Greetings (Jambo) on this Hallow's Eve from Eldoret, Kenya. Of course everyone in the U.S. is celebrating with costumes, parties, and giving away candy tonight, but we can't find a trace of that here. Cheryl thought she found a hint of Halloween here when she found a wide assortment of wigs on the supermarket shelf a month ago and asked Rachel Gallagher if the wigs were costumes in preparation for Halloween. Rachel informed her that they were not costumes, but that Kenyan women frequently used wigs and extensions to change their hairstyle.
We all got a laugh out of that one, but none of us laughed at an incident that happened last night when David Gallagher and Matt were out with the ministry leader for our street children in downtown Eldoret. Our ministry leader for street children, Morris Mordecai, does a fantastic job of regularly meeting with the hundreds of street children in downtown Eldoret, counseling them, speaking with them, loving them, and feeding them, helping them get off the street. Open Arms had received a donation of nearly 100 quarts of milk from a local dairy to distribute to the children and David and Matt went downtown with the milk ready to help Morris distibute the milk. Unfortunately, they were met with what appeared to be a mob of angry street children being dispersed by the police with whips.
Matt and David intervened by talking to the police and pleading with them that their interests in helping the street children were entirely peaceful, and eventually the police allowed them to continue their gathering undisturbed while Matt, David, and Morris spoke to the children and distributed milk. Of course the street children in Eldoret face their own challenges in relating to the broader Eldoret community, since many of the children are involved in theft and also addicted to sniffing glue, the local drug of choice (I believe there is a BBC documentary on YouTube about the street children of Eldoret which is well worth watching). In defense of the street children, they are often abandoned, orphaned, and they steal and sniff glue to alleviate their ongoing problems with hunger, homelessness, and all of the related challenges that come with these two blights. Open Arms is beginning to offer short term and long term solutions to the challenges these children face, but there is still a lot of work to do.
However, starving children and children sniffing glue was not necessarily what disturbed Matt the most during this evening. As Matt and David confronted the policemen, they smelled alcohol on the breath of most of the officers. The only thing scarier than a mob of street children or a Freddy Kreuger Halloween costume tonight, was several drunken policemen holding assault rifles and whips in downtown Eldoret. That is something really scary to think about this Halloween. Be safe and enjoy some candy corn today!!
Matt and Cheryl
P.S. Happy birthday to my sister, Beth Tallman!!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment