Kibera and Spurgeons in Advent

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.