Base Walking

Part of the ministry in Eastleigh is to go out into the streets and minister to people that congregate in various places, which they call a base.  The people there include men, women, and children, and sometimes they may not even be a part of the base but they come because they recognize the Eastleigh staff and want to hear what they are preaching about.  The message that the staff wants to send to those in the street is that God is all-powerful and that he is strong enough to bring them out of this phase in their life.

Every Monday and Tuesday the Eastleigh Center has a program for all of the street kids to attend as a sort of audition for them to be asked to come to Made in the Streets (MITS).  If the kids come consistently, show that they are changing their behavior, and get off of the drugs that they are taking, then they will be asked to attend MITS and that whole process of getting them to Kamulu will begin.  We knew that we would be going base walking this last Monday so we were very excited and eager to see if the boys that we worked with during the camp the week before would return for the program classes.  When we first got there we drank some of Augustina’s, the cook at the Eastleigh Center, chai which was absolutely delicious.  We were just hanging out and enjoying the fellowship with some of the staff there and realized that class was actually going on, so turned around and peaked into the classroom and it was FULL of boys!  We found out that there were twenty-six boys who came for class, and most of them were ones that we had seen during camp last week.  We were so encouraged and excited that those boys had come back and are very prayerful that they will continue to come.  After we finished our chai, we had a meeting with some of the staff so that they could prepare us for some of the things that we might see and give us some guidelines about what we were going to be doing.  Then we just started walking.

The first base we went to was not too far from the Eastleigh Center.  There were several people congregated together, and there were even some that stopped to listen as they were passing by.  To prepare for our base walking experience, the staff asked us to choose one verse and come up with a short explanation that would be encouraging to the people on the streets.  It was neat to be able to talk to them about God and see their faces light up.  All five of us were given the chance to either pray or talk about our verse, so it was really neat to see the reaction from the people we were ministering to.  We ended up traveling to three other bases; one had three people there and we prayed with them, one of them did not have any people there at the time that we passed, and then there was one that we visited that was so big and had so many kids.  This was the one that was probably the most influential for me just because there was so much more to see and feel.  It also broke my heart because there are two boys who are currently at MITS who used to live in this base so it was hard to think about them being here and having to endure the environment for so long.

We walked down this alley-way to get to the heart of the base and immediately there were signs of desperation and despair; there were kids huffing glue everywhere I looked, there were random people lying on the ground asleep, and there was a massive heap of trash at least eight feet high and twenty yards long that people were laying on, searching through, and sitting on top of.  There was a woman there who is known as “Big Mama,” but the kids call her canini which is Swahili for small.  She claims that she helps the kids by feeding them, but she also sells them glue so that they can get high.  Most of them are so high that they probably won’t even remember that we came to see them.  This, by far, was the hardest of the three bases to go to and see because there was so much heartache and struggle there.  I was so shocked to see the things that I saw, knowing that this is the kind of situation that each of the kids here at MITS came from.  Each MITS student that I have talked to about their past, spent several years wandering the streets and it just breaks my heart to think that they had to endure such intense living situations with little shelter, no food or water, and little to no attention from their families. 

It has been such a blessing to see both sides of this ministry because without MITS, the Eastleigh Center would not exist because it is an extension of MITS and there would be no kids found to minister to.  In the same, without the Eastleigh Center and the outreach they do, there would be no such thing as MITS; there would be no opportunity for kids to be clean of drugs, be educated, be fed, or come to know God..  It encourages me so much to see the staff working so hard to make it happen.  Some of the staff came from the streets as well so they understand the struggles of the lifestyle they live, but despite that they have still decided to spend their lives trying to save the few kids who are willing to embark on a journey that would change their lives forever.  We ate dinner with Charles and Darlene when we first got here, and they mentioned how the transformation these kids make is totally a God thing and after visiting the bases I totally believe that statement.

We have completed our last day here at MITS and are packing up to head out in the morning.  We will leave pretty early tomorrow to head to Masai Mara for Safari for a couple of days and then head to Malindi, Kenya to continue our mission work.  Please continue to pray for us in our travels, and that we will be the hands and feet of Christ as we minister to more of His people.

Love Ya’ll!

LeShae