How God Led Me to Africa: A Glimpse into the Slums

I have no words to adequately describe what I have seen today. My words will not give it justice. The conditions that I have walked through, the conditions that I have seen with my own eyes...they are unlivable, yet people live in them. The smell alone made me gag repeatedly. I walked around paralyzed by my emotions most of the day. I wanted to breakdown and cry, but what good would that have done? As children ran toward me with smiles on their faces, they would yell out, "Mzungo (white person), how are you?" one of the few English phrases they knew. My only thought was, "How could they be smiling in these conditions?" Somehow the people living in the slums of Kenya find joy among their conditions. They live among garbage, filth, feces, sewage...yet they find joy! My only answer is Jesus! They know there is something better awaiting them after this life...their conditions now are only temporary. Children squat in the streets to use the bathroom, women eat rocks for calcium when they are pregnant, men rape young virgin children because they are told it will cure them of HIV/AIDS, women are so frightened to leave their homes at night that they use the bathroom in plastic bags and throw it into the streets. Homes are thrown together with metal sheets and plastic tarp...there is one room and one room only. The homes have no bathrooms, no kitchen, no running water, and houses entire families. The water system running through the community is overflowing with garbage, goats and pigs bathe and drink from the same water supply as the people. Children sit and play in the sewage and garbage, men rape their neighbors, human beings starve to death. There is no way for me to accurately describe the conditions of the slums, therefore I will post some pictures so that it will give you a glimpse of what I walked through today...of what people live in everyday.