Did you know!!

Did you know that for every 80 streets children that are living in the streets of Nairobi, 10 or more die every year.Yeah its true!This Monday like all the other Mondays, we got an opportunity to visit the streets, Kennedy took Larry and I to a new base which is opposite the Eastleigh military airbase runaway.
This is a sad spot to be in, with a lot of garbage around, dirty animals all around and insects zooming on you. We were glad though to be received by several young men who to our surprise we pleased to have us visit them.This doesn't happen a lot in the streets. In the base there were some Muslim guys also who received us well too. As we encouraged them and Larry read from the Bible, it was astonishing to note the hunger they had to hear us.They said that people come and take pictures and make lots of promises but they never return again.I also noted that one thing stood out in our conversation with them too, the issue of Identity cards. In the streets when one attains the age of 18, one of the biggest dilemma they experience is how they will get this document.You cannot get a decent job or get around well without this Card.
After that base visit, we called the lady that had helped us secure IDs for the first group of 18 guys from the streets and she had good news for us that her bosses had agreed to help us.This had taken us 1 year to get where we were. This was good news for us considering the time and money we had spent getting this guys come to the center, go for age assessment, get them cleaned up, i can imagine how the Eastleigh team felt when we hit a dead-end. When we did a follow up of the 80 people that we had started with in this process of getting the IDs, we discovered that of the 80, 10 of them have since passed on which was a surprise revelation that life for a street person is very short.Well sometimes life is too harsh.

Joel