I Cried Really Hard
It is the day of celebration for the new library at Taru Secondary School. We have come to the campus for the event and to visit the students in our sponsorship program. We run into two of them, Gonzi and John. One year ago they had showed us, with great pride, the project they had been working on under the guidance of a teacher. They had planted tiny seedlings of trees on a raised platform. They were caring diligently for these seedlings, transferring them as they grew to small plastic containers they then grew below the platform. They had built a thorn fence around the seedlings to keep the goats from chewing on them.“It is a micro-business. It is to help the reforestation of Kenya,” they had told me, with such earnest pride. A worthy goal, in this land where every growing thing is subject to be burned as fuel. “What will you do with the money you make?” I had asked. “Send it to our families,” they had both answered in unison. No equivocation there. They both came from very poor families, as all our sponsored students do.Now it was a year later and of course our first question was to ask about their business. Had the trees sold well? Were they able to send that money to their families?They both got quiet. Looked at the ground. “We worked very hard,” Gonzi said. “We watered and transplanted the trees. We worked every weekend. Even these new trees you see planted all over campus – they are our trees. It came time last July to sell all the trees to the nursery. They sold very well. A good profit was made: 39,000 shillings! We were to share the profit with our teacher. But he took it all. He disappeared.”“I cried,” said John. “I cried really hard.”“I did too,” said Gonzi. “He was our teacher! But we still have the knowledge. He couldn’t take that.”"We will start again after we graduate. God finds a way. We must not let this hold us back," said John. The smile returns to their faces.*John and Gonzi will graduate in November. May their seedlings and the forgiveness breathe life into this barren land.