23 October 2009
The day started as any normal day would. A warm shower, a good breakfast and then off for a day of looking at schools that are already in a partnership with African Leadership and those that are potential partners. The African Leadership Director in Kenya picked us up at Grace House where we were staying and we headed for Kabira. By now I have come to know Kabira as a place where many people are ministering in the name of God and it seems that there is a church or mosque around every corner. While the churches and Christian schools are beacons of light shining in very dark places some of the mosques have proven to be for breeding ground of hatred and darkness.
We visited one school project known as Faith Community School. To get to the school we actually parked our car at a church where it would be safe and a driver from the community picked us up and drove us to the school. He is known and so is his car. The scene is hard to capture, but imagine shopping stalls made of crude materials that have been salvaged from somewhere crowded so tightly together that you couldn’t squeeze between them. Picture taking had to be done discretely and with great sensitivity. This is an area that was adversely impacted by post election violence. Reconciliation has been slow. There wasn’t enough space for the car to pass. It had been raining and the actual roadway was filled with large puddles of water and mud. The driver was a master navigator. The road was nothing more than a glorified dirt path but it had a name known as “the main road.” The shop keepers had to move their goods out of the roadway for us to pass. I tried taking pictures out the front windshield of the car but there was a glare from the sun that distorted the picture.
As we drove into the school lot the scene ahead of us was one of long corrugated tin shacks that might reminded me of a cattle shed on the farm. There was a series of doors that I surmised were an entrance to a classroom. We were right! Each room was separated from the other by another corrugated tin wall. We sat with the Bishop’s wife who is the visionary for the school. She started the school out of a compassion for the children in the neighborhood who were orphaned of AIDS and those who were so destitute they would never have an opportunity to attend a local government school that is supposed to be free.
The Bishop’s wife gave us a tour, explained her vision and shared some of the children’s stories. The school currently serves students up through grade 3. In order to provide for the students next year they will need an additional teacher. I spent time in the classroom asking the students to tell me their numbers and letters and vowel sounds. Surprisingly, they knew them out of sequence which means the teachers are doing better than just rote memorization.
The kids sat three and four to a desk and seemed bright and eager to learn. While it is obvious that the learning conditions are less than ideal, they are certainly better than nothing and learning is taking place. I am always fascinated by the eyes of children. These children were no different. Some had bright eager eyes while others had a haunting sadness.
The oppression of the evil one is so real in the slums of Kabira that you can feel it in the air. There is obviously a battle going on for the minds and hearts of these children. The school staff is making great sacrifices and a huge investment to rescue these children from the clutches of Satan and bring them into the glorious light of the Gospel. The pastor and his wife manage to scrape together enough money to provide a breakfast of porridge and then lunch before they go home. This is truly a ministry of faith as this precious couple watch and wait on God to provide for these children every day. My prayer is that God will so transform the minds and hearts of these children so that they will shine as the stars of heaven and become ambassadors of the Lord Jesus in the midst of the darkness of sin that has landed them in the midst of the deep poverty that surrounds them every day of their lives. One teacher told me that many of all the girls living in a poverty situation in the Kibera slums are sexually molested by the time they are 9 years old and often become prostitutes as teenagers to find enough money to survive. What will their future be? Hope?
The eyes tell the story—two pictures ─ two very different stories ─ one of sad longing the other hope.
