Thousands of people live here. One-room shacks are lined side by side, each housing a family. Some are wealthy enough to add rooms to their homes.
Open sewage ditches run through the maze of shacks. When it rains, these ditches overflow and flood the walkways and roads. We’ve already seen kids fall in. We’ve seen their toys fall in, and they retrieve them and act as if nothing is wrong.
The community gathers to greet us in the gravel pit. The kids tug on our clothes and try taking our bracelets and water bottles. They are violent towards each other and towards us—but who can blame them?! They’ve grown up in a violent home, where alcoholism and abuse is a common part of life.
Many kids have infected wounds or infections behind their ears and on their scalps. Lice is a common finding through this community.
As we walk through the walkways that divide the shacks, we find another road. On the other side is more shacks lined side-by-side. If you keep walking, you keep finding more shacks, more dirty kids, and more people that are haunted by alcoholism, abuse and poverty.
Inside the shacks that we enter, cooking pots and utensils cover a corner of the floor, while a single bed usually lines another wall. They have very little—just what they need to survive. When we enter, they are so quick to give us a seat on the bed and they find a place on the floor. They offer what they have to us. They are excited and willing to hear what we have to share with them.
This is only one of many slums in the area. The need is huge. The area looks hopeless.
But Christ is their hope. Nothing is impossible with Him. It will take a creative and extravagant solution to solve this problem. We are trusting that the love we show to this community will be a seed that will sprout in their lives and allow them to escape the poverty, alcoholism, abuse and whatever else is hiding in this dark area.
