Emmanuel, or God is with us.

Welcome to a year of new beginnings! Over the next 12 months, Give A Child Life will move from the crawling stage to toddling around…as we put together the infrastructure for a global organization caring for children under 5 in developing countries.

Last month, when I was in Nairobi’s slums, I met a little gent named Emmanuel, or God is with us. But God seemed far from this child. Within the past year, both his father and mother died. They left behind three boys---aged 6, 4 and 3. Emmanuel was the smallest and the sickest. A cagey child, he responded to bribes of cakes or coins. But he tired quickly.

After their parents died, the three boys struggled on their own in the village. Their grandmother had also passed away. Neighbors took care of them for a while, but eventually one of them brought the boys to the Oxsic Gospel Church and Rescue Center in the Korogocho slum in Nairobi. They live with 100 other orphans in mud-walled rooms, with no guarantees of food or medical care from day to day. They attend the church school, though.

 

The day I arrived, Emmanuel was sick. The center director said he is frequently ill. He needs an HIV test. If he is HIV-positive, ARVs can make all the difference in the world. I’m arranging a test for him on Thursday. In the meantime, we’ll get him and his brothers cleaned up and have a nurse look at the jigger bites they’ve had for months.

The Center is a stone’s throw from the massive garbage dump in Dandora, with huge hogs and vultures rooting around the mountains of debris. If the Center lacks food for dinner, the older boys search through the refuse, looking for scraps to share with the rest of the children.

A week later, I took all three boys to a clinic. Fascinated, I watched the nurse dig the jiggers out of the boys’ feet. The small, thick worms create tiny black mounds on the soles and in the warm crevices between the toes. It wasn’t easy—the thin medical needles kept snapping…finally, she found a thicker one. An hour later, we drove to a Lea Toto clinic, where a very kind technician gave each child an HIV test. We watched the results emerge—thank God, all three boys only had one line, meaning they were HIV-negative.

But what will happen to these boys? Will Emmanuel survive the hard-scrabble life in the children’s home? Or will he, like millions of other boys and girls under the age of 5, slowly give up fighting and then quietly slip away?

Comments

[April Lena Rain]

I can't fathom what it must be like for your heart to become attached to every child you come into contact with... I want to help spread the word about Give A Child A Life and will post about you on my fledgling blog soon...

Sincerely,
April Lena Rain

[Abigail]

It is so sad that some children have to live like this. I am glad that you and so many others are doing what they can to help out. My family does what we can from here, but people are needed there, too.