This is the face of glue. Our last Saturday in Bungoma, Kenya we gathered together all the street kids we could find and led them to the church. We spent the afternoon playing football (soccer) or just talking as best we could with them. We bought them milk and biscuits (cookies) to get them some nutrition and soap to wash themselves and their clothes. It was a wonderful day of joy, laughter, and love, but it was a day that I had not been looking forward too. Facing this is challenging. It breaks my heart every time I look into one of this children's eyes and they are glazed over like the glue they're huffing. This is a reality…and it's shameful. How do we live in a world that allows children to make the decision to huff glue instead of live with a growling stomach? It breaks my heart. I apologize that this is not the happiest blog, nor the most joyful pictures I could present you with from my month in Kenya, but as seeing that I had limited ability to post pictures (due to the internet in Africa) I felt like these were the most urgent. As you take a look at the faces, at the children whose hunger is so terrible, they spend most of their days high on glue, will you please just pray.
This is one of the older boys living on the streets.
His name was Peter. He was the 'leader' of the kids actually gave us hope. I saw him take a huff of glue only once the entire day we were with him. He was completely coherent and showed remarkable leadership by keeping the younger kids in-line. His only request of me was to see if I could get him a nice pair of shoes. He had never owned a nice pair of shoes.
This was about half of the gang. They were great kids. We had a blast hanging out with them.
