I'm going to tell you Rosemary's story because I want you to pray for her and the thousands of girls like her. Her name isn't really Rosemary, but that shouldn't matter.
Beautiful Rosemary. She is 19 years old, though she doesn't really know how old she is. We don't know if she's orphaned or where her parents are, but Phil has known her for about 6 years, always as a street girl. He and others around Kitale have tried multiple times to help her and her 3 children, the youngest of whom is 5 weeks old, but she always ends up back on the street, which should be an indicator to the years of abuse she's suffered. Rosemary is a fighter, the fact that she is still alive and still wants help is a miracle. Yesterday she proposed to us that we help her start a small shop where she can sell soap in the slum. You may remember our post about Peter and how Phil helped him a few years ago start a business that is still thriving today.
Having read the book "Half the Sky" by Nicholas Kristof earlier this year, we knew that we needed to know more to successfully help Rosemary. We learned that she hadn't had more than 3 years of formal education and cannot read or write at all, nor comprehend simple arithmetic. This was not surprising since she is a street girl, but my immediate thought was that supporting a shop is setting her up to fail. There was a representative of Youth Apart having lunch with us also, and she proposed that we help Rosemary learn a skill through trade school. Ever heard the saying "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime"? Phil and I want to provide something lifetime-sustainable for street kids. Rosemary is going to learn how to sew, and she will be able to support herself for the rest of her life from that skill.
Rosemary is a statistic of so many things. The irony of "Sex, Drugs and Sausage Rolls" is that Rosemary can't read, yet that is what her shirt said yesterday... she bought it because of the bright colors. She has been through it all and wears it on her shirt. But she is also our friend and we're going to help her. Again. Our prayer is that we can do it the right way, which we realize isn't the easy way. There are over 150 million children on the streets of the world like Rosemary. That's overwhelming. Today we can try to help one. Thank you for contributing to Thanksgiving in Kenya, it's how we're able to help Rosemary.
We haven't been able to find the two girls Phil wrote about the other day.. let's hope that means they are somewhere better...
Ever Hopeful,
Dalene
below is the priceless smile of a rescued child at Mattaw, courtesy of Phil Hamer
tyler was here
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