Thursday fun with the street kids...

Thursday’s have become one of my favorite days of the week. It’s a day of hugs, laughter and fun with the street kids.

Anne (our social worker), Kate, Amanda, Daniel and I headed to the back of the Nyayo (N-eye-o) house where all the street girls hang out, like we did last week. Along the back corridor, before the opening of the back veranda, there laid a little boy against the wall, sleeping. It was the same little boy that sat on Daniel’s lap the whole time we were there last week.

He’s a beautiful little boy with light brown curly hair. He’s no more than two years old; he has a mother, who is pregnant again and they live on the street.

I walked over to the boy and he was dead asleep. I rubbed his cheek and his hair but he didn’t budge. If it wasn’t for his chest rising as he breathed, I would have thought he was dead. I looked around but his mother was nowhere to be found so I picked him up, while sleeping. He woke up and was a bit shocked at first, especially with three white girls looking down at him. I picked him up and carried him over to the stairs that we sit on that overlooks the trash pile compound. Once the shock wore off, he started to cry. It wasn’t an “I’m scared” cry. It was a deep “I’m hungry” cry. Yes, there is a difference.

I asked him in Swahili where his mother was and he looked over in a direction of a woman sleeping in the fetal position just a few feet away from us, on the cement ground. I asked if that was her and he just looked at me with these sad eyes, huge tears rolling down his face.

Anne called over one of the street sellers who had biscuits for sale so she bought him a package (8 little biscuits in a package). I opened up the package for him and he immediately sat next to me and I handed him one at a time. He ate them so quickly and didn’t mind that I wiped the tears from his tear-stained face.

He had gunk dried and stuck in his curly hair. He wore a little blue jumper outfit that has holes in the crouch and legs; the same outfit as last week. He is completely dirty, probably hasn’t been bathed in weeks. It was sad; he cried out loud for over five minutes and in that whole time, his mother slept. She did not budge an inch as her son sat crying just a few feet from her. I wanted to take him; take him home and bathe him, put full covering clothes on him; make him the biggest plate of food and cover him with love, with hugs, with kisses, with attention. What a beautiful child he is.

A few minutes later, I caught a glimpse of Ellen. She too is a street girl that we met last week. She has a little girl name Brenda. Brenda is not yet a year old. Ellen was sitting down on the dirt ground and leaning up against a tin shelter. She saw us and waved to us and then began to breast-feed Brenda.

And then the saddest thing happened. As she is breast-feeding Brenda, she pulls out a glue bottle and puts it to her face. She is feeding her child and sniffing her glue at the same time. If I had a camera with me at the time, I would have taken a picture as most of us may not be able to fathom a sight like that. It was heart-breaking.

Then from the right of me, I saw a girl running. She was running in our direction, full speed ahead. It was Rose, my sweet Rose from last week. When she reached us, she ran right to me, plopped herself beside me, wrapped her arms around me and put her head on my shoulder. Oh, my sweet Rose! She was surprised that I remembered her name; she looked at me and said, “You remember me?” and I said, “Of course, you’re my sweet Rose.” The biggest smile came upon her face and she stuck to me the whole afternoon.

There’s another street girl, rough on the edges but when you look at her face and in to her eyes, she is just absolutely beautiful. Her name is Elizabeth. And when she saw us, she came over, greeted us and sat with us. I told her today what I thought of her; I told her that she was absolutely beautiful. She blushed and looked away with a small “thank you” escaping her lips.

We piled up all the street kids together and started walking to our weekly feeding program. Here were four white people, holding hands and walking with about 30 street kids, including street moms with their babies down the main roads of Kitale. There were shop owners coming out of their stores to see what was going on. We weren’t four white people annoyed with all these street kids surrounding us; we were four white people who were hugging on the kids as much as they were hugging on us.

On the way to the program, I was talking with some of the kids and they were saying that if Daniel and I built a home for them to live in, they would come and behave themselves. I told them that there were many homes and programs in this area that they could all live in and be a part of, why would Daniel and I be any different then those places. And they said, “Because you and Daniel aren’t selfish. You and Daniel talk to us, play with us and help feed us. You treat us good.”

Yesterday, I had to go to Eldoret for a meeting really early in the morning. I took a boda-boda (bicycle taxi) to town to catch an express taxi to Eldoret. When I got off the boda-boda, there were three street boys that I knew. They immediately called my name and came over to greet me. I gave them all the usual hugs/handshakes; they asked where I was going and I told them. They walked with me over to the express taxi and as I got in to the taxi, I shook their hands one more time and told them that I would see them tomorrow.

The man sitting next to me in the taxi said, “It seems they know you. They were calling you Mary. Is that your name?” I told him that yes it was my name. He asked me why they knew my name and why I would be talking to them. I told him, “They know my name because they are my friends and I am talking to them because they are human beings and deserve to be treated like human beings.” People sitting in front of us, turned and looked at me with a surprise look on their faces. I didn’t care; the man shut up.

