Walking in Beauty: Nairobi Slums

Posted By Glenn B. Jenks on Jan 30, 2015

By Glenn B. Jenks

Sometime “Walking in Beauty” describes the environment we pass through. There are other times when “Walking in Beauty” describes an inner beauty that shines from within some people despite their environment. Such is the case with the beautiful children I met while passing through some of the most ghastly slums on the planet, the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words. May I offer you a quick two thousand words in the form of a couple of photos from these slums.

Yet despite the horrors of disease and suffering that surround the children who live there, the beauty of their faces and hearts glistened like diamonds. They will stay with me forever.

In the country of Uganda, in the capital city of Kampala, there is a mission project called “Watoto”, which means Children” in Swahili. This mission was started by one of the local churches to rescue children who had lost both of their parents, usually from AIDS. But instead of starting an institution, such as an orphanage, the church decided to create new families, with a new life in a new clean home in new clean villages. Each family consists of a “mother” and eight children, four boys and four girls, who form a new family for life that will last the rest of their lives. The children who are rescued are found in the same type of horrible environment as the Kenyan slums shown above. The new families are each provided a home like the ones shown below.

The exterior of their new home.

The interior of their new home.

As I walked through one of these new homes, a little boy (shown below) took me by the hand and led me to the room that he shared with his three new “brothers.” He wanted to show me something he was so very proud of. As he sat down he said “This is the first and the only bed I have ever had.” — The beauty of that moment was overpowering.