1. There's a myth here that having sex with a virgin cures HIV/AIDS. This is one of the reasons infant rape exists.
2. Rape is ridiculously common here. It's not unusual for girls to be sexually active by age 12. Girls that are 10 years old--that's third grade--have often been raped and sexually abused.
3. Women are responsible for cultivating food (or brewing changaa, the local brew made/sold in slums nearby), house chores, raising the kids, and feeding the family. If there is no food, she may give her kids changaa, because there is nothing else. When a woman sells changaa, her daughters often come with the purchase for that night. Men are free to sit around with other men, talk politics, beat their wives and sleep around.
4. It's technically illegal to live on the street. This week 7 or so street kids got rounded up by police and taken, where they were probably beat. Some team members went to the prison to buy them out. You can buy your way out of most anything here.
5. Street kids are anywhere from 8-16 years old. They often run away from single parent families where they are overworked or beaten, without much food or love in return. So the streets is just the better option.. where they arent wanted anywhere, have to beg for food or dig through trash, sleep under store awnings with maybe a tarp or bag as a blanket, and wake up to beatings by angry store owners or drunken nightlife. These are 3rd graders.. and it's cold in kitale at night. To see a bunch of 8, 9, 10 years olds cuddled up together on the sidewalk is heartbreaking. It's horrible.
6. Jiggers are flesh eating maggots that come from walking without shoes in the dirt. At medical clinics we help at we spend all day removing jiggers from kids hands and feet, mothers hands and feet. They're painful and eventually make you walk only on your heals. The sad part is once we remove them, kids will get them again in a few months because they don't have shoes, they need to walk, the mothers need to work, and the cycle repeats.
As sad as some of these things are, there are some really great things going on in kitale as well. Oasis of Hope is this center for children that welcomes street kids and orphans and the poor. They educate for free, provide 2 meals a day, teach trades to older kids, house students, counsel kids, provide medical care, and have organized games. All for free. It's literally an oasis of hope for a few hundred kids in kitale. I was there all afternoon, learning kids names, playing with them, eating lunch, and walking home together. Love it!!
