Kibera – home to millions
Kibera – a barrage on the senses
Poverty, laughter, hunger, generosity,
happiness, sadness, community, vulnerability
All intertwined through an infinite number
of threads
Threads of all shapes and sizes
Joining together
Crossing over
Lifting each other up
Encouraging each other along
Kibera – home to millions
Kibera – a full-senses experience of
humanity
It rained all night and much of the
morning,
The day I visited Kibera
The pathways – all mud, no tarmac – were
slick and moving underfoot
The colour – was it mud, or was it worse?
Don’t think too hard about the ‘flying
toilets’ and how many are being stepped on
The dwellings – walls are made of sheet
metal, held together by rust
While other walls are made of mud, held
together by the plastic waste within them
Roofs of metal – held down by rocks, and
shoes, and sacks of dirt
With buckets placed carefully to catch the
drips,
Whilst the children sleep on the floor
Huddled together for warmth
Need to spend a penny?
Hang on ‘til its light – there are no
street lamps out there to guide you safely through the maze of alleyways
Or pee in a bag and throw it into the
‘streets’
Want to wash clothes?
Collect some water from the roof – it’s
free, and you don’t need to walk ages to fill a basin from the nearest tap
And amidst all this sits Spurgeons Academy
Spurgeons Academy -
A beacon of hope for the pupils
A place of love, of safety, of shelter
A place to come and play,
Where there is room to ‘swing a cat’
Where there is space to be indoors while
the rain falls outside
A place where it’s OK to be, even in the
school holidays
Spurgeons Academy -
A beacon of hope for the community
A place where it’s OK to dream of a better
future
Where there is help, and advice, and
support
A place where education is seen as
important for all, no matter what your income
Spurgeons Academy
A place where the staff turn up in the
school holidays if they know that there are children wanting to take refuge in
the loving arms of the school, and to seek some quiet and gentle shelter within
the peace of the place
Whilst hustle and bustle churns without
Where no-one is demanding of you
Where it’s OK to be a child, and to just
hang out with your friends.
Spurgeons Academy
Where no problem is too great
And no problem too small
A place where every child matters,
And every aspect of every child matters
If Mary and Joseph had turned up at Kibera,
looking for a place to stay
They might have been turned away from some
of the homes
‘No room,
The children are sleeping
The roof is leaking,
The walls are falling down’
But they certainly wouldn’t have been
turned away from Spurgeons Academy
There would have been ‘room in the inn’ for
them there.
The welcome would have been great
The arms opened wide
And a safe place would have been made for
all
Just like it is today.
