street children were suffering out there with nothing to eat and no roof over their heads. For about three years, I kept getting signs from God, telling me, “Go ye, Charles,” but it was not until November 1989 that I finally said, “Speak, Lord; your servant is listening.”
The turning point came that November day when I suddenly became ill at my office. I left for home, yet strangely found myself on the highway headed to Uganda. I blacked out and nearly crashed. I pulled over and felt an incredible battle inside me. Do I stay in business, or do I leave it all to rescue street children? It was crazy, really. But there is nothing normal about following God.
After a moment of silent meditation and prayer, I realized that God wanted me to rescue and show love to the suffering children in the streets of Eldoret and the rest of the country. Most of them were totally hopeless and desperate; they had concluded that God had forgotten them. They believed that their lives were headed nowhere. But at this moment, God was calling me to show these children that He still cared about them and, despite being destitute in the streets, all was not lost in their lives.
And the message finally came out loud: “Go ye, Charles, into the streets and rescue the suffering children from the trauma that they are facing out there. Restore them back to Me. Give them food, clothing and shelter. Let them know Me and know that I love and care for them. Sell everything that you own and dedicate those resources to uplifting the lives of the destitute children.”
Just like a soldier who had been commanded into action by his superiors, I sprang to my feet with my heart blazing. I focused all my energies on rescuing and rehabilitating the needy children by giving them food, clothing, shelter, spiritual guidance, parental love and education.
But before doing all this, I sought to know and understand the street children better. There was no better way of doing this than befriending them and going to the streets to spend time with them. I knew I had to befriend them and get to know their ways before I could teach them the ways of the Lord.
Most evenings I would go down to the banks of the Sosiani River in Eldoret—where they mainly lived—and try to understand their lives. What do they talk about? How do they reason? How do they connect? How do they eat? Where do they sleep? Whom do they worship? How do they perceive life? What do they hope for in the future? I decided to find out.
I sat around their fires and shared in their stories. Sosiani River cuts through Eldoret town. It often floods whenever it rains. This is a dirty and dangerous river, and many people drown in it. I could not understand why street children chose to live next to this dangerous place where it could be catastrophic if someone pushed you over the edge. My worries were compounded when I realized that some children liked pushing others in. All the same, I joined them there.
I learned that the children on the street barely ate anything. They went for days without food. And when they happened to eat something, it was mainly decomposing leftovers that exposed them to serious dangers like cancer and even death. They slept in the open alleys and literally saw nothing positive in the world.
These children became a bother to the public. They begged in streets and camped outside hotels and supermarkets, begging for assistance, but few people would give them a second glance.
It is not a secret that even today many people find these children repulsive and bothersome. Many people shout at them or simply roll up their car windows and drive off. This attitude leads some of the street children into stealing, but the consequences became even worse. Many of them were brutally attacked, injured and even killed. I witnessed and also heard of many cases of street children dying by the hands of irate citizens. It pitted a society of those who have against those who do not have.
The street children were commonly referred to as chokora. This name refers to people whose main preoccupation is to rummage in garbage cans and dumpsites. It is a negative term suggesting that the children are very disgusting, disorderly and unbearable. Instead of pitying and supporting the poor, it is sad that our society chose to look down upon them and coined a demeaning name for them.
I don’t like using the word chokora in reference to street children. This term literally accuses them of being wild or vagabonds and portrays them in a negative light, whereas some of them are living in the streets as a matter of fate. Given a chance, they would not have gone there at all.
My interaction with street children revealed that most of them hardly knew where they came from. Some were dumped in the streets when they were barely two years old. They could not understand anything or even defend themselves. By the grace of God they managed to hang on to life, and the streets became their ultimate home. Others are in the streets as a result of having lost their parents and nobody else would come to their support. The streets became their last resort. Such children need to be understood and comforted, but not shouted at and called chokora.
Through interactions with street children, I learned that street life—just like in the jungle—was about survival of the fittest and preying on each other. It was full of selfishness, anger, disorder, hatred, fear, blackmail and undue opportunism, among other vices. The children struggled to get something to eat by any means possible, including stealing, lying, pretending and even concealing their identity. In this jungle—where their ages ranged from as young as 2 years old up to 25 years old—the strong ones had it all while the weakest were hit worst. Life was not so different from the animal kingdom, where the weak ate only after the strong had their fill. Woe unto the young ones, because the big ones hardly ever had their fill.
The girls in the streets were sexually abused by the big boys and even other members of the public. It was common to see small girls aged 12 years having babies or getting infected with HIV/AIDS. Most of the adult street boys and girls were already infected with HIV/AIDS. The situation was appalling. It signalled to me the need for urgent intervention.
Besides the prevalence of the deadly virus, the children were also used by criminal elements for illicit trade such as drug trafficking—and abused drugs themselves. Selling and smoking of marijuana (bhang) was common in the streets. The huge, dirty, black sacks that some of the children carried on their backs—that were mostly believed to contain food leftovers—also contained drugs. Sometimes I would talk to street children who were too intoxicated to see me. When we later met again, they had no idea who I was.
The jungle life was strongly exhibited when children struggled for food. If a small child, for instance, got a piece of bread and went with it to a given “camp” where other street kids lived, it would be grabbed from them mercilessly by the stronger ones and devoured as they watched. It was even worse if someone stumbled on food in the presence of others; they could fight for it and end up injuring one another badly. Every time I went to the camp in the evening, I would be told of cases where children quarrelled over food. Such living conditions left no room for love, courtesy, friendliness, orderliness, meekness, humility or concern for other people’s welfare. It only created men and women full of selfishness, anger and vindictiveness, practising blackmail and other anti-social behaviours.
On almost any day, at almost any time, children dressed in rags with bottles filled with glue pressed to their faces roam the streets in Kenyan towns. Even today they can be seen, roaming in rural towns, too. Many have lost their parents to the deadly HIV/AIDS scourge and other diseases. Some have been cast out of their homes. Many are runaways, while most of the others are forced on the streets due to poverty. Remember, we have millions of Kenyans out there who live on less than half a dollar per day. These children are the poorest of the poor; they depend on begging, theft and prostitution to survive. Sniffing glue and smoking marijuana are also popular among these children.
I would spend time with my wife and children in the evening, talking to them about God and His love for the poor, sharing with them my desires for street children. We would have dinner together and pray together as a family. When they went to bed at around 9 p.m., I would
