My day in town began in a Swahili language school classroom, and it ended in the social services office.
I rode into town this morning by daladala (update: max. count- 18), and got to language school at 8:00 AM. After two hours of class, I had a hodge podge of errands to run, one that was not on my list at the beginning of the day.
Rob called me, apologetically, while I was in class to tell me that there was another child at the social services office to bring to Tumaini today. I told him that I could be there by 11:30.
I entered the office to see a couple of workers huddled over their cluttered desks, chatting away as they shuffled the papers. I also saw a little boy sitting on a bench against the wall, quietly crying. The workers introduced me to him. His name is Lukas, they don't know his last name, and they think that he is about five years-old. Apparently, he was found wandering around late at night, by the police, in a ward outside the city. He did not know his father's or mother's names, where he lived, or where he went to school. After over a month and a half of waiting for the parents to find him, the police finally turned him over to the district social services office. Whether it is a case of abandonment or a lost boy who wandered too far for his parents to find him, they don't know. They placed the call to us, asking Tumaini to take him in.
After waiting for about 1.5 hours, the paperwork was done, and Lukas and I headed to Tumaini by taxi. I tried to do my best to help him feel comfortable around me, but it was evidently going to take time. He was obviously frightened, shown by his timidity and anxious glances here and there. But he got lunch when he arrived and was already starting to show some responsiveness to the workers. Pray for Lukas, that he would begin to feel comfortable in this new place and that his time at Tumaini would be a ministry for his soul and not just his body.
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