Street Kids....one of my favs

The past few days have been spent with street kids and I have to say, as per usual, they are some of the most fun days that I have had.

Wednesday, October 10th, 2007

This morning, Caleb, Eva, Amanda and I were heading to town. We were all motivated to walk to town (a usual 20-25 minute walk) but then this really nice white pick-up truck with a Kenyan lady stopped and asked if we wanted a ride to town (we later found out she is our next door neighbor and recognized me). We couldn’t turn down the offer (as it’s rude in this culture) so we all jumped in the box of the truck with the wind blowing in our hair. As we were heading toward the main road of town, I heard all these voices screaming, “Mary, Mary!” I looked and there were tons and tons of street kids, girls and boys, sitting around, which was an odd thing.

The truck dropped us off in town and the four of us immediately headed to where all these street kids were. When we got there, I was bombarded by tons of the street kids, hugging on me, kissing me, shaking my hand, etc. Jackson, one of the street boys, says in Swahili, “Mary, these children and me love you so much.” Thankfully, with the Swahili I know, I knew what he was saying.

It turns out the children were waiting for this street kids home called Challenge Farm to come and pick them up for the day. This organization does this every other month; they come to town with a lorry and take all the street kids to Challenge Farm. The ones who want to stay and get in to the home and program are allowed to stay, the ones who don’t, get back on the lorry and are taken back to town. Realistically, a lot of the children end up coming back to the streets. However, it was cool to be together with this amount of street kids at once.

Here are some pics of the kids and me.

Then we noticed a bunch of street girls, street moms, and then I saw my sweet Rose. She and I ran over to each and other and hugged a great big hug. This is my sweet Rose.

Amanda and I sat down with the street girls, the street moms. One of the girls asked me to come over and see one of the street women sitting there. I went over and she had a puffy lip and a deep gash at the corner of her mouth. She had tears pouring down her face. I had asked what happened and they said that she had gotten beaten earlier that morning. I sat with her for a minute and comforted her the best way I could, especially with the language barrier. I told her that she needed to get to Challenge Farm and then see if she could get in to Sister Frieda’s (associated with Challenger Farm) medical clinic and they would be able to help clean her up and maybe stitch up the wound. I knew that if she went there, she would probably be able to get the medical care for free.

There were at least 5 street girls, around the age of 16-18 who were very visibly pregnant. Some of these girls already had children attached to their hips. And most of these girls had glue in their mouths or on them somewhere. It was such a sad sight; a heart-breaking sight.

One of the girls asked me to sit down and as soon as I did, they all wanted to play with my hair. Within a few minutes, they asked if they could braid my hair. I love having my hair played with so of course I said yes. I had three girls doing my hair, pulling in different directions, different size braids. But I looked totally sweet afterward, I must say.

One of the girls let me hold her sweet baby girl, Valinda. She was such a beautiful baby. At one point while holding Valinda, the mother came to me and said that she wanted me to keep her baby. She told me that I could raise her better than she and that I would be a good mom to her baby. And then she ran off, with me still holding her daughter. I went after her, baby in arms, and she ran away from me. At first, a part of me panicked. What would I do if she was serious? What would I do with this baby? I would take Valinda in a second, in a heart beat. She does deserve a good life; she doesn’t deserve to be a second generation street kid. I could take care of her, couldn’t I? But I’m not her mom; she needs her mom, doesn’t she? And then I saw her mom and when her mom saw me, she didn’t run. When I handed Valinda to her, she took her. She had sadness in her eyes but she took her. What else could I do? What would you have done?
Shortly after 12:00, the lorry for Challenge Farm came to round of the children. Amanda, Caleb and Eva Joy decided that they would go to Challenge Farm with the children while I stayed back in town to do a few things and then head home to start on my pasta sauce (I make it from scratch) for dinner that night. As I headed to the main road of town, I saw a boy that I see almost every day on the street. His name is Benson. He lives in the Shimo slums (which is just a few minute walk from our house) and comes to town every day to find food/money for his mother and siblings. He’s about 12 or 13 years old.

As I got closer to Benson, I saw his shoulders shaking and then these big tears rolling down his cheeks. I asked him in Swahili what was wrong and he said, “John hurt me.” I asked who John was but he wouldn’t say. I asked him if he was hungry and he shook his head yes. So I told him to come with me. I asked him which restaurant he would like to go to and he picked one so we went to it. We sat down inside and I asked him if he was okay and with a tear-stained face; he looked at me and said yes. I told him that he could order whatever he wanted from the menu and to get a big soda too if he wanted.

