If it had been sunny we would have swam and laughed and enjoyed ourselves, but that would have been it. Instead, our camping trip turned into a soggy mess we will never forget.
Keith was working, so I took my two daughters and three of their friends for a trip in our tent trailer. No problem, I thought. I’ve done it all before. But this time the ground was not level. If one child was in the dining area, two had to sit on the beds to balance her out. A Good Samaritan came over after a few days to lessen the slant, the only problem being that now our awning was inadvertently level as well. I didn’t discover this until the torrential rains came and the water, instead of running off, puddled in the middle. I had no idea metal poles could bend like that.
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Sheila Wray Gregoire with young lad in Kenya
After the awning collapsed, all hope of staying dry evaporated. The six of us huddled in our trailer for days on end, waiting for the sun. And then came the news: tomorrow the weather would break! We rejoiced as we settled into bed, only to be greeted by a strange dripping sound. The roof was leaking.
My only choice was to pack it in and head home. A few minutes on our way, though, forty heads of cattle suddenly jumped up onto the road. They quickly lost momentum as they slowed to a crawl, with me following behind and praying for the Parting of the Red Heifers.
As I began to wonder if getting out and yelling would be a better strategy, a driver in the opposite direction came to the same conclusion. He yelled. The cows jumped. And then all forty of them turned and galloped full speed straight towards us. The girls stopped breathing. At the last minute the cows split apart and our little band was saved.
African cows are much smarter. They run quickly from the careening cars trying to avoid the bovine-sized potholes. I happen to know this because we have just returned from Kenya, where we were working at the Mully Children’s Family, a home for over 800 abandoned and orphaned children. We were there last year, and loved it so much that we decided to return. It is the children you can’t forget, and their stories are as individual as their smiles. There is Elizabeth, whose older siblings couldn’t afford to feed her after her parents died. Hope, who was left for three days by a riverside when she was three months old. Jennifer, who fled at the age of seven to avoid an early marriage. And yet, what strikes you when you meet them is not the hell they’ve endured but the healing they’ve received. Mully Children’s Family is as close to a definition of hope as I have ever found on this earth.
Right before we left last year, 11-year-old David breathlessly ran up and presented me with an elaborate racecar he had made out of scavenged milk cartons and bottlecaps. He wanted us all to know that even orphans can be creative and play. He was beaming as we took a picture of the two of us together, the last one I took on that trip before waving good-bye.
This year, as soon as we stepped foot on the compound, the children came running. Girls squealed as they hugged my kids, the boys smiling from ear to ear as they hung back a little bit. But as I scanned the faces, one seemed to be missing.
Later I asked Elizabeth where David was. “He’s at Eldoret,” she told us. Eldoret is the pediatric AIDS treatment centre, the place where they send the truly sick ones. My children did not realize the significance of the statement, and so they kept on chattering. I didn’t. I paused, and thought of my little friend.
And so that is what I will remember from this summer. Rain, cows, and a milk-carton car, made by a boy has already known more rejection and more love in his short years than most of us will in our entire lives.
If you would like to sponsor a child like David, or give a one-time donation, you can do so through Careforce International at http://www.careforceinternational.ca/dnn/. Just mention that you want to give to the project in Kenya.
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