EUGENE GOES HOME COUNTING HIS LOSSES

It’s an exciting start to the New Year and TKW team is back on the streets of Nairobi.  One child walks back home! Meet Eugene Ronald Otieno and imagine his parents giving him that name dreaming of what he would become.  Would he become the next Ronald Reagan – a president in the making?  Yet here he was on the streets wasting away all that potential.

Have you ever lost someone or something?  It hurts a lot and it takes time to recover.  When Eugene’s parents separated, he lost his home and lost his father because his father moved away.  He then came home one day and found that his mother had relocated to an unknown place.  This was his second loss, his mother and siblings. Although his mother could barely provide the basic needs for the family, at least she was always there when Eugene came home from school.  Later on he was reunited with his siblings at his grandparents’ home in Kitale in North western Kenya, but he could not settle there so they decided to send him to his father.  This was another loss and separation with his siblings and community.  He came to live with his father in Kitengela, Eastern Kenya, but his father worked long hours and Eugene found himself with a lot of time on his hands.  That’s how he started wandering to the streets. This is a 10 year old child who has gone through many losses and which has left his self-esteem and dreams in tatters.  But there is hope…

Eugene’s journey to restoration will be long and hard considering what he has been through.  The team members who rescued him expressed satisfaction of seeing one child rescued from the streets. One of the team members involved in the rescue said, “We are glad to start the year in such a way”.  Eugene looks innocent because of his age but he has been on the streets from time to time.  He was very jovial and enthusiastic about going back home where he used to live with his father.

Our motto is: “Transforming Lives of Children, Families and Communities”. It takes many journeys to the streets, rescuing the child, journey back home and many more journeys to monitor his progress. Restoration begins when we meet a child on the streets and it takes time and resources.  Eugene could not trace where his father lived in Kitengela and the team had to enlist the help of the area District Children’s Officer who found his father at a nearby town of Isinya.

Eugene says of his father, “My dad used to bring home chicken pieces and I loved that”.  His father seems a responsible man as he shared how he would always ensure Eugene had enough food after school.  However, Eugene lacked parental guidance because his father was always busy at work. That is how he was enticed to the life on the streets TKW team met him at the beginning of January.  Eugene is now with his father and we shall walk with him until he is fully settled and restored.

It has been said, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’.  Eugene’s journey to transformation and restoration will take human resources, financial resources for him to recover his losses and get his dreams back on course. We are exploring the possibility of reconnecting him with his grandparents and his siblings. With the right structures in place Eugene will settle and his journey to restoration is on course. Despite his past there is hope

We are glad that Eugene Ronald is no longer a statistic but a child of hope!  Come with us on this exciting journey.  Eugene’s rescue at the beginning of the year has ignited our passion to see many more children find hope in 2014 as well as monitor the progress of the 145 rescued last year. “Transforming lives of children, families and communities”

Jan 2014 – first rescue