The best kind of day

It is the best kind of day. I meet Sammy at the cyber café. Sammy is one of Emmanuel Center’s first high school graduates. He comes from Kitui in Central Kenya. The area is so dry that the World Food Program has had to provide food aid to Sammy’s community for the last decade. His mother is still trying to grow a few crops on their acre of desert, while battling TB and AIDS. His father and youngest sibling are dead. His three other younger brothers are all at Emmanuel Center, having fled rural poverty for Nairobi’s streets and then the streets for a chance at Emmanuel Center.
Sammy is all smiles. We are going to register him for college. We board a matatu. Matatus are the most common form of public transport. Most are Nissan 14 seater mini vans, though they often squeeze in 15, 16, or 17 passengers. Most blare hip hop, reggae or gospel music (or a lively mix of all three) and are decorated with decals representing European football teams, American gangster rap and God. The one we’re on clearly supports Arsenal Football Club, has a huge picture of some gangst’a (I don’t know any of their names) and numerous stickers with sayings like “God can do what no man can do,” and “I love Jesus.” I’ve often compared riding matatus to riding roller coasters since the driving makes your stomach drop. Thankfully we reach downtown Nairobi safely and cross Moi Avenue, one of the busiest streets in Nairobi, with only two near death experiences.
Sammy and I enter the office of the Tourism College to a warm reception. Sammy has decided to study catering and found an excellent course. After one year he will get a certificate in Food Preparation and Management, if he continues for another year he will get a Diploma in the same, and if he completes a third year he will have a Advanced Diploma in Catering. We go over the paper work and register him to start in July. Since Sammy mentioned the course to me he has been constantly praying for it, even though I told him it was a done deal and I could guarantee that I would beg, borrow or steal the funding for it. Now he still doesn’t seem to quite believe it.
We go for lunch and he begins to talk – and Sammy is a talker. The conversations goes something like this: he says, “You know Daniel (Emmanuel Center founder and director) is like my father and I love him so much and he is my father because he saved my life and he put me through school and now he has brought people like you to help me. I love him so much. I really honour him….and you are so good. You must come to Kitui and see my home. I will give you half my farm (which is of course drought ridden) and we will kill our only goat for you. I am so happy…. Once I have this course I won’t want anything. I will never ask for anything again. I will be a chef and can’t miss a job…I will get a good job and give you the farm… and I will come on safari with you and cook for you. You know once I’m a chef I can’t miss a job. I won’t ask anything from Emmanuel Center again. I will be a donor. If I have job I can help others like Daniel does. I won’t ask anything from Daniel again…” And so the conversation goes full circle and starts at the beginning again. Meanwhile I’m torn between bursting into tears, because I’m so moved by what Sammy is saying, and bursting out laughing. Sammy is desperately trying to eat his chicken and chips with a knife fork even though everyone in Kenya picks up chicken with both hands and chews it off the bone. Sammy is obviously inexperienced with a knife and fork, but I guess he’ll learn such things in college too.
And as we ride the crowded, smelly, noisy matatu back to the center I realize that this might just be one of the best days of my life. Sammy is starting a new phase in his life, a phase he had every chance of missing due to poverty and disease, and I am here to celebrate it.