Faith defies filth at lakeside city's largest dumping site

Street families at Kisumu's Kachok dumpsite in prayer. [Denish Ochieng, Standard]

It is Sunday morning and a group of street families are gathered atop garbage heaps at the infamous Kachok dumpsite.

The dumpsite receives about 400 tonnes of waste collected in Kisumu and its environs daily.

Rugged, dirty and hungry,  men and women and children, sit quietly on garbage as one of them reads the Bible and delivers a Sunday sermon.

Amidst swarms of flies,stench from rotting garbage and human waste, the group kneels down to pray.

They do this every Sunday before breaking to scavenge the dumpsite for anything they can find to sell or eat.

Some of them have been praying at the dumpsite for the past 15 years now. The ‘church’ they say, has helped fight drug abuse and crime.

Christened “Church Across Borders”, it has offered the destitute street children a home and has been instrumental for the education of a few of them.

Cosmas Otieno, a former police officer who now lives in the streets, is one of the senior members of the church. He says streets families started the church to ensure that discipline was maintained at the dumpsite.

Otieno, who has been at the dumpsite since 1981 after he was dismissed from the police service, says that the church is always active every Sunday with the street families at the dumpsite gathering to pray after a long week spent rummaging through the garbage.

“Before we started worshiping here, crime was rife at the dumpsite, it was a no-go zone and that is why we opted to start a place we could worship,” said Otieno.

“Most of the street children here do not have proper supervision and guidance and are vulnerable to drug abuse and crime,” he said.

Boniface Otieno, a reformed street urchin and the church’s pastor, told The Standard that the church has brought street families at the dumpsite together. They now share whatever they scavenge out of the dumpsite like one family.

Mobilise support

The church has about 70 members, but only about 50 turn up every Sunday to worship, most of them young street children. There are about 100 street families at Kachok.

The street families have been using the church to mobilise support for the street children who are defying the odds of the torrid life to go to school.

Two candidates from the dumpsite excelled during this year’s Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination, with one scoring 380 marks, the other 338 marks.

The two, David Ochieng and Mark Vincent, who will be joining form one next year after they  received a four-year scholarship from the Jomo Kenyatta Foundation.

News of the scholarship further lifted the faith of the dumpsite congregation that has been appealing for help for the two bright needy students.

Rosemary Barasa, the managing director of Jomo Kenyatta Foundation, challenged the two boys to use the opportunity to excel in secondary school.

Both are clear examples of the influence of the church at the dumpsite.

“Our Sunday worship has registered some positive results,” said Otieno.

The church gives solace to this small band of Christians. Armed with faith, the health risks associated with the dumpsite do not give them jitters; spoilt food disposed at the dumpsite becomes a bouquet.

“We believe that even Jesus was born in a filthy place, so to us this place is holy,” said Otieno.

Despite struggling to get a meal, the congregation of street families faithfully contribute during offertory. The money is used to support school-going children.

Street families are encouraged to tidy up every Sunday in readiness for church service.

“We have a policy none of the street children sniffs glue. The church has really helped us push this agenda,” said dump-site manager John Orinda.