ESCAPE HATCH FROM POVERTY

Two girls in Eastern Kenya taking that long trek to school bare foot.

It is five O’clock in the morning and the fog is heavy, hovering as close to the ground as it can get. The cock crows for the umpteenth time and children emerge from all directions of the village to take the one dusty road to school. In their tattered clothes, some grazed on the shoulders, others with multiple multicolored-patches and most bare footed, they trudge on to school, hoping for a brighter future. A future so bleak that one can see it in their sunken eyes rested on dry, bony faces.
In a few years, the numbers waking up to walk several miles to school on an empty stomach start shrinking. Eunice drops out at sixth grade because her aunt has a new baby and someone has to babysit. Alice stops going to school because her father thinks she is not improving. Naomi runs away from home because she can no longer withstand the hardships in the family. Domitila is discouraged because all her childhood friends have dropped off and her mother tells her she has no chance of advancing further than eighth grade anyways! It is heartbreaking. The boys keep going but it a matter of time before the demands of society rests on their shoulders and they can no longer advance. One young man once told me he cannot read because he could not concentrate in class, “I had to sit by the window all the time to keep one eye on the goats and sheep browsing outside while the other eye tried to concentrate on the blackboard.” He simply could not keep up; eventually he decided to follow his father’s wish to herd the family’s livelihood.

To untangle communities out of such dilemmas would require deliberate efforts like was the case with me: holistic child development. In open societies, education is the main determinant for social mobility and higher education opportunities are necessary in order to pull away from the poverty line. I was lucky to have been sponsored by compassion International and benefitted from its holistic Child development model. In this program, I was brought up in a concerted cultivation where there were activities programmed for me to get involved in. These activities and opportunities build my social skills, physical health, spiritual consciousness of God’s plan for mankind and His redemptive work. Also, it built my self-esteem to believe in the dreams of my childhood. I was injected with hope and grew not looking at the poverty of my mother and the community around me but at the possibility of becoming their hope for a better tomorrow.
Today I look at the skinny boy with a protruding stomach, light like a feather and compare him with the 175 lbs, stout young man I have become and tears are coming down my eyes imagining what would have happened if God did not love me to send this sponsor who, not only rescued me from death but dreamt along with me!
Indeed Confucius was not confused when he said that, ‘a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step’. Meditate on this story and when you are done, don’t be tempted to hesitate, act. Give a child a chance and watch hope grow!