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Chapter Three: A Call to Respond to the Voice of Suffering Children

The MCF journey started in Eldoret in 1989 when I received a calling from God to undertake a special duty for His people, the duty of helping the helpless in society and restoring hope among the hopeless children. In those early days, I had no idea of the magnitude of how this work could grow. I started out by simply trusting in God and believing that greater things could come.

Eldoret town, at that time, was full of street children, who were considered a nuisance by the members of the public. These destitute children were all over the town streets, bus parks, market centres, dumpsites and even estates. Many people could not stand them. The children were dirty and uncultured. They were stinky and offensive. They were seen as bothersome beggars as they followed people with a persistent plea for money, saying, “Auntie, Uncle, nisaidie shilingi,” meaning, “Please spare me a shilling.”

I heard street boys asking me for a shilling when I parked my car in Nairobi one day. They showed me to a parking spot and wanted me to reward them for their help, but I denied them any money. When I had finished my business meeting, I came out to discover my car had been stolen. This greatly impacted me. In fact, this one incident set in motion a chain of events and started a process where I became more and more convicted about the plight of street children.

But I did not immediately respond. Just like Samuel in the Bible, the little boy who lived in the priest Eli’s household (1 Samuel 3) and later became a prophet, I too was called many times by the Lord but could not immediately grasp the message that He was communicating to me.

In the biblical story, God wants to use Samuel to guide the children of Israel. I could relate to Samuel. One night, the Lord calls the young boy Samuel.

Samuel answered, “Here I am.” And he ran to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” But Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” So he went and lay down.

Again the LORD called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.”

“My son,” Eli said, “I did not call; go back and lie down.” Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD: The word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him. (1 Samuel 3:4–7)

Samuel must have been so confused!

A third time the LORD called, “Samuel!” And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, “Here I am; you called me.” Then Eli realized that the LORD was calling the boy. So Eli told Samuel, “Go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, ‘Speak, LORD, for your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

The LORD came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:8–10)

And the Lord went ahead and gave Samuel the intended message.

Many times I had felt a lot of compassion for street children, to the extent of taking food to them in the street, mainly bread and soda, chatting with them, encouraging them not to give up in life (however unbelievable such words sounded), but God had wanted me to do something bigger than that. During that time I kept asking myself, What is the reason for our existence on earth? I felt a compelling force pushing me to go forth and do something about these abandoned and vulnerable children. But what was I supposed to do?

I could not quickly figure it out. I spent sleepless nights pondering it. This was characterized by moments of prayer, meditation and soul-searching. I continued making trips to the streets of Eldoret, the place this vulnerable group called home. At one point I became a very troubled man—not happy or contented with what I was doing, despite succeeding in a lot of businesses and earning a lot of money.

I kept feeling that God was calling me to something different. I even felt guilty that I had a lot of food for myself and my family, but the 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 go out to meet the street children. I would stay there in the dark up to 3 a.m. or sometimes until morning before driving back to my house in Pioneer Estate. My wife and children were worried about my security at night, but I told them, “I’m doing God’s work, and He is watching over me.”

Initially, the street children were suspicious of my intentions for visiting their riverside camp. Perhaps they thought I was a police officer or a security informer tracking their movements. Many of these children were involved in petty crimes and were repeatedly arrested and beaten by the police. The authorities simply called it discipline.

But with time the children relaxed and welcomed me into their open abode, especially after I kept taking food to them every evening. They were used to people abusing, beating and harassing them, but when they saw me coming with food they opened up and warmly received me. After walking aimlessly in the streets and rummaging through dumpsites during the day, these children would rush back to the riverbank in the evening to wait for me. They were sure I would come. They were sure I would bring food. They were sure they would eat. I became one of them. This gave me a chance to get to know them better.

My wife, Esther, would cook a lot of food and pack it in containers. I would deliver it to the children at night. Initially, the children fought over it, but I created order and supervised the sharing exercise. On other occasions, I bought them bread, soda and milk. This made them so happy, and they started longing for my arrival every evening. And while they ate the food, I taught them the art of sharing among themselves and appreciating one another. The rehabilitation process had started.

As my relationship with them became stronger they started telling me their stories. I even learned their language—the popular street sheng—which we used to communicate with each other. For instance, they would get excited when I greeted them with “Ooooyeeee.” To them it was a moment of excitement, but for me it was a learning session. This expression would later become synonymous with MCF. In our interactions, the children frequently used words like buda (father), msosi (food), niaje (how are you?) and many other words that I have since forgotten. Today when I interact with the MCF children I still greet them with “Ooooyeeee.” This phrase also means “Peace be with you.”

While visiting the street children, I discovered that some were very sickly, especially the young ones who were less than 10 years old, because of the cold temperatures they were exposed to in the streets. In the months of June, July and August, it would get as low as 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit). These children had no choice but to brave the cold by the riverside or on wet pavements. Some of them would cry in my presence, cough endlessly and shiver throughout the night. Others had acute cases of fever and diarrhea. I took them to the hospital, where they were treated for malaria, typhoid, acute flu, skin diseases and other ailments.

Furthermore, these children were dirty and smelly—they operated in dumpsites, and some had not showered or changed clothes for many months—but I sat close to them and listened to their stories. Whenever they were happy, especially after I had delivered food to them, they would hold my hand, brush themselves against me, pull me around, climb on my shoulders, struggle for my attention, play with me, and do all manner of things that ended up getting me dirty like them. When I went back home one might imagine that I had been rolling in a pool of mud. My clothes were extremely soiled. Furthermore, these children were infected with crawling pests such as lice, and I ended up catching lice too.

These are some of the minor challenges that I faced while reaching out to the street children, but they never deterred me from focusing on my main goal of rescuing and rehabilitating them.

For example, each time I returned home from Sosiani River, my clothes had to be thoroughly disinfected. However, to control this situation among the children, I would bring them soap and advise them to bath by the river and wash their clothes. This ensured that we all remained clean. This was a tall order for some of them, who had a phobia of water, but others took it with enthusiasm and practised some personal hygiene.

After continued interaction with the street children—playing, greeting and holding hands—I began getting itchy hands, especially at the back of my palms. My irritated skin began peeling off. I constantly kept scratching my hands. I later found out that I had contracted scabies, an extremely itchy skin disorder that spreads from one person to another through close skin-to-skin contact.

Medical experts say scabies is contracted from prolonged hand-holding with an infected person. It is caused by a parasitic infestation on one’s skin. Itching is the main symptom of scabies. It is often severe and tends to be in one place at first (often the hands) and then spreads to other parts of the body. If the skin becomes infected with bacteria, it becomes red, inflamed, hot and tender. Scabies can stay in your skin forever if not treated. It can be cured by applying a medicinal cream or lotion as prescribed by the doctor. My condition persisted for a while, and I went to the hospital for treatment, but I was not immediately healed. I lived with it for over 10 years.