Kipsongo Slum - Kitale

It's been a long day today.

An early morning start for the drive up to Kitale.

Kitale is known, with good reason, as the bread basket of Kenya. The fertile lands and temperate climate combine to give excellent harvests and Kitale tea and coffee is rightly considered amongst the best available. Alongside the commercial crops many, many people run small farms producing maize, the food staple of Kenya.

We have farmed in Kitale for a number of years now. Last year we planted 10 acres with Maize. The harvest has usually been sufficient to feed the whole project for the year, giving us food security and protection against rising prices or the regular food shortages that accompany the years of poor rains.

Last year though, the rains failed and harvests were less than half what they were in previous years. Fortunately we still have enough for our own needs, but we have previously been able to sell the surplus to fund the following years planting, something which we wont manage this time.

Vincent his wife Rose look after the farm, as well as four ex street boys from the local area and I was looking forward to catching up with them. They are a delightful couple, the only downside of which is that Vincent is a very keen Arsenal fan. Fortunately their relative league position allows me a little gloating.

This trip was a little different to others however, as we had a particular objective in mind. Four of the boys we look after in Kibos originally come from Kitale. They are from the Turkana tribe, who inhabit the very north of Kenya, near the Sudanese border.

Many Turkana's have been displaced as a result of the regular border scuffles, often caused by cattle rustling (cattle having a cultural value beyond the meat or milk).

The four boys came from a Turkana community which has established itself in Kitale, however with no land rights they have been forced to build temporary homes in a slum on the outskirts of the town called Kipsongo.

During the post-election skirmishes the boys were grabbed by relatives from our home in Kitale and forced back onto the streets to find food. When things had settled down we relocated the boys and talked with their relatives, who agreed that they would return to our care, to school and to their studies, but this time back at our base in Kibos.

The boys are now flourishing in school and have fitted into the community at Kibos with ease. Our purpose in going back there was to meet with the community, update them on the progress of the boys and visit the home (a simple mud and thatch house) of one of the boys mothers, which we helped her to build.

As we drew up to Kipsongo the extent of the poverty here was obvious. I have walked through many slums, in Kisumu and Nairobi, but none quite as basic as this.

Most of the houses were traditional Turkana structures, igloo style construction of mud and sticks, with a rounded roof covered in anything and everything to hand, from sticks to paper, plastic bags, tyres and flattened bottles

We met with Pastor Edward at the entrance to the slum. Edward is an assistant pastor at a local church and a Turkana himself. Moses had contacted him during the troubles, and between them they have established a Christian fellowship in the slum. They meet every Tuesday afternoon and, this being Tuesday, we intended to make this our first stopping off point.

Edward greeted us warmly and led the way.

As we walked downhill through the slum we drew all eyes upon us. They were suspicious of the strangers in their midst, but accepting of us, as they saw we were with Edward.

We walked through a jumble of traditional homes, children in scrappy clothes played barefoot, but stopped to stare at us as we passed.

After about 10 minutes we arrived at the door of a hut, which Edward turned and entered, beckoning us after him. As I ducked my head to enter the low slung doorway it was apparent through the impenetrable darkness, that that the single room was packed with people. As my eyes adjusted from the bright sunshine to the relative night of the dwelling I realised it was standing room only.

This fellowship, begun less than a year ago amongst a people where there had been no church, had grown to some 40 or 50 people. Far more than a little hut can hold!

As we squeezed into a chair where people had moved to give us their place, the numbers of curious locals outside grew and grew.

Pastor Edward introduced us and Moses stood and greeted everyone. He spoke for about 10 minutes, in Swahili, whilst Edward translated into Turkana. At one point he introduced me, and I greeted the group warmly.

I shared about the charity, about our purpose and objectives. I shared from Isaiah 58 about what I believed we have been called to do. I shared about little Moses, Amos and James, the Turkana children we look after.

They were delighted to hear news of them, and even more delighted to know that they are in school and getting good marks.

Then Edward, and later others from the group shared. They thanked us for beginning the fellowship, for the very small funds we provide to help the community on a regular basis (about 5,000 shillings a month) and people shared how it had helped them, one with some hospital fees, another with some medicine and so on.

When the meeting finished we asked to visit the homes of the boys relatives, to greet them and to see and understand where they came from.

We left the hut and walked back out into the heat of the day. This time, rather than just Edward, we had a full entourage of people walking and chatting with us. Everyone wanted us to see their homes!

No longer full of suspicion we were walked around the village. They explained that many people come and take photographs and promise to help, but not many return. They believe that people use the pictures to raise funds and then keep the money. Maybe they are right, maybe not, but it is a fact that nobody seems to be helping them.

I was reminded of something I read once “A lot of people talk about the poor, but not so many talk to the poor”

We walked through the slum, past a kiosk set up by a single mother selling charcoal to help look after her 2 children and elderly mother, past a butchery, selling the meat (the squeamish should skip this bit) of a calf foetus, pulled from it's slaughtered mother and past countless hands, trying to pull me in a particular direction, to see a particular thing, to hear a particular need.

It would be good to help them all, but I know that is impossible.

We saw little Moses mothers house, a simple, single room mud and thatch structure which now sleeps her and 5 children. We say James relatives house and Amos's home.

There is absolutely no doubt, whatsoever in my mind, that they are better where they are. And so say their relatives. I thought I had seen communities with nothing. But I hadn't seen Kipsongo.

As we waked through the slum back to the car, still pulled this way and that, in spite of my protestations that I don't speak fluent Turkana I reflected on what a little money and care might do in this community to improve the lives of the children who live there.

Helping families can make a huge difference in stopping children ending up on the streets.

We left for the three and a half hour drive back to Kisumu in a reflective and thoughtful mood. It had been good to join the fellowship and although it is a small beginning, it is still a beginning. In such a way much can be accomplished.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta: -

“Today, it is very fashionable to talk about the poor. Unfortunately it is not very fashionable to talk with them.

When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you not I wanted to give that person what he or she needed. We have refused to be instruments of love in the hands of God to give to the poor a piece of bread, to offer them a dress to ward off the cold. It has happened because we did not recognise Christ when, once more, he appeared under the guise of pain, identified with a man dying of hunger, when he came in a lonely human being, in a lost child in search of a home.”