.  For a start, no Kenyan can afford to travel to the USA on a student visa, even if on full scholarship unless they are wealthy.  He is taking your generosity of spirit and using it to take you for whatever he can.  if you want to help, stop falling for this fraud and trickster and give directly to a local charity instead.

minamanda

Thank you, my husband and I know the husband of the family personally.  We met him here in the US and have helped him since he has gone home.  He was part of our church here before he left.  It helps to have information from someone who lives in Nairobi.  I did post last year - and we cut our support down since then with plans to continue diminishing support through the end of the year.  It would be a hard pill to swalllow to believe he has turned into a "trickster" as he was not that way here - but stranger things in the world have happened.
He has communicatedwith us that it ther is no work to be had, he speaks english and has a degree in accounting.  He has three children, one in high schol,one in college and one toddler.  He takes care of his elderly mother and mentally challenged brother.  Also, he has taken in two orphans one male one female.  The female has one child - so, it seems he is taking care of many people.  I do not know the work situation - the availability of jobs.  We communicate bi-weekly through e-mail.

The travel issue he told un is that is whole village/family pooled money together to send him here with intentions of him working to send money back to his family.  Also, that in him returning to Nairobi he would be ostracised(spell?) for his decision. Is that a normal practice? He was in his late 30's when he came here.

Longonot62

'For a start, no Kenyan can afford to travel to the USA on a student visa, even if on full scholarship unless they are wealthy'. 

Not true Skyblu!  Its quite usual for the community to have a harambee for this sort of thing.  I am married into a Kikuyu family and know that money is often raised in this way. 

The expectation would be that he would work and return money to Kenya.  There is an assumption that the streets in the USA and UK are paved with gold.  It is only when Kenyans go to those countries, they find that it isn't like that at all, but then they struggle to raise the airfare home.

With 40% plus unemployment in Kenya, then he could well be right about his work, as well as finding it difficult to find work - lots of degree holders and professionals are out of work and struggling. 

It is unfair to jump to the conclusion, with the barest of facts, that this man is scamming you.

$400 is, as Skyblu says, a very generous amount and he would certainly be able to feed the family and pay the school fees easily with that.  For the basics, I would have thought $200ish would be sufficient.  Its difficult to use a domestic workers salary as a baseline - most get extremely poorly paid, even by Kenyan standards. 

Where the scam part often comes in is when people start asking for extra amounts of money; saying things like 'I need (enter amount) as my mother, father etc is ill', or they need money for a funeral or wedding'.  If he hasn't done something like this, then he may be genuine.

It is quite likely that his village would ostracise him.  This happened to my Mother-in-Law after she returned to her village, from a spell in the UK.  Its all about the jealousy and that person having had experiences that most of the villagers would never have.  Doubly so if he didn't manage to send the amount of money home as people were anticipating.

It would be incredibly heartless to just stop the payments and the whole family, plus children would be affected.  If you no longer want to assist, then a gradual withdrawal is much better. 

Give the money to a local charity?  Well they are often pretty good at wasting money.  Personally, I would rather give to a genuine family.

Hope that this helps.

minamanda

Logon62,

THe times he has asked for extra money were when he needed for school fee's, when his wife had an emergency c-section, building a well in his village, and for christmas.  I have documents for school fee's as well as pictures of the well and the baby.
He asked for money when we were sending him on average $300.00/month. Since we started sending him more he has not asked for more - an honestly I think if we sent him less he would just say thank you.
We are thinking of sending his daughter to college and then not sending him money as we cannot do both.

muisyo

hi
life in nairobi is quite expensive compared to the rest of the cities it all depents on the estate the live coz house and life stly differ in different estates also the type of school kids go to and which level they are in also if there is a special kid among them it will depend .:)

Longonot62

Hi Minamanda,

I would be a bit suspicious of him asking for money for the village well. 

I think that if you are going to continue with this, then I recommend that you send an agreed flat rate per month - no top ups, which will allow him to meet his daily needs.  I think that $300 a month would be more than enough (see previous post).  You could give him the option about funding his daughters college -see what he says.

I understand your predicament - my family, on my Wife's side is large and we are just not able to help all of them.  One of my sisters-in-law was being assisted by someone in the UK, who met her on a trip to Kenya.  It was done on the basis of an agreed monthly amount and she was able to live on that, but knew that there wouldn't be any extra.........so didn't ask.

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