A Bed in Hell

Korogocho is a slum in the city of Nairobi where 150,000 people live within one square kilometer.  Sanitation is non-existent and the smell of sewage and the smoke of burning trash hangs heavy in the air.  Homes, no more than tiny metal or earthen shacks, are stacked almost on top of one another in a maze of human habitation.

The Greek word we translate as hell is “Gehenna” – Jesus’ reference to a burning trash dump outside of Jerusalem.  Korogocho is a hellish place.

Walking around the streets of Korogocho, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the thought that there is too much evil and suffering for us to make any difference.

“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought.”

In the midst of this Gehenna, twelve women receive hair salon training for free so that they might receive careers.  A pastor’s wife named Panina runs a small medical clinic for 350 of the poorest of the poor.  Rosa, a patient of the clinic, volunteers twenty hours a week as a community health worker and receives a bar of soap each month as her thanks.  Vonter, a mother of five and an HIV patient, takes in a sixth child despite her fears of not being able to feed her own children.  Maureen, another patient, finds shelter with her brothers from the man who beat her until she lost her hearing.  Respis, who has bled for three years, will receive the operation she has needed – free of charge – this coming Tuesday.

The truth is that light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it.

by Jim Gates, Associate Pastor for Evangelism at First Presbyterian Church in Norfolk, Virginia.