The television coverage of the unrest and violence continued. There were reports of police shooting people in the streets and mobs boarding buses to check IDs. Anyone who did not belong to the mob’s tribe was hauled off the bus and killed by machete.
Charles could not watch any more news reports. “Let’s take a break,” he said. “I’m going for a walk. We need to pray for guidance.”
Charles walked beside the Thika River. He had many choices to consider regarding how to respond to the situation. They could try to flee with the children at Ndalani and Yatta. The Tanzanian border was 120 miles away, but where would the food come from to feed so many children if they left? After all, they cared for over twelve hundred children now. And what about the three hundred staff?
As Charles prayed, the fear that had engulfed him watching the news reports evaporated. It was replaced by a sense of peace, a sense that everything would be all right. He knew that God would protect the children at Ndalani and Yatta and that he needed to go to Eldoret to see what MCF could do to help the families being affected by the violence there.
An hour later Charles was back at the house when he received news that the farmhouse and all the storage buildings of MCF in Eldoret had been burned. He called all the children and workers together and told them what was happening in Kenya.
“We are being torn apart by tribal violence. You know you are all from different tribes. Some of your best friends are children from tribes that are fighting each other at this moment. But we here at Mully Children’s Family belong to a much bigger tribe—the tribe of Christians. That is what holds us together. We do not fight. We love and serve each other. We are family. You are my children, and I love you all. God wants us to love each other and to love our neighbors as ourselves.”
Very early the following morning, Charles prayed with his family and then set out for the airport. It was too dangerous to drive all the way to Eldoret because of the many roadblocks that had been set up. And with no official government in place, chaos reigned in the country.
When Charles arrived at the airport, the place was busy. People stood in small groups or walked silently, terror etched on their faces. Charles knew that many of them were making potentially life-or-death decisions. Should they head into the worst areas of violence to be with their families or stay where they were and hope their loved ones got out?
Charles made his way to the Fly 540 airline counter and asked for a ticket to Eldoret.
“There’s one left on the nine o’clock flight,” the agent said. “Do you want it?”
“Please,” Charles replied, pulling out his wallet.
Charles boarded the twin-prop, eighteen-seat aircraft for the fifty-minute flight. No one spoke much, and all eyes were on the ground below them as they flew. As the plane passed over the town of Burnt Forest, Charles saw houses ablaze and people running to and fro. In the distance, plumes of smoke rose over Eldoret.
After the airplane landed in Eldoret, Charles grabbed his bag and headed to where a line of taxis would normally be waiting. Today there were just a few. The drivers were all Kalenjin—tall and lean. Charles walked over to a taxi and opened the door. “Can you take me to the Agricultural Society of Kenya Show Grounds where the IDP camp is being set up—the camp for internally displaced people?” he asked.
The driver nodded. Charles climbed into the backseat. The taxi eased away from the curb and out onto Kitale-Cherangani Road. As the taxi moved along, Charles saw broken windows, smoldering buildings, and corpses on the side of the road. The scene was beyond anything he could have imagined. Roadblocks were manned by men with spears and machetes.
The driver coasted to a stop at the first roadblock. Several armed Kalenjin men stood in the roadway. The driver wiped his brow with a handkerchief and took shallow breaths. He’s very nervous, Charles thought. I should be the nervous one. He’s Kalenjin too, and the tribes are not killing their own people.
The driver tried to roll down the window, but he turned the handle the wrong way, applying more and more pressure until the end of the winder snapped off. Then he turned what remained of the winder the other way.
“ID,” one of the men in the road said, waving his bloody machete at them.
The driver shook like a leaf as he reached into his pocket. Charles took a deep breath and prayed, “God, don’t let them see me. Let me pass straight through here.” His last name Mulli would give him away as a member of the Kamba tribe as soon as he showed them his driver’s license.
The man with the machete took the driver’s ID and walked over and showed it to another man, who read it and nodded.
“Okay,” he told the driver. “You can go through. Welcome.”
No one had said a word to Charles.
As they drove on, Charles said to the driver, “You seemed very nervous back there. Was there some kind of problem?”
The driver let out a bitter laugh. “I’m Kikuyu. I have a false ID. If they knew who I was, I’d be dead.”
