Charles did not know what do to. Over three hundred children were drinking contaminated water, and he wasn’t sure how he could change that. The property had no electricity. Since there was no grid nearby to connect to, there was no way to power a water-purifying plant, even if they could afford it. The local elders told Charles that there was no underground water supply in the area. They knew this because over the years many people had tried to dig wells, which always turned out to be dry. Aware of this but desperate to do something about the situation, Charles hired a drilling rig and crew of drillers from Nairobi to come to the Ndalani property and see what they could do. The drillers sank two bores, each two hundred feet deep, but found nothing. The head driller shook his head and told Charles, “This area is as dry as a bone. You are wasting your money. There is no water down there.”
At the same time, the condition of the two boys with typhoid became critical. Charles visited them in the hospital and prayed for their healing, but it was not to be. Both boys died. Charles was in the room when the second boy died. Seeing his adopted son lying lifeless on the hospital bed, he knew he could not rest until somehow the water problem was solved.
Charles began to pray constantly for God to intervene and provide a source of clean, fresh water on the property. “God, I know You didn’t give me these children and lead us here for them to die from bad water. There must be a solution. I beg You, give us clean water.”
For three days Charles devoted himself to praying for water. Then, at three o’clock on the fourth morning Charles awoke, his senses on high alert. He could feel goose bumps rising on the back of his neck. “Follow Me, and I will guide you to water,” he heard a voice say. He wasn’t sure whether it was just in his head or not, but the message was loud and clear. He woke Esther, grabbed a kerosene lamp, opened the door, and walked out into the moonless night. Esther followed, tying her robe as she went.
Charles walked straight ahead, then turned left and stopped. “Here is water,” he said to Esther. “When we dig here, we will find water. God has just told me this. Let’s give God thanks for providing for us.” He took Esther’s hand, and together they prayed and then returned to bed.
The next day Charles announced to the children that their water problems had been solved. There was water on their own property, less than a hundred yards from where they stood. The children cheered and danced. Their exuberance didn’t last long, however. After the older boys had spent two days digging through the rock with pickaxes and shovels, they’d had enough. Some of the boys refused to dig anymore. “This is useless,” they grumbled. “If a team of well drillers with big machines can’t find water, how can we?”
On the third day, Charles’s eleven-year-old son, Dickson, asked him to come to the hole. “We have reached the end,” Dickson said as they both peered into the well. “We have hit the volcanic rock the well drillers told us about. You told us to dig. We have been digging for three days. There is no water. You say God told you to dig here. What do we do now?”
Charles could see the confusion in his son’s eyes. He had only one answer. “We must keep digging. God told me this is where the water is,” he said.
Slowly Dickson climbed down the scaffolding into the hole.
About an hour later, Charles heard yelling. “Maji, maji [water, water]! Dad, Mum, come quickly!”
Charles ran to the hole, surrounded by children who had heard the commotion and leapt up from their schoolwork. Instead of calling them back, the teachers ran with them. At the edge of the hole, Charles looked down. His two sons, Isaac and Dickson, were standing ankle deep in water, splashing it on each other and laughing. Charles hugged Esther and joined in the laughter. “God has answered our prayers!” he yelled above the excited voices.
The children gathered around and started chanting “maji, maji” as they clapped their hands and danced. Charles and Esther joined them. Now the family would have clean water. The well was soon prepared and capped and a water tower built. They named the hole Jacob’s Well.
Soon afterward, an American visitor was so impressed with the work of Mully Children’s Family that he offered to pay for electric lines to be run to the property and for the buildings to be wired for power. Now, in short order, the children had both clean water and electricity. These two additions allowed Charles to begin the next phase of his plan. Until now, the only gardening they had been able to do involved a two-and-a-half-acre plot where they grew corn. The plot was plowed by a team of oxen, and Charles knew it was time to modernize.
Charles and his seventeen-year-old son, Kaleli, walked the length and breadth of the Ndalani property and dreamed of what kind of agriculture could be possible. Charles decided on a large garden. The garden would allow him to employ and pay struggling local women to tend the crops. Such an enterprise would also provide food for Mully Children’s Family, and if all worked out, there would be produce left over to sell.
At the start of the following year, Kaleli began attending Nairobi University, where he studied business and agriculture. Charles looked forward to learning about the latest agricultural techniques from his oldest son. Meanwhile, work on developing a larger garden began.
With the water problem solved, Charles was surprised when another strange sickness presented itself at Ndalani. Some children who became sick with seemingly simple illnesses, such as measles and the flu, failed to fully recover.
By now, various church groups from Canada and the United States were sending medical mission teams to help care for the children and the local residents. One of the doctors who had come to help suggested that the sickly children be tested for HIV/AIDS. Twelve MCF children tested positive for the disease. In response Charles set up a home for the twelve back at the property in Eldoret where they could receive special medical care.
