This story is told by a volunteer
Before I met the children at Emmanuel Center I would walk from my safe gated apartment in Nairobi to the big gated western style shopping mall. On the way I would meet street children, short for their age, because of malnourishment, but with faces already creased by a hard life. I had been told by some colleagues that such boys, often called Parking Boys because they live in parking lots, were 'bad' and I should steer clear of them. But the boys that fell in step beside me were simply children. If I spoke nicely to them, they would speak nicely back. If I gave them a banana, they would say thank-you.
There was one especially short boy named Moses, whom I would buy milk and bread for. He said both his parents were dead and he had lived on the streets for five years. Sometimes he would beg for a cup of tea. So I would go to one of the many tiny restaurants, constructed out of plywood and sheet mettle and say, "I'd like one .." and all of a sudden Moses had called his friends, who had called their friends, so there were now over 30 street children surrounding me with hungry eyes. "….Enough tea for them all," I would say and hand the laughing waiter $20 or so. Perhaps it was these early experiences in Nairobi that led me to seek out and start working at Emmanuel Center.
When I did begin working there, I moved to a different part of the city and did not see those same street children any more. I occasionally wondered what happened to Moses. Then one day, Daniel (Emmanuel founder/director) and I were called to the city's 'rehabilitation center.' One of the street children in their custody said he was from Emmanuel Center. None of the Emmanuel boys were missing, but Daniel knew that sometimes the children lied, as it was a good way to escape the facility. I did not understand why they would want to 'escape' until I saw the place.
It was a big warehouse with broken windows and no electricity or plumbing. The staff would not let us inside, but I did not need to see inside to understand it was a worse place than the streets. There were two men working. Each carried a heavy stick, stained purple with dried blood. They told me the street children they were caring for were 'bad' and needed to be punished. When Moses emerged his head was covered in huge goose eggs and his face was as purple as the sticks.
We knew there were at least 70 other children in that warehouse, but we only could help Moses. Daniel and I took him back to the center. Daniel spoke to him for a long time about going to school and not sniffing glue, but there was no space at the center so he went back to life on the streets. I never saw him again.
Often Daniel has to remind me that, as he says, "We cannot help all the street children. But we can help that one," and he points to a smiling kid in a school uniform eating his lunch. "It might not be much but, to that kid, what we are doing is everything."
