IN MEMORIAM-TABITHA ATIENO FESTO
Originally from Nyakatch village in Nyanza District of western Kenya, Tabitha graduated from high school in Kisii District and became a certified nurse at Masaba Hospital. In 1985, she met Henry, her late husband. That same year Henry, a mechanic, moved with Tabitha to Kibera to find employment opportunities. They settled in Lindi village, and Henry found employment as a welder. Tabitha worked as a caretaker and nursed neighbors in Kibera out of her home. 
In 1998, Tabitha’s employer made a sudden decision to downsize and Tabitha’s position was terminated. Shortly afterwards, Tabitha’s husband Henry died unexpectedly from an illness. Tabitha herself then fell ill and barely survived. During that time, her daughters Valerie and Joy helped nurse her from her bed, from which she could not move for three months. At one point she was evicted from her home and forced to live in an abandoned vegetable stand in Toi Market on the outskirts of Kibera.
In July 2000, Tabitha, still jobless, approached Rye Barcott and requested 2,000 KSh to start selling vegetables. Rye gave her the money, the equivalent of about US$26, and returned to America the next day. Tabitha sold vegetables in the Eastleigh District of Nairobi and accumulated daily savings in a local women’s merry-go-round for six months. After six months, with over $130 in savings, Tabitha decided to start a medical clinic, which had been her life-long dream. She named her clinic Rye Medical Clinic and gave it the motto “sacrificing in success.”
Over the next few years, Rye Clinic became one of the cornerstone operations of the non-governmental organization Carolina for Kibera, Inc. The clinic moved twice from its first location in a four-room sheet metal building, finding a permanent home in 2004. Under Tabitha’s guidance and management, services and staff expanded to include a laboratory and a home-based care program for people living with HIV/AIDS. Specializing in maternal health, the clinic became one of the few in Kibera to offer in-patient and out-patient primary care services to residents twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. After Tabitha's untimely death in December 2004, the clinic was renamed in her honor.
In March 2009, after over two years of fundraising and construction, CFK celebrated the official opening of the new Tabitha Health Clinic. A model for sustainable development in slums around the world, the new Tabitha clinic unites both eco-friendly design and advanced medical services in a beautifully constructed 3-story, 13-room facility. The new Tabitha Clinic features solar-heated hot water tanks, an open-air atrium, a waiting/patient education room accommodating more than 90 patients, intake and triage rooms, a children’s play area, 8 exam rooms, and expanded clinical laboratory, a central pharmacy, and a staff conference room.
Tabitha and Henry had three children, two girls and a boy. On the Ides of March, 2001, Tabitha discovered an infant abandoned at the door of Tabitha’s home and the old Rye Clinic in Gatuikira village. The baby boy, Ronnie, became, by the grace of God, Tabitha’s second son.
Tabitha Atieno Festo
1965 - 2004
