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Kenya: Former Street Children Out to Change Life in the City Slums
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The Nation (Nairobi)
22 September 2007
Posted to the web 21 September 2007
Arno Kopecky
Nairobi
With the election season under way, Kenyans are daily subjected to an endless succession of photo ops, press conferences and sound bytes. With all the sound and fury, it's easy to forget what any of these men are actually doing for the people they claim to represent.
Emmanuel Boys Centre founder Daniel Muiruri Nduati with Aids orphans Samuel Kamau, 9, and Kevin Kinyanjui, 14. Photos/ARNO KOPECKY
But a new generation of leaders is quietly emerging that is far removed from the wealthy dynasties now orbiting State House. Working below the radar and without the benefit of a public purse, the youths are all the more impressive for coming from the most disenfranchised corners of society. Unlike so many who make good and never look back, they have stayed on to help lift their communities from the hopelessness of poverty.
"I know how people struggle," says one of them, Mr Daniel Muiruri Nduati; "because I went down that road myself."
Mr Nduati, a soft-spoken 26-year-old, left an abusive home when he was 14 and entered life in the streets. "I started hustling," he remembers; "stealing when I could, doing odd jobs for a few days at a time. I was taking drugs everyday, whatever I could lay my hands on - brown sugar, marijuana, alcohol, glue - I went crazy for years."
Articulate founder
It's difficult to equate this story with the articulate founder of Emmanuel Boyz Centre standing before me now. But it is precisely his experience of life in the streets that gave Mr Nduati the drive and compassion to start up Emmanuel in 2000. The youth centre has so far taken 300 children off the streets, providing them with shelter, food and a productive environment in which to focus on self-development rather than merely surviving.
At present, the centre houses 40 boys, including three brothers orphaned by Aids. They were all at school the afternoon I dropped in, leaving the gated compound quiet and serene. Mr Nduati explained the religious vision he had at 17 which shook him back to life. He returned home and completed high school with such distinction that he was offered a European scholarship. Although he never graduated from university, the international contacts he made soon led to the funding that enabled him to start up Emmanuel Boyz Centre.
"One of the benefits of having the centre at Dagoretti is that it's too isolated for the children to sneak back to the streets," he says. "When they first come here, many can't think of anything other than finding a way to get high. But once they're here it's just about impossible, and gradually they learn to focus on other things."
At length the gates open and a van comes through, disgorging an unruly but cheerful crowd of children. Most have been here for months now, some for years; in fact, some are just a few years younger than Mr Nduati.
"I used to run with some of these guys when I was in the streets, you know? I go back and look for old faces, buy them lunch, see how it's going. If I find someone who really wants to make a change in his life, I'll take him in. But of course, I can't take them all - there are just so many new children on the street every year."
People who are too old for school are offered vocational training instead. We leave the boys in the yard and go visit one of them, Samuel, now employed as a carpenter at a nearby workshop.
"Daniel totally changed my life," Samuel, 22, says, stepping away from the bandsaw where he's carving out a bed frame. "I would still be on the streets, or worse, if it wasn't for him."
Various programmes
The success of Emmanuel Boyz Centre inspired another project nearby: Dagoretti 4 Kids, or D4K as the locals know it. Founded two years ago by four men in their early 20s, D4K provides shelter and various programmes for orphans and street children while at the same time working to find jobs for impoverished parents and single mothers.
"I used to know Daniel," says Mr Michael Mungai, one of D4K's founders. "He was one of the people who kept telling us we could make it if we wanted to." Now 23 and studying on a scholarship at St Joseph's University in the US, Michael recalls the days when he too lived in the streets, selling drugs and working in brothels.
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Mr Mungai rehabilitated himself with help from the Pamoja Child Trust, where he met another young man named Peter Nduchu. The two teamed up with Mr Elijah Waweru and Mr James Njoroge and got D4K off the ground. They are now busy planting maize, cassava, beans and other crops on the one-hectare compound. When not busy on the farm, they are heavily involved in community outreach programmes.
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