First day in Kenya and I visited a ‘new-to-me’ project that is based in one of the informal / slum settlements on the outskirts of Nairobi. The organisation is called Positive Life Kenya (PLK) and was founded back in 2010 by a wonderful woman, Mary Wabwire, who continues to lead the organisation with wisdom and an unquenching passion for intervening into the situations that first touched her heart and led to the birth of PLK.
PLK’s focus is based around programmes that support vulnerable children, young people and families living in, and caught up in the cycle of poverty. They do all sorts of outreach programmes in the community, run a primary school for the local children, and have a vocational training centre for young people. They do a lot of work on life skills, empowering young single mothers, and community-based interventions around educating, informing, and advocating for the rights of all, but particularly women and girls. I’ll let you read more if you want to at https://positivelifekenya.org/
Whilst at PLK, two of the social work team took me on a home visit to one of the families that they are journeying with. The home that we visited was about 3m square. It had a tin roof, and the walls were crumbling as they had been damaged in the recent floods that affected lots of vulnerable communities in Nairobi. Pieces of cardboard were up against the walls, presumably to stop the mud from crumbling down onto the children as they slept. There was one bed in the room, which had most of the clothes piled up on it, and a gas cooker in the corner. A plastic stool was the only other bit of furniture.
The mum was at home with her youngest, a son who is just 2 months old. She also has 4 daughters, two of whom are at primary school and two of whom are secondary school age, but as we visited during the school day, I didn’t get to meet them.
Between the mum and the PLK staff, they shared her story with me, as this family has only actually been part of the PLK ‘family’ for about 3 months. Prior to that, the staff were aware of the family in the community, but they had never been called to get involved as mum seemed to be doing fine with her 4 girls.
But then she got pregnant with her fifth child, and this seemed to be something that she just couldn’t cope with. The thought of one more mouth to feed was too much, and the mum was seen to be oscillating between wanting to terminate the pregnancy, even at such a late stage, or ending her own life. As soon as the community leaders realised how much she was struggling, they asked the PLK outreach team to start engaging with the mum, which they did.
Through home visits, gifts of food for the family, many conversations, and just being there, the mum started to feel less alone, and the suicidal ideations ceased. She still was not sure that she wanted to keep the baby however, and was open to the idea of having baby adopted once born. The visits and support by PLK continued, and one day they went into the home to find that the mum had given birth (on her own, no-one to assist), and was lying on the floor holding a very young son. The PLK machine swung even more into action, and by the end of the day, the baby was clean and clothed, mum had had a wash and was feeding the baby, cloths and clothing had been washed, and food was on the table for the family.
Two days later, when the PLK staff member visited, it came up about the mum’s previous thoughts of giving the baby up for adoption. The mum looked up, smiled shyly at the staff member, hugged her son tightly, and said that he was going nowhere.
And so he is still with her, and it was a beautiful moment to be able to kneel down today next to the mum, hold out my finger for the baby boy to hold on to, and see the strong love from the mum shining down onto her son.
That visit was to just one family out of so many who live in dire poverty and struggle against so many odds just to keep going each day. The statistics are desperate: almost 8.5% of the global population live in extreme poverty, and the poverty rates in low-income countries are higher now than they were before the pandemic (according to World Bank). It can feel so overwhelming.
But thankfully, it seems to be a given that, where there is poverty, there are also people who want to do something to help. Not in a patronising, self-seeking way (although those people do exist), but in a quiet, self-effacing, humble way that is all about just trying to make life a bit better for others. Sometimes that’s being done in a formal way through organised systems and structures and programmes, other times its being done in an informal, helping your neighbour way.
Thank goodness for the likes of PLK, working quietly and tirelessly in communities across the world, making a difference, one family at a time. Showing God’s love in practical, caring ways, and bringing hope into the lives of folks who need it most.
What a wonderful way to start my visit to East Africa.
