We are staying in a suburb of Nairobi called Lavington Green. One of our ministry sites is just down the road in a neighboring city named Kawangware, but the place we’re spending days for the first half of our trip lies an hour down the Mombasa Road. This is Athi River.
I went to Athi River on Sunday morning for church services, and the drive was more than interesting, which is what I normally would call drives in foreign lands. I hold the most sobering story for another post, but this drive held more than one story.
As we made our way to Athi River, we began to descend into a small valley to cross a body of water. I am not sure if this was the actual Athi River, or something else, but being the lowest point around, it collected the runoff of anything and everything.
The scent that accompanied this water was of a class that truly made one’s breath stop. It took a bit of effort to get it started again. I’ve driven through countrysides filled with livestock and stretches of road through paper mill country, but there is something altogether more disturbing about that smell.
Were I to stay there long enough, perhaps I would grow accustomed to it, as undoubtedly others have. But what is more difficult to get used to is the disease that must accompany the kind of water in that stream.
Residents of Kenya, and children especially, have an almost unbearable weight of factors against them in this world.
Christ says in Matthew 11 to “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” We are here to bring that rest to people who so badly need it.