Executive Director For Christian Friends Of Mentally Ill

CFOMI is a medical mission. We are a community of the Catholic Worker Movement and our Catholic Workers are known as “Rafiki”. “Rafiki” is a swahili word that means friend. We believe in a simple lifestyle in an intentional community called “Boma'' a swahili word for home and spiritual values based on the philosophies of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. This we do with the sole purpose being to serve the severely mentally ill. We are grounded in the bible, prayer and christian faith in our call. All the values listed as our core values speak to our DNA. We currently live off grid.

We started in February of 2016 as a group of 10 people living with severe mental illnesses in Siaya County in Kenya. The story however starts a bit earlier on. It starts with the story of the first chairperson of CFOMI Japheth Obare. He has experienced paranoid schizophrenia since 1995. In 2015, he had a psychotic episode that his family got involved in. He later developed severe depression as a result of medication put secretly in his food by his family. He started having suicidal thoughts and started planning for suicide. While in the process of doing so, he decided to seek help as well and realized that there was none around. He eventually got some help in terms of hope from the British Columbia Schizophrenia Society in Canada. That is how he realized the need currently in the Kenyan mental health space after living in the USA for five years.

He decided to do something about it. He organized a group of ten people and with the help of the then British Columbia Schizophrenia Society Executive Director Deborah Conner, we got registered by the Kenya government. Our focus is on advocacy, health and meaningful relationships for the severely mentally ill. The organization focuses its work in Siaya County in the south western part of Kenya.

We are a membership organization and the organization is actively seeking new members. One can join as a member irrespective of their country of citizenship or religion as long as they are eighteen years old and above. There are three classes of membership in CFOMI namely full members with voting rights, associate members with no voting rights, and contributing members with no voting rights. We only have ten full members at a time to constitute the board.

Any christian of legal age can join us as a staff aka “rafiki”. We provide free room and food plus a work permit for non Kenyans. We also provide a small amount of monthly stipend to our rafikis. CFOMI is located in Anyiko sub-location in Siaya county along Yala-Anyiko Road. CFOMI does not provide medical or crisis services. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please contact your local emergency services.