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The Street Children of Sumbawanga
Tanzania, East Africa
Many of you will have followed In 2015, I made my first trip out there
the story of the finding and and immediately bonded with these
rescuing of a group of street boys, who wanted a better life than the
one they had. They were filthy and in
children, back in 2013. Some will rags, covered in lice and followed us
be new to the village and may everywhere, hanging onto our arms
be interested in the background and jabbering away excitedly in
to this remarkable work that has Swahili. For a month, with the help of a
been so generously supported young man called Kelvin, who acted as
my interpreter, we settled the children
by our village community. into groups of 20 and fed them on the
streets. The first night we were there,
Back in 2013, the Pastor of our church, we fed 200! Kelvin found the most
Settle Christian Fellowship, found what vulnerable, the youngest ones, and
appeared to be a bundle of rags, which after we had returned to the UK, he
turned out to be 20 young boys, continued to feed them and
huddled together and sleeping on the eventually,6 months later, we rented a
side of the road in Sumbawanga. He house for 21 of them. We went over
sent me a photo and we agreed we regularly and I taught them to read and
had to do something, so while he was write. We took out clothes, equipment,
there, he fed them. For 2 years we paid and the children made amazing
for different organisations to feed them progress, learning to do the chores in
and during that time, Pastor visited the house, growing vegetables and
them several more times. keeping chickens. We had collected
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