Day 25: Bungoma County, Kenya.
They sat on the sofa, looking cautiously at the cameras ready to take in every spoken word and subtle nuance of their story. He in his well-worn school uniform and her in her Sunday finest. She was so very proud of him, and did her best to encourage him to study well. It wasn’t easy – there are no books to teach you how to raise children as a grandmother, no foods you can eat to make you young again, no perfect words to explain why mom and dad aren’t ever coming home. Poverty, neglect, and HIV have left their scrawled mark here.
But hope keeps rising like the sun.
He has dreams far bigger than the small patch of earth he walks every day. A small school down the road is the reason why. Two meals a day, loving teachers, a social worker, medical care, and visits from mzungu who “come down from the sky” to help them give her faith that his future will be more than she can even imagine.
And so she keeps raising him up. And she keeps thanking God for the kindness of strangers and friends.
They sat on on the sofa, and they told the story. Her feet are planted. His feet want to fly.