And maybe that’s why the street kids like us because we do treat them like human beings. We don’t care if they are dirty and smelly; we still talk with them, hug them, and treat them with respect. We don’t brush them aside and treat them as a nuisance; we love on them.

After the children had been fed at the feeding program at our church, we all hung out together, despite a bit of the sunshine rain that was falling. When the children start to leave the property, we have someone at the gate to search them, to ensure that they aren’t stealing the plates and cups that we use for the feeding program. Well, today, we had an older street boy – his first time there – trying to steal some of the plates so one of the older guys who teaches/translates at the feeding program, confronted the street boy to give back the plates.

It turned in to a huge fight; the street boy trying to punch the teacher/translator. The street boy picked up a big rock and was trying to attack the teacher/translator with it. All of the street kids went running in the direction of the fight and I then saw one of the other older street boys, James, pick up a big rock as well. I turned to Daniel and told him that James had also picked up a rock. Daniel handed me his things and went running in the direction of the fight. James, who had the rock then turned to me with the rock in his hand and I asked him what he was doing with the rock. He said that he had it to protect the teacher, that one of the boys was going after his teacher and he wouldn’t have that.

Then before I know it, the angry stealing street boy starts screaming at my street girl, Elizabeth. Well, Elizabeth, high on glue, hikes up her skirt, puts her fists in the air and starts bantering the angry stealing street boy to fight her. He starts charging at her and I immediately get filled with adrenaline and this protectiveness. I shout, “Don’t you dare lay a hand on her.” as I head in the direction of Elizabeth and this street boy. One of the younger street boys grabs my arm and says, “Don’t go.” Amanda and Kate are behind me saying, “Don’t go, Meredith.” But there was a part of me that knew that if I saw that boy hit Elizabeth, I would have been over the fence in a matter of seconds and put myself between her and him, no questions asked, no hesitation.

Finally things calmed down and we all took that as a cue to 1) have the kids head back to the core town area and 2) us to go home. As we were walking home, we were talking about the fight and about the street kids’ reaction. Daniel said that we have probably come to a point in the relationships with the street kids that if something were to happen, a fight to break out and we were a part of that fight, that we would be protected by the street kids. They would defend us and protect us and after today, seeing how they were with us and with the teacher/translator, I believe they would too. We’ve built that friendship with them over the past six months or so, there is a trust between us and them now. It makes me smile; it makes this motherly affection and protection of them just pores out of me.

I also want to tell you about another street girl that we met today. Her name is Anne. She is about four months pregnant and was completely drunk when we met her; she could barely walk or talk. She prostitutes herself; probably for her drinking habit. We asked her how she would care for her baby and she said that she will just give the baby to her mother. We asked where her mother was and she said that her mother was dead. So she decided that she would give the baby to her step-mother to care for. She said that she likes being pregnant and will probably continue to get pregnant. But she said for us not to worry, she would give each of us (Daniel included) one of her children to raise because she knows that we will take care of them. She was no more than 18 years old; pregnant and completely hammered (drunk).

Our hearts break for these babies; they are the next generation of street children. Their lives, from the moment they are born, will be hell for them. Their mothers are addicted to glue, to alcohol, to prostitution and these children will cry, painful cries because their stomachs ache of hunger and their mothers will not be able to feed them, because their addictions are more important. These children will die at early ages due to malnutrition, malaria, and other diseases. Most of those street babies may not live to see their fifth birthday. These mothers will never visit a doctor during their pregnancy and will just give birth to the children on the streets; literally. Maybe some of them will know a midwife who will deliver the baby; but most of the time, it will be a friend or family member, who doesn’t have the experience of delivering babies, who will be the one to deliver the street girls’ babies.

It’s such a sad thing to see; Ellen breast-feeding her baby while sniffing glue and Anne, four months pregnant and completely drunk. But it’s a common thing here; it’s an every day lifestyle for these girls. I’m sure it’s not a lifestyle that they would have wanted and chosen for themselves in the first place. But to them, there is no hope; this is the way life will be.

I don’t know what I can do for them except to go and see them every week; let them know that we are here. Not to gain fortune from their stories, their pictures, their pain but that we are here for them. We are here to hug them, encourage them and spend time with them. We want them to know that they are human beings with feelings and emotions and dreams…and that we care for them and truly want a friendship with them.

They are the forgotten ones, the rejected ones by the rest of the world but by us, they will never be forgotten or rejected. They are loved; not just by us but by our Lord Jesus Christ. And I just pray that His love can be magnified through us. I just pray that God uses us to reach these kids in a way that we could never imagine or fathom. So that we will all know without a shadow of a doubt, that it was Him who did it all; who conquered it all.

Mungu akubariki (God bless you!)
xoxoxo