Peter - a boy just like me

Slowly we wound our way into this Northern Kenya slum near a town called Eldoret. People, stopped and stared at me, I am sure not too many white men had ventured here. This was not your average tourist attraction; this was sheer hell, and certainly would rank amongst the worst in this world.

Small shacks made out of dark, red clay, the ground seemed to churn up after a recent downpour. Our vehicle just inched its way along in order to avoid the hundreds of people all around.

Our driver stopped the Land Rover in front of a nondescript hut; I wondered how he knew that this was the place. A young boy came out through the door covered by a filthy piece of cloth. A big grin on his face, his eyes wide, he waved to us.

It was there I met Peter, at his so-called home, but like so many children in this slum, all Peter had ever known in his life of 11 years was misery, poverty, sickness, death, hunger and a shortage of nearly anything and everything.

He looked at me and said "Habari Muzungu" and I answered him with a simple mzuri. I had come to take Peter out of this squalor, to talk with him and his grandmother, whether I could bring him to a home and school in nearby Kisumu, where he would live with other children like him, be fed, housed, clothed, but most of receive nurturing love.

Peter and I sat on a small makeshift bench at the back of his house, drinking warm Coca-Cola and getting reacquainted with one another. I asked him how life had been. He did not say anything, just silence. I asked him again,   and again there was a silence. My hand reached out for his, and we sat there in the warm afternoon sun, quietly, just two people connected by a touch of a hand.

My mind went back to my own childhood, my own growing up years, when people used to ask me how things were and I simply said fine, or like Peter - silence.
I thought of the times, where there was no money in my family, when there was not much food, when there was no love, and I was a child like Peter in survival mode.

Peter began to talk, to tell me in a smoky sort of voice about his life. He told me how he had not eaten anything in three days, but mostly stayed inside of his house lying on a straw mat, trying to escape the hunger.

He told how his grandmother would go out at night or in the day even and try to find men to sell herself too, so that there would be some money for food. How the uncle would come and steal  even the little there was in the house. How no one interfered with his uncle, since he had murdered three people in the last few years and the police were looking for him, but every time that they showed up, he would know it and disappear into the slum or go to a nearby village.

He began to talk about his mother, her life as a prostitute, her violent death, her wanting to throw him into a pit latrine just after he was born. Tears trailed down his face. Our hands still united, understanding the moment in time that were we part of.

No words were needed from me, he knew somehow that I understood, that I knew what it was like, that somehow, even though our skin color was different this young boy knew I was a safe person, he felt accepted, home with me.

Age wise we were miles a part, we came from different cultures, but somehow he sensed that I understood him, that I felt his pain, maybe he even realized that  I had a childhood, not unlike his own.
Germany, was thousands of miles from this slum, but as Peter spoke, I was back home, I felt once again the sting of the rejection of a father as he deserted his family, I felt the beatings of a mother across my face until she drew blood. Of being called a bastard because I was conceived prior to my parents were married. Of being abused by an older person at a very young age. Yes I felt what Peter felt. It became so real again.

The times of crying in my room, under my featherbed to muffle the sounds, the feelings of abandonment, isolation, of not feeling the love a young boy needs. Of finding safety in books, of going to church during the day and simply sitting there looking at an image of Jesus hanging high above me, praying for change. Of daily running away into the forest up by the castle and making a fire and simply dreaming of a better world, where I would and could make a difference. Yes I felt what Peter felt. I had been there and now could do something about not my life back then but his life today.

Years have past since my childhood; the scars are still there, the pain even surfaces at times. Somehow though I refuse to see myself as a victim, but have learned to allow my past to shape my present into a better world for me.

The Land Rover slowly inched its way out of the slum, Peter's meager belonging in the back, our hands still touching, knowing that it was OK to dream - to believe - in a world where one can still laugh and dance,  growing and becoming...jon

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Last updated: 13 February 2008

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