This was a service project during the slam service week in Mombasa Kenya. We took about 30 Kenyan youth to an orphanage to visit the kids, feed them, play games with them, and teach them the Bible. Immediately when we got there we were met with a bunch of kids, singing songs and dancing to welcome us.
Although there was a lot of joy coming from the kids, the atmosphere was almost uninhabitable. Inside of the orphanage building was just four rooms. with the center being an outdoor small courtyard where they wash their clothes and bathed. There was water flooding everywhere and was even tracking into the rooms that didn’t even have doors.
They were even new babies at the orphanage that the police just kept dropping off. They were a three month old newborn twins that were sleeping in a bed alone in a room. There was also a preemie baby that just got dropped off this week. The circumstances of these children and the environment they have have to grow up in is awful and disgusting.
I talked to their founder and head of the orphanage and she told me about what their day-to-day looks like. A lot of the times they don’t even get food during the day. She legitimately just does not have the funds to feed all of them so sometimes she just doesn’t. You can tell by the kids malnourishment, their crossed eyes or their hair falling out or they’re swollen stomachs or how the ones that are actually 12 years old look like they’re five years old.
There was so much need and at first it even made it hard to breathe for me. I felt the weight on my shoulders because I was seeing it in person so I felt responsible. Throughout the day, though I saw the Kenyan kids invest and take time to get to know and teach these little kids.
To see these Kenyan kids who are also poor and also go through similar struggles look down and invest to these little orphans made me so emotional because I know that that is how Africa will change. It’s not gonna be through white saviorism or colonization. It’s gonna be through the empowerment of the poor through the word of God to be able to reach the poor next to them and lift up their communities.
Although this visit to the orphanage came with so much grief and sadness I saw the hope and the light shining through it reminds me of Jon one how the the darkness has not overcome the light. I see the hope through us teaching the word of God to these youth, and then being able to practice it in their communities.