Every morning….
Every morning on our Leadership for Hope programmes we ask people to stand up and share
what leadership step they took last night.
Even after one days training the stories often reduce us to silence or
tears.
Eunice stood up on day two of this weeks three-day
programme and this is what she said
“When
I left the training last night I got on the bus to go home like I normally do.
When the bus stopped I got off. There was a commotion at the bus stop and I saw
this distressed woman on the ground surrounded by people. Normally I would have
just kept on walking home without stopping, but because of all we learned today
I decided to stop and go and find out what was happening and to see if I could
help. As I got close to the woman I realised that she was laying next to a naked
new born baby lying on the ground. It had been aborted by its mother and left
to die, still with its umbilical cord attached. The woman on the ground was a
passerby who was overwhelmed with grief and powerlessness as to how to help
this fragile life.
I
spent time talking to this lady and discovered that this woman was herself
childless and this was the greatest sadness in her life. I agreed with the lady
that to get any help for the child we needed to quickly get to the Police
station for help. As we continued to
talk the woman said she would be more than willing to be this abandoned child’s
mother. So, in the end the woman and I took the baby to the police
station. We explained everything. Papers
were signed. The woman was given custody of the abandoned baby”
When Eunice arrived at the scene everyone
was staring but no one was doing anything to help the baby or the distraught
passerby. By seeing herself as a leader Eunice saw what was going on and took
responsibility (one of the Mindsets we teach) and wrote a different story for
an abandoned baby who now has a loving mother and a hope
- TW
- TW
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| This bus nearly crushed our car...!! |
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| Jane is glad to be a vegetarian! |
From a traffic jam....
It’s a weird feeling knowing that you
really are boxed in and trapped by a roads system that is super-snarled up
beyond belief 24/7. You really are unable to get from A-B in any part of this
big city without sitting for hours and hours in stinking traffic queues,
wrestle with your irritation and fretfulness.
We have a wonderful driver called William
who’s a whizz at sniffing out any possible back route across Nairobi, but we
still always have to return to the inevitable Langata Road, which is total
nightmare. And there we sit filling our tender lungs with exhaust muck and red
dust.
I’m writing from one of these jams right
now…lungs complaining and eyes scratchy and dry. We’re itchy, tired and
desperate to flee from the polluted air.
But some things you just can’t escape. I’m forced to accept the
situation and hope the fumes won’t make me vomit.
From the back of the car I watch a
cacophony of action weaving about me: road sellers wandering with their wares
from car to car (I wonder who could possibly want to buy a dusty face flannel
or coat stand at 6 p.m), and there are the streams of folk at the sides of the
roads…walking. Walking and walking to wherever they call home. And what I
notice most are the children, thousands of them, walking by the side of the
dangerous highway in groups or alone, trying to get home. Little ones of 5-6
yrs old dragging their tired little bodies homewards. I wonder if some of them
were the figures I’d spotted on our 6.30 a.m. journey a lifetime ago?
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Children get killed crossing the roads on a regular basis in Nairobi. So far this year 145 people have lost their lives, and over half on our crazy route.
- JB
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| There are no safe places to cross roads in Nairobi |
