The Smell of Success

I have never been so happy to step in the excrement from a cow. A cow is significant here. A cow means wealth and security. It means daily milk - a regular source of income and food. After I looked down at the evidence of success on the bottom of my shoe, I looked up to find a man who had recently been a boy. This man had four cows. Wealth unimaginable to the man who was a boy three years ago, before ZOE Ministry and the Giving Hope project began in Kenya. Dickens is one remarkable young man.

Dickens earned the money for his four cows from his business of selling ballast – rock for construction. He used to work back-breaking manual labor for 200 Kenyan Shillings a month - less than 3 US Dollars. When he joined the Giving Hope project, Dickens requested money from his group to begin buying and selling rock. Last fall when bossman came to visit, he was selling six truck-loads a week. When we saw him yesterday, he was doing nineteen truckloads that week and employing twenty men to break apart the rock at the quarry. Quite a long way for an orphaned street kid taking care of two brothers.

As I stared at these cows, I wondered what the orphans thought of us. In Kenya, white people are called muzungus. We are told that it has no real negative connotation, just a description. Today as we drove away from one of the orphans houses, a new kid from the neighborhood walked alongside the van and when he saw that we were white he started yelling, “Muzungus! Mazungus!” I wondered what they all thought of us coming from America to stare at four cows and a construction project.

Dickens is used to showing off his enterprise by now. Not only do many groups who come to Maua Methodist Hospital visit his home, but Dickens also shows off his business to orphans who are just now beginning the Giving Hope project. They will all be going back to their groups and dreaming of how they can be the next Dickens. Each of them will be working so that when mazungus come to visit, they too can step in the excrement from a cow.

If they got that far, then they will certainly have food to eat. They will have a community of other orphans for mutual support. Like Janice – a seamstress with her own shop now – or like Naftali – a barber who cuts thirty people’s hair every day - they will be able to look around and praise God for the grace that allows orphans to own their own shops and feed their siblings.

If you came here, you too might be able to glory in the smell of success. When it means siblings staying in school, food on the table, and a future with hope, such a smell truly is beautiful.