I excused myself for a moment to go and wash my hands at the sink. A man came walking in to the restaurant and headed straight for me. This is what he said when he reached me (in brackets is my thoughts or what I said).

“Hi. I’ve been watching you. (me freaking out a bit!) I just had to come and tell you that if it was proper in my culture, I would hug you right now (again, me freaking out a bit!). I watched you go and talk to that boy and I saw you bring him here to buy him lunch. (me, breathing a sigh of relief). And I just want to say thank you. Thank you for taking care of the children that we Kenyans don’t (me just about bursting in to tears and saying thank you to him). My name is Mike and I just want to say thank you.”

He shook my hand and then he left. I stood at the sink for a moment, trying to compose myself before heading back to the table to join Benson. When I got back to the table, Benson and I ordered our lunch and a large soda for him. A taxi friend of mine, Sam, came and sat down with us; “trying” to talk back and forth with Benson but it was a little difficult as Benson was very quiet. He ate his food slowly and looked down most of the time. I tried to engage in some conversation with him but he was so shy.

I couldn’t eat all of my food so I had it wrapped up in a baggy and then Benson did the same with his. I told him to take my food home to his family and gave him a few extra shillings (money) to go and buy his family some milk or extra food.

I noticed that Benson’s hands and feet were covered in “chiggers”. Chiggers are a flea/mite like bug that gets under the nails and lays eggs and grows and is very itchy. It’s a common thing among street and slum children; it’s caused by lack of hygiene/bathing. I’ve looked up on the net a bit of info but I think they may be a bit different then when I found on the net. Actually it’s almost exactly like the Chigoe flea (in case you want to look it up). I know that here in Kenya, you can tell the really bad cases of chiggers. When a child leaves a spot that he/she has been sitting at for a period of time, you can see a white residue left behind on the ground, usually from their feet. Some say that this is the infection/liquid that is oozing from under their skin/nails from the chiggers. It’s definitely not something that I would want to get and that is why we usually come home and wash up after spending the day with the street kids. This also helps us from getting ringworm as well.

As we were leaving the restaurant, Benson looked up at me with tears in his eyes and said, “Asante sana Mary. Mungu akubariki.” which means “Thank you very much Mary. God bless you.” He was a great person to spend my lunch and some of my afternoon with.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

This morning we got up early and as every Thursday morning, met for prayer at 7:00 at the Prayer Room, built by the organization called Youth Apart (I’ve talked about them before) and just five minutes from our house. We go there with Youth Apart members and sometimes other ministries and usually spend an hour or so praying for our ministries, the street children, our church, the town of Kitale and the country of Kenya. It’s a great way of getting in to the day of time with Christ and with each other. It keeps the unity strong among the different ministries in the area.

At 9:30 a.m., we started our first Swahili class at our house. We have a Kenyan friend that has set aside two hours every Thursday to teach a few of us white people Swahili. We aren’t telling any Kenyan friends that we are doing this; we want to surprise them. Plus we want to know what they may say about us – and them thinking we don’t know what they are talking about. J

Our first lesson went awesome. We had so much fun. It was Jared, Eva, Caleb, Amanda, Marlies (from Youth Apart) and myself in the lesson (Daniel is away for a few days and Kate is in Sudan until Tuesday of next week). We learned a lot and we can’t wait to get more in depth in the language.

After lunch, we headed to town and behind Nyayo House to visit with the street girls. When we got there, it was a raining a bit so we didn’t see many kids out back as we usually do. But then I heard, “Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary….” It was Elizabeth; one of the street girls. She saw me from a distant and came running and screaming my name, everyone looking from her to me. All I could do was laugh. She came running up and greeted us. Her and I walked away from the crowd of people and spent a few minutes together. She smelled so much of glue but we still hugged on each other and when I kissed her on the cheek, she giggled like a little girl and then returned a kiss on the cheek to me and then told me she loved me. I told her that I loved her more, to which she giggled like a little girl again.

