EXPERIENCES, REFLECTIONS AND STORIES ABOUT A FEW OF THE STREET BOYS
PETER
Peter is about 16 years old but if you saw him you would think he is 10 or 11. He has no family, no home, no stable source of food. He lives in a place that if a person in the U.S. were to be caught housing animals there, would be arrested. The level of absolute nastiness and filth of his little world is beyond description.
A week or so before we arrived he got high on glue one evening. For the street kids glue is their only escape from the stress, pain, and horror of their world. You and I have other more socially acceptable ways of escaping but Peter was doing the only thing he knew to do when his heart was worn and his stomach was empty. For a few shillings he could buy a bottle of glue that smells like model cement and has the same effect when inhaled. As he got stoned this particular evening he dripped the glue all over his hands and bare feet. He got a little too close to the fire that night and immediately his feet caught on fire. He tried to beat the fire out with his hands, which of course ignited them as well. They don't teach "stop, drop, and roll" in the slums of Africa, so poor little Peter helplessly beat at the flames until the skin was burned through his wrists and feet to the muscle tissue and he passed out. Some of the boys carried his smoldering body to the compound where they waited all night until the Coulston's arrived the next morning. Street Kids are normally left to die by medical personnel here, but after some pleading a nurse dabbed a purple infection killer on Peter's festering and wretched wounds and the long flaps of burned flesh.
When we arrived, Peter would be carried to the compound every morning and would sit watching what everyone else was doing in unspeakable pain. The other kids would be playing and Peter would sit trying very hard not to cry. Of course tears are the worst enemy of someone who lives on the street. Tears are a sign of weakness and to be weak is to die. The "doctor" at the compound would take Peter into the office every day to clean, medicate, and dress his wounds. His cries and screams would fill the tin roofed classroom area as lengths of flesh would have to be trimmed away and infection cleaned. When I would pass by and see the process I would get weak and tremble.
It was wild to witness the reaction of some of the other kids during this time. They would watch the entire process without flinching. Pain is no stranger to them. They are unaffected by it. No pain, no matter how intense, frightens them at all. I saw four or five of these kids just enthralled by the process and they would watch with an intense focus for over an hour as little Peter wailed. I cannot imagine what they were thinking as they watched his pain.
Just before we left, Peter improved. He still is carried from place to place but the pain was better. He began sleeping on a table in the office at night because when he arrived every morning after a night sleeping in the slums his wounds would be infected horribly. As he improved and the pain lessened he joined into the parts of camp that he could. He really seemed to have a blast with crafts. Slowly, his face would shine and he would laugh and sing.
Friday night (6/26) after all the other kids had left, Peter was sitting on the bench under the Craft/mess hall area. It is an open concrete area covered by a corrugated metal roof. It has an open pit cooking area and a storage room for cooking supplies. Peter had been carried there sometime earlier and was still sitting there looking quite content even though everyone was long gone and he was alone. As I passed him to take yet another cold shower I heard him singing, but at first I didn't recognize what the song was. But as I stood in the cold concrete shower room shaking off the evening chill I realized he was singing, "This is my story, this is my song, praising my savior, all the day long." His voice rang out in the empty compound with purpose and clarity. Earlier that day he had been held down on a metal table crying out in pain, now he cried out in praise. I wondered how he could sing those words. How could a boy whose feet and hands were deformed and scarred exclaim that the story of his life was Jesus? Somehow Peter had experienced something in Faith that shaped who he was. Pain did not have the last word in defining his life. Jesus did.
. DANIEL
Daniel is 18. He came to Nairobi at age 7 or 8 with his older brother and sister. His parents had died and the three children came seeking life. There is no life in the big cities of the third world for children without parents. You see for a homeless child life only comes by begging, stealing, prostitution or grace. There was to be no grace for little Daniel and within a few days' Daniel's brother and sister abandoned him. He simply awoke one morning in the dirt of an alley way to find them gone. He has no idea what happened to them and never saw them again.
He went without food for 4 or 5 days until he learned how to search for food by digging in the rotting piles of trash heaped up in alleys or along roadways. He dug in the trash until he found enough bits and pieces of discarded food to get a little he could eat. It would be impossible to really explain what this means.
Within a few months he attached himself to a gang of boys who slept and operated out of an area called a "base." He learned the craft of stealing in order to buy a meal which is vastly preferable to warming up and eating laboriously picked out bits of discarded food. One day he was stealing the hub caps off a car with some of his gang when guards began chasing them. The guards commanded them to stop running, then began to shoot at them. Daniel was wounded and then watched one of his friends die on the street from six gun shot wounds.
Desperation drives extreme actions. The stealing continued. One day some men witnessed Daniel pick pocketing a tourist. The men grabbed Daniel, tied him up, then went to get some supplies in order to execute him. In Nairobi street justice is swift and merciless for homeless children. The typical method of "pest removal" is to tie up a street boy, place an old tire around his mid section, cover him with gasoline and set him ablaze. No one on the streets of the third world would give a second thought to murdering one of these children. They view them the way you or I would view or value an insect.
Just as the men were getting Daniel ready for "justice" the tourist returned and begged them not to kill him. Luckily the police arrived, arrested him and Daniel ended up in prison for the next year and a half.
After his release Daniel moved into the homeless world of the slums of Eastleigh. There he met ministry leaders who introduced him to the street school. He made his way from crime to education, then from education to Jesus. Jesus has given him a whole new perspective of life. In fact, Jesus has given him life. The life his brother and sister abandoned him to search for found Daniel just when he needed it the most. As I said, desperation drives extreme actions. It can also ready us for a kind of faith few in America could ever fathom.
Reg Cox
Thanks for letting me post this.
dan |