Charles asked the doctors many questions about the disease and learned all he could about this new threat. What he learned scared him. He realized that millions of Kenyans were putting themselves at risk of getting HIV/AIDS, yet no one was talking about it. Charles made some charts and began visiting local schools, churches, and village gatherings to educate people about HIV/AIDS and explain how they could protect themselves from it. He then trained two social workers to carry on the work.
Amid the grim diagnosis of HIV/AIDS among some of the children, there were also things to celebrate. In 1999 the high school boys made it to the divisional soccer championship. Sixty boys, with five teachers accompanying them, were transported to the site of the championship on a large trailer pulled by one of the MCF tractors. Charles was there to wave them off and wish them all well.
Three days later, when he was visiting Eldoret, Charles was delighted to receive a telephone call informing him that the boys had won the championship, beating 123 other schools in doing so. It was a heartwarming moment for him. He could only imagine what the other schools thought of this motley crew of boys from many different tribes all working together to win. He hoped their success would spur other schools to also accept students from different tribes.
That was not what happened, however. Charles received a phone call from Jacob telling him that the boys had been ambushed on their way back to Ndalani. About two hundred boys from the two nearest schools had put rocks on the road to stop the tractor and trailer. When the MCF boys got down to remove them, they were attacked with knives and rocks. Charles could only imagine the scene. Not only were the MCF boys in top physical shape, but also they knew how to street fight, and they excelled in karate. “Even though they were outnumbered by more than three to one, our boys were unstoppable,” Jacob reported. “By the time the police arrived, several of the attackers were badly hurt and the rest had run away. Not one of our boys was hurt.”
Charles didn’t know what to say. He was proud that the boys had won the soccer championship. He was proud that they had the skills to ward off their attackers, but he didn’t like them using their karate moves to hurt anyone.
After the phone call, Charles got into his car for the six-hour drive back to Ndalani from Eldoret to talk with the boys. It was hard to know what to say to them, and he prayed for wisdom as he drove. He didn’t want the fight to overshadow the boys’ amazing sports accomplishment. They had a right to feel proud of that. When Charles reached Ndalani, the sixty boys who had been attacked gathered to hear what Daddy Mulli had to tell them.
“Did we do the right thing by fighting?” one of them asked. “I think I broke someone’s thigh bone. Is that okay?”
Charles looked at each of the boys, who seemed genuinely conflicted.
“I am proud that you are not the kind of boys who go looking for a fight anymore,” he told them. “Jesus has changed your hearts, and you love others. But yesterday you did fight. I understand that two hundred boys attacked you and threatened to kill you. You had a right to fight back and save your lives. You know that we need to respond peacefully whenever we can. We need to forgive and to find a way to reconcile with those who want to fight us, but I understand that you did not have time to consider that. I am just glad that none of you were hurt.”
Charles paused for a moment, marveling at the scene. Here was a group of boys who had been gang members and street kids, and they were struggling with the concept of fighting back to defend themselves. Once they would not have even questioned such action. What a long way they had all come as members of Mully Children’s Family.
“Let me see your trophy!” Charles said with a broad smile. “And congratulations. You are the best soccer players in the district. Perhaps one day some of you will play for Kenya. I want to shake each of your hands for a job well done, and then I believe we have a party ready for you.”
The boys cheered.
During 1999 MCF produced a bumper crop from their garden. With a steady supply of water and electricity to run irrigation pumps, more and more land was being used to produce food. That year they harvested tomatoes, kale, cabbages, and watermelons.
Charles was so proud of the quality of the produce they harvested that he took some of it to an official in Nairobi to ask if it would be possible to export some of what they grew to Europe. That was where the big money in growing produce lay. The official was so impressed with what they had grown that he came to Ndalani to see the operation for himself.
“You know,” the official told Charles during his visit, “the biggest profits are in growing and exporting French beans. So far only large corporations are doing it because the rules are so tough, but if there is any way that you could pass the new European Union regulations for growing and transporting produce, you could make a lot of money to help support these kids.”
Charles ordered a copy of the European Union regulations and began to read them. Growing French beans and exporting them to Europe was a daunting task. There were rules for everything—from planting, fertilizing, and watering to picking, packing, and shipping. Charles and the farming team met together to work their way through all the regulations.
French beans turned out to be a challenging crop to grow. Eventually MCF mastered the art of doing so and felt that they had properly implemented all the necessary regulations. Charles decided it was time for an inspection by EurepGAP, a global partnership to promote safe and sustainable agriculture. A group of EurepGAP auditors from the Netherlands arrived at Ndalani to spend a day going over the entire process of how the French beans were grown. When they had finished their inspection, they met with Charles. The head auditor handed him a wad of papers.
“You got some things right, but not much,” the auditor said matter-of-factly. “Your overall score was 10 percent.” Charles was too shocked to think of anything to say. “Here is the list of violations. Your biggest downfall is poor record keeping, but there are many other violations as well. You are using pest control chemicals that are not approved by EurepGAP, and your irrigation system is not up to our standards. You could try correcting these problems, but it’s unlikely any operation your size would ever meet our standards. It takes a European-based corporation to truly understand what we’re after.”
