This month our team is working with Masana, a day center for
street boys in Maputo, Mozambique. Every
Monday through Thursday from 7am-2pm roughly thirty boys come to the Masana
house where they take showers, receive breakfast and lunch, take classes and
worship. In every country I’ve been to
over the past six months there have been street children like these boys we
work with everyday. They stand outside
bakeries and wait for people like us to buy them a pastry or a loaf of bread. They wander the streets and walk up to car
windows begging for your spare change.
The street boys have been a staple in each country thus far, but it’s a
life I knew very little about and certainly didn’t understand. Life
on the streets is not only for the homeless and orphaned; life on the streets
is an addiction. A large percentage
of the boys we work with at Masana have families back home to go to, however
the life on the street is far more appealing than the one they left
behind. These children range in age from
nine to nineteen years old. Many left
because they didn’t want to be punished for something they did wrong, so they
ran away from home and just never went back; others weren’t happy with their
family life and some just went out of curiosity and fell victim to the street
life addiction. But there is nothing
glamorous about the life they live. Yes,
they probably make more money and eat better on the streets than they ever did
at home, and maybe the freedom is freeing, but these boys are just children
living a grown up life. Rather than
playing soccer and going to school, these boys are fending for their lives and
wondering where they will sleep and where their next meal will come from. What breaks my heart the most is when we see
the roughest and the toughest break down in tears because he got hit by a ball
in the head or was withheld a meal for bad behavior. It’s in those moments that we see the grown
ups turn back into sweet little boys in need of a mother to comfort them.
Masana is a wonderful program for these boys because they
give them a chance to better their lives.
Many programs for street children will just feed them and allow them to
come and go as they please, but Masana actually requires the children to stay
from 7am-2pm if they want to be fed.
This program teaches them discipline, and responsibility, basic skills
and teachings, and most importantly, the word of God. In addition, if a boy has been coming
regularly to Masana and wants to leave the street life and move back home,
Masana will take him in for one month and begin the reintegration process. The missionaries will go on weekly home
visits for an extended period of time and aid in the readjustment of living at
home again. Currently, there are four
boys that live at Masana. Two of these
boys, Edson and Josephe were taken in and permanently live there, while the
other two boys, Felix and Kahlitu, are both in the reintegration process. It has been such a blessing working along
side Lauren, Alexis, and Ian-three passionate young missionaries- and seeing
their hearts for these boys. What makes
this program different is a basic teaching from the bible, but something that
many organizations miss when they get too wrapped up in schedules and
logistics, and that is simply LOVE.
Over the past two weeks, I have watched Lauren, Alexis, and
Ian hold crying children, rush sick or wounded boys to the hospital (sometimes
in the middle of the night), sneak food to a starving child, help the boys with
school work, and pretty much spend all of their spare time serving and living
life along side these boys. They are different, because they love. You can teach the bible to a child all day
long, but if they aren’t seeing it lived out by those they look up to it will
never permeate their hearts. Even if
these boys never go home, they at least have people that love them the way
Christ loves them; people that will stick by them even when things get a little
messy and difficult. Its that kind of love that changes the
world.