After a few minutes, she told me that she was in need of shoes (her sandals were torn and abused a bit). I simply told her that I would not buy shoes for her as long as she had a glue/drug habit. I told her that if she quit the glue for one week, she would be able to buy her own shoes. She laughed and then said, “Yes, I will do.” I wish and pray that she would do that but I know the effect the streets and the glue have on those kids.

On Wednesday, Caleb’s sunglasses got stolen by one of the street kids (when we were hanging out with them waiting for the Challenge Farm lorry to come). So today, some of the kids told Caleb they knew who had them and where they were. The kids took him a bit in to the “forbidden white person” area and ended up taking him to a pool hall where they left to go and find the person/people who had the sunglasses. Jared ended up joining Caleb and after a few minutes, Amanda, Eva and I ventured down there as well.

This is the rough part of behind the Nyayo House. For awhile now, we’ve just sat on the stairs and the kids came to us but this time, we wanted to go to them. It was a different feeling today. We weren’t scared that we were going more in to their territory, a bit deeper in to the “slum” part. The street girls stuck to us like glue and the guys were more than happy to see white girls coming in to the “pool hall”. The pool hall is a small, rectangular, concrete building with a tin roof. It had two pool tables and around the pool tables were benches for the spectators. When the three of us went in, there was Caleb already playing pool with a bunch of street kids that we know. When we walked in, I could hear my name being called and even some new young faces of street boys that I had never seen before. We introduced ourselves to some of the kids and they were so excited to have us there. Within two minutes, the word had gone out…not only were there two white guys in the pool hall but three white girls too…and the place was packed.

Never for one moment were we scared or uncomfortable. There were street girls coming in now to see us and sit with us, including my sweet Rose. She couldn’t find a place to sit so I had her sit on my lap and we just cuddled. I met a girl named Pauline who I had heard so much about from friends at Oasis of Hope (street kids program in Kitale). I met a young girl named Josephine and her baby, Mark Isaac. Pauline hugged on me the whole time and I started singing Swahili worship songs that I knew and she immediately jumped in and started singing to. Then Josephine started in on the singing with us and so did some of the boys that were hanging around. A bunch of us just ended up singing worship songs in Swahili while the others played pool.

About twenty minutes later or so, I started to feel the effects from the smell of the glue that was in the air. Almost every child in there had glue on them or if they didn’t, their clothes reeked of it. I began to feel light headed and a headache was quickly surfacing. I turned to Amanda and by the look on her face, she was feeling the same way I was. And then she said, “My head is hurtin’ from this smell in here.” I said, “Me too. Let’s get out of here.” We also realized the time and that it was getting close to the start of the feeding program. So we packed up Caleb, Eva and Jared and a lot of the street kids and then began our fifteen minute walk to the feeding program.
We did our usual walk through town and got the usual stares by Kenyans who saw these four white people walk through town with all these street kids. We also had Josephine and her son Mark Isaac with us on the travels.

We arrived at the feeding program to another 25+ kids already there. After the time of teaching, the kids who went up to the front the week before, were asked to come up again to be prayed for and spoken with. After that, the children were asked who would like to accept Christ as their savior and about seven kids went up to the front. Eva, Amanda and I went up there too and we laid hands on the children and Mwangi (a good friend of ours and staff of Youth Apart) prayed with them and for them. Josephine was one of the girls up there. She was so excited to be up there and prayed out loud and with her heart’s content. Again, it was such an amazing thing to see. God is certainly moving and working in this place; in the feeding program and we pray it’s going to move the street kids of Kitale.

This is an average day at the Feeding Program:

After the teaching, praying and food, we spent some time with the kids. I danced with a few of the boys (old fashioned style of course) and taught them how to spin me. Amanda and some of the boys started doing high karate kicks, which caused a riot of karate kicks. It was fun to watch them all try to karate kick Amanda. :-)

It was a great day with the kids, as per usual. I can’t say enough about how much we have with the street kids; or how much fun I have with the street kids. They just want to be accepted and loved and treated like human beings. Isn’t that what we all want? No matter what age, color or nationality we are? We just want to feel loved and accepted and treated as equals. These kids deserve that. I don’t know what life is like for them at home, if they have a home to go to or what life is like on the streets but if we can give them a full day or an hour a day of love and affection and they can feel important and special, then I’m all for that. I will always be more than willing to give them my time, attention and love. I can’t even explain how beautiful and special and gorgeous these kids are. I have a huge heart for them; they have a special place in my heart. Each and every one of them.

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