Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted something. I’ve been going into town to visit the street kids with Morris quite a bit. For those of you who don’t know Morris’ story I’ll do my best to tell you. Morris lived on the streets for eight years. He was addicted to glue like all the other 99% of kids on the streets- meaning he had a bottle of glue stuck to his lips and he inhaled the glue to get high for 10 hrs a day- give or take. To many, this sounds like a strange addiction, but after learning about life on the street, it starts to make more sense. The glue masks hunger and the high pulls them away from their reality. Now, to me this makes perfect sense for a street kid. Most have been abandoned and are starving and have nowhere to stay, so they sleep in the dump on the worst side of town. To me, glue seems like a sufficient, but terrible solution for most of them. Anyways, Morris lived on the streets for eight years and then some how someone he met tried to help him and he accepted. He says that person changed his life forever- which is obviously true. He slowly started to make better choices and he stopped sniffing glue, etc and he now works with the Open Arms International group that I’m working with. He has dedicated his life to the street kids and he is an amazing man.
The first time I met Morris is what stands out the most to me. He picked me, Morgen, and Catherine up from the Nakumat (grocery store) one afternoon and was going to take us back to the village. As we drove through town kids started to follow our car and were yelling “Morris” and started tapping on the windows… so he rolled them down and started talking to them. To those watching it was probably a strange sight- a Kenyan and three Mazungu girls driving through town with what seemed to be all the streets kids surrounding and following the car. I asked Morris what was going on and he started laughing and said, “These are all my friends. These are the street kids”. When Morris walks through town everyone seems to know and respect him. The kids start to follow him and talk to him and businessmen stop him and say hello and what not. And here I am, sticking out like a sore thumb completely at a loss of what to do- but completely in awe of how the entire town seemed to respond to this man.
Anyways, back to my story about one of the times I went with him on his daily visit to the street. Morris tells me he’s just come back from taking a few kids off the street back to their families and helping them reconcile their differences so that they hopefully wont end up on the streets again. He tells me how the rains caused flooding in the city and he couldn’t get out for a few days and that he had to drink the water there- so he got typhoid. So, here’s Morris sick as a dog on his way to hang out with the kids on the streets. (just a glimpse of who he is)
Morris tells me a little bit about what I’m about to experience so I try to prepare myself. He says I may feel a bit unsafe but as long as he’s with me I’ll be ok. (I start to wonder how this is going to go) We pull into the worst part of town in what seems to be a few feet from one of the nicest restaurants. Looking out my window as we drive further in I notice a young boy asleep on a mound of garbage. We pull up to a somewhat empty area (literally in the dump) with piles on top of piles of garbage and he parks the car.
As we get out he says, “Oh, Anne by the way I told them you were a doctor.” I’m thinking uh.. Morris why? You know I’m not. He then tells me he thinks a few may need my assistance as a swarm of “kids” (mostly young men and a few younger kids) start grabbing my hands and greeting me. They mumble “Habari”( how are you?) through the bottles of glue they have stuck to their upper lips. Many of them are so high they don’t make any sense.
Morris gets the medical bag out of the truck and the kids start showing me their various wounds. Now- these aren’t your typical cuts and scrapes.. these kids are so filthy and they haven’t been clean in god knows how long that something that could have started out as a simple cut has progressed to infection and for some their legs were literally rotting. At first, I didn’t know what to do first. But Morris told me they wont go to a hospital and all we can do is try to help. So I started cleaning them.. but when each cloth seemed to be dirtier then the one before he told me it was as good as it was gunna get and to just bandage them up. Meanwhile, through all of this they were talking back and forth Mazungu this Mazungu that and Morris told me they were very happy I was there to help them. Some it seemed were almost competing to see who I would help next- it was like they wanted to have a cut or something so that I would help them and so a mazungu would touch them.
But, what happened next is possibly the hardest thing I’ve experienced. A young boy (probably 10 or 11?) walked up to me and tugged on my shirt to get my attention. I thought that was kind of odd at first because all these kids were pretty vocal when getting my attention. But I quickly realized that he was deaf. Morris walked up and said to me quietly, “if you can’t do this, he will understand”. Unaware of what he was referring to I quickly said, “No, no I’m fine I want to help.” He sat down and showed me his foot (he had no shoes on) and it literally made me sick to my stomach.. they call if foot rot in some places. He was so dirty I looked up at Morris and asked him if we could take him somewhere to clean him, but he said we can’t. So I started to clean his foot. As I was cleaning, I noticed he had about an inch deep cut that ran along the crease on the bottom of your foot where your toes meet with the rest of the foot.
I showed Morris and he simply said, “just do the best you can”. So I told him to tell the boy this would probably sting a bit but then I remembered he was deaf and that wouldn’t be possible. I couldn’t help but put my head down and cry while I poured hydrogen peroxide into the cut.. and the next thing I know the boy puts his hand on my leg to get my attention and I look over and he’s giving me a thumbs up. Instead of screaming and pulling away he gave me a thumbs up.
I don’t really know how to explain the feeling that gave me but it changed me forever. I told Morris we were going to get him shoes after. As we were getting ready to leave- the kids all started talking to Morris and motioning to me. We left soon after that. As we were walking down the street looking for shoes for the deaf boy I asked Morris what they said about me. He told me that they said, “This Mazungu (white person) will always be safe. We will watch her when she’s in town, wherever she is and no one will harm her.” Then Morris explained to me how big of a deal that was and that in all the years he’d been doing this and all the Mazungus he’d taken to the streets, and of all the doctors he’d taken, I was the only one they had ever said that about and the only one they accepted.
