The young lady on the left is Ann Nzuma. She and two other Daystar students are involved in a ministry to teenage single mothers. The young lady, Serena, in this photo is 17 years of age, and her little girl, Tracy, is 18 months old. Serena is being trained as a tailor in a Catholic school. She is still living at home with her parents and several younger siblings. Their house in the slum was very typical with corrugated tin walls, a dirt floor, and blankets hung to divide the house into rooms.Ann asked Judy to accompany her to the slums of Athi River this past Friday, to see the ministry. We spent several hours with this young lady, another single mother named Kathy--who had recently given birth, plus we met the head man for this particular area of the slum.
In order to travel with Ann, Judy experienced her first matatu ride. Each matatu has a driver and a tout. The tout is responsible for getting the passengers on/off the matatu and collecting money from the passengers. The matatu (a van) has about a dozen single seats; however, the tout wouldn't start the journey until we had about 20 people crammed into the vehicle. There seemed to be two people to every single seat. Judy had to ask her neighbor for permission to move her arm :-) Fortunately, most Kenyans are slender--but none of us had any personal space to speak of. Fully loaded the vehicle moved very slowly up the steep grades. These drivers are known to take risks in order to get from one point to another quickly. This ride was no exception.
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