A river of hope

I am introduced to Fred at the colourful school building in the heart of the Kakuma refugee settlement, where children of nine different nationalities learn and play together. It’s here that two of his children eat Mary’s Meals – the daily bowl of rice and beans fuelling their concentration as they follow their A,B,C’s.

When I ask him about the food, Fred says without hesitation: “This food is very important – if it wasn’t for Mary’s Meals many refugee children wouldn’t be at school. Mary’s Meals is giving support so at least I know the children will eat and be ok till the evening when we will try to provide something else. The children come to school simply because of the food so they can learn here.”

Throughout our chat Fred is playing with the edges of a battered book and it’s only towards the end I notice it’s a well-read bible. Not his, he tells me, but he adds that his faith and God’s love has carried him through troubled times. “I was brought up by a faithful Christian mother and I am a Catholic, my wife a Protestant. My whole family goes to church and we pray together every day.” An example follows of answered pray around a short term job opportunity when his wife was pregnant and the family were feeling very desperate. “The prayers worked!” Fred says with a smile.

I smile with him but when I hear the rest of his story, I know that what he has gone through would test even the strongest of faiths.

In 2013 Fred had to suddenly leave his home in Burundi and he knew he could never return. After being forced by bandits to help them hide items or be killed, Fred knew his life was in great danger.

He left so quickly there wasn’t even time to say goodbye to his family. Fred tells me, “I had to run away. I could only leave a note for my wife with a neighbour. It asked my wife to find a way out and to follow me.”

Fred then had to make a difficult journey through Tanzania and Uganda to arrive at a refugee camp in the dusty, arid land of Kakuma.

Fred was safe but encountered a whole new set of challenges. He says: “It was stressful to leave my family, my job and my home. It was hard to be on my own and I was worried about how my family would survive. It took me time to recover from the trauma.”

Finally, in 2015, his wife Nabintu-Louise and their children managed to join him. It took the children time to settle but they eventually managed to make new friends and adapt.

And although they are now safe, life holds a new set of challenges. Fred owned a shop in Barundi and his wife was a tailor. Here he relies on piecework to make ends meet, but there is not enough to sustain the family.

Turkana is a tough place to survive – it is in the midst of the worst drought it has seen for 40 years. The livestock many people rely on for their livelihoods are dying. Hunger is prevalent and water is so hard to find I saw people digging eight feet deep wells into the heart of a riverbed.

And yet, although Turkana may not have seen rainfall for far too long, a river of hope runs through this dry country in the form of Mary’s Meals. This hope is present in the volunteers who light fires before even the first rays of sunlight to cook Mary’s Meals for their children, its present in the teachers (often volunteers) who bounce with joy as the children sing new words, and it’s present in the parents, like Fred, who long for their children to make a better life through education. He tells me, “As a parent I strive to ensure my children can be educated to the highest level possible, so that we can support them to learn and get a good job.”

When I think of Fred’s story now, as the memories of this beautiful country and its resilient people follow me around into my normal life, I can’t stop thinking of this man’s strength and my thoughts turn to this scripture from Jeremiah (17:8).

“But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

Please join me in praying for Fred and all those who stand determined in hope that their children will find a better tomorrow because, today, they hold the certainty that their children will eat Mary’s Meals.