Today we visited the Pangani Lutheran Children’s Center. Located in the middle of a vast slum in Nairobi, the center started as a place for young street girls to come and receive a meal, education and medical treatment. The center provides some housing to a few gals, but mostly just come for the day. They are all required to have uniforms like the public schools, but the school helps out when the parents are unable or unwilling. Giving gals training in various trades is another part of the program, and we witnessed one young woman, Monica, use a loom to weave a kikoi, a shawl-like sarong. The young gals sang to us as we ate lunch.
I was greatly encouraged to see such good work being done for those who most need it. Meeting both the girls and the instructors was a great inspiration as I prepare to begin hopefully meaningful work of my own at the end of the month. Still, I could not get past the sickening feeling of what these girls had to return to at night. As we drove through the slums, a two-vehicle convoy of privilege surrounded by vast quantities of the malnourished and underprivileged, the contrast was almost too much for me. How do these people survive, let alone live, like this? What is my response when confronted with such extreme need? My heart doing somersaults, I fall into prayer.
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