Street Children

Hey All!

People have been contacting me about giving donations to my mission work, and I’m not totally certain that I have the authority to receive charity on behalf on any of the organizations where I work. In fact, I’m pretty positive that I’m not. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with giving me gifts with the implication that I put them to use in my work. I can, however, describe the different ministries that I am involved in and give you the information necessary to donate directly to those organizations. So over the next week or two I’m am going to post exposés on each of the places where I work, and then, when I’m done explaining each center and their work to you, I will post the ways in which one might go about giving to them.

Today, I am going to talk about Street Children also known on the streets of Mathare as Mododo. There are three good men that work there. Here they are:

AUUUGGGUUUSSS!!!!

Augustine actually grew up in Mathare and went through the program there. He excelled in grade school and achieved a qualifying score to attend a provincial high school. He did well enough there to then go on to college. He spent a couple years there before taking time off due to monetary insufficiencies. He now volunteers at Street Children full time. He receives a stipend large enough for him to cover an apartment just outside Mathare in a place called Huruma which is a small step up from the slums. He does incredible work doing anything and everything at the center. He knows what the kids need, and he’s very driven to accomplish it. He’s 23 years old, and he’s been volunteering there for about 8 months now. After to speaking with Dan about him, they are looking to hopefully hire him as an employee within the next year or two if they can keep him around.

Vini

Vincent is the on-site manager of the center. He lives on the 4^th and the highest floor of the building with his wife and two children (a girl and a boy 4 and 2 respectively). He is pretty much the Dad to all of the kids of the center. He is the one who organizes them for prayer, meals, study sessions, and upkeep of the center. There are between 10 and 15 boys who actually stay at the center full time, and Vincent is the primary caretaker of these boys. He’s 33, and he’s worked there for 5 years. He always has a smile with a true caring authority behind it, and, with that smile, he runs a tight ship.

Somalians, beware! Pirate Dan's on a Tear!

Dan. Oh Dan. He’s one of the most interesting men that I have met in my time here in Kenya. In the picture he has a patch on his eye because he has a severely infected eye that he has had a couple of treatments on, but he cannot seem to quite shake it. Despite this, he is one of the most passionate people at the center, and it is his work over the past 12 years that has kept the center open and running. He has more worldly knowledge than most because, for a good portion of those 12 years, he has been going back and forth between Germany and Kenya raising money. He’s actually dating a nice German girl who spends about 6 months of the year working at St. Maurus school for the mentally and physically challenged which I will talk about in a later post. Dan is pretty much the end all be all for that center. Without him things just wouldn’t run. He is incredibly important there, and he’s there at all purely because he cares about his boys there.

The center itself is sort of like a YMCA. It’s a place that boys can go when they are not in school, so they do not get into trouble (girls, drugs, AIDS). Between the start of school and its end they recruit boys to go there from off the streets directly. Over the vacation periods they don’t recruit because of the massive number of boys there. They offer lunch time meals as well as a pretty endless pot of tea. They bring in the Catholic culture to many of the boys and train the boys to do the same for others. Right now, during the teacher strike that is going on across the entirety of Kenya, they are offering lessons based on what the boys need in order that they might do well on their exams when school finally begins.

On a given day, this center might have as many as 115 boys go through it. There is only room for about 10 boys to board there, and they board almost 15. The boys would rather squeeze in tight here at this center than be out on the streets simply because of the security it offers. There is a lot of good work being done here. Even if you only mention their meager garden which over the past couple years has actually encouraged other members of the community to start growing crops. It is a highly influential center that is wildly under-staffed and even more so under-funded. The needs and prayers of the boys, staff, and monastery have really reached out to God and kept it going.

Needs that I have seen:

1)      The staff just got paid, and it was three weeks late.

2)      A Basketball Rim. There’s a spot on their patio where I could fashion a rigging for it.

3)      Good work books for geography, English, math, chemistry, biology, and physics for grade school and high school levels.

4)      Good literature consisting of all levels of reading ability.

5)      School utensils like pencils, erasers, sharpeners, paper, and calculators.

Just email me with any questions of that sort Haha

Again, I’ll post the donation process for this center in about a week.

In the next couple days, I will post about St. Benedict’s primary school. As it stands, the list of ministries I’m involved goes as such:

1)      Street Children

2)      St. Benedict’s Primary School

3)      St. Maurus School for the Handicapped

4)      St. Benedict’s Parish Youth Organization

5)      Mogra Star Academy and Rescue Center

The first four are affiliated with the Benedictine Monastics with whom I am living, and the last one is supported by David and Anne Trufant who also run Summer Camps Kahdalea and Chosatong in Brevard, North Carolina. These are by no means the only 5 ministries that are here in Mathare let alone Nairobi, but they are the ones that I am directly involved with and with which I am more than fairly knowledgeable.

Stay tuned for more from East Africa!

-          Harris

PS

Here are some cute babies:

This baby's name is David. Apparently after Dave Trufant. No Joke. That's what they told me,

This baby's name is Angel. She legit waved back at me when I said Good Bye or rather Kwa Heri!