Charles was shocked. The man looked Kalenjin. “You are taking quite a risk,” he said.
“We all are,” the driver replied. “Death is everywhere.”
The taxi arrived at the Agricultural Society of Kenya Show Grounds, where Charles had been many times before to see various displays and demonstrations. Today, however, he barely recognized the place. The grounds were filled with white canvas tents.
Charles paid the driver, got out of the taxi, and began walking up and down the rows of tents. Children sat in the mud crying for food. Mothers stood around them with blank faces. Some of them still had blood on their clothes. Some people sobbed, but most were eerily silent.
Charles met with the Red Cross manager in charge of the camp to request permission for MCF to assist the children now living there.
“Why do you want to be registered as an assistance provider? What can you do for the people here?” the manager, who sounded American, asked.
Charles took a deep breath. He knew that what he was about to say would sound crazy. “I want to provide food for the children, and teachers so the children can resume their education. And we will bring school supplies for them and provide counseling for them and their families. They really need that.”
The man stared at Charles. “Yes, they do. They need all of those things, and it is wonderful of you to offer, but in truth, do you think you can provide all of that? There are over thirty-five hundred children in the camp.”
“It is a lot,” Charles agreed, “but I believe it is the right thing to do.”
“It may be the right thing, but can you do it?” the Red Cross official pressed. “Let’s say you want to feed all of the children. It is very difficult to obtain food at the moment. You are not a magician. Where will you get it from?”
“I don’t know yet,” Charles said, “but we have trusted the Lord before, and He always provides.”
“Okay,” the manager said, sounding less than convinced. “Let me get this straight. Are you coming to ask us to give you food so that your organization can distribute it here, or are you saying you will provide the food yourself?”
“God will provide the food,” Charles said. “He’s done it for us before. Then we will use it to help the children here. Please give me the opportunity, and you will see. I will provide cooked food for all of the children in the IDP camp.”
“So you’re not asking us for money or food?”
“No, absolutely not,” Charles replied.
The Red Cross manager walked a short distance away and talked in quiet tones with several other workers. Then he returned to Charles. “Okay, I will give MCF a permit to work in the camp, but I have to say, if you manage to feed and provide schooling for all of these children, it will be a miracle.”
Charles reached out to shake the manager’s hand. “I agree,” he said. “My God is in the business of miracles.”
At six that evening Charles headed to the airport for the trip back to Ndalani. He had been in Eldoret for only nine hours, but it felt to him like a lot longer. He had seen enough gruesome scenes and suffering to last a lifetime.
At Yatta the following morning, Charles called together the members of his biological family who were there. They were all subdued, waiting to hear what he had to say. He told them briefly about what he had seen and then said, “I have made a decision, one that will affect all of us as a family. I obtained a permit for MCF to work in the internally displaced persons camp, and we’re going to go back to Eldoret and do whatever we can to help the children there and their families. Are you with me?”
One by one they nodded, first Isaac, then Ndondo, Mueni, and Grace. What a difference twenty years had made. Charles thought back to when he first decided to take in street children and how his own children had resisted so much. Now they were ready to risk their lives to help him.
“The children in the camp need all the same kinds of help that we offer to the children here. They have been through great trauma. Many of them have seen family members killed. They have experienced much violence and hatred. At the camp, you, Isaac, will get a computer system up and running and keep it that way. Ndondo, you’ll work with me maintaining communication with friends and churches around the world and with the workers and children back here at Yatta and at Ndalani. Grace and Mueni, you two will be in charge of finances and procuring food, fuel, water containers, and educational supplies. Does that sound okay to all of you?” Charles asked.
One by one the Mulli children again nodded in agreement.
The Mulli family spent the next two days preparing a sixty-five-member team of people to go to Eldoret. The team received training in dealing with people in trauma and fasted and prayed for the task that lay ahead of them. A week after Charles’s return to Ndalani, the team was ready to depart for Eldoret. Food and supplies were loaded onto the bus, along with the team, which included Charles and Esther. Charles had arranged for heavily armed Kenyan police officers to ride inside the bus with them all the way to Eldoret. Once the officers were aboard, the bus set off on the journey. As they traveled, Charles quietly prayed that God would take care of them all and keep them safe and that He would provide the supplies they would need to minister effectively at the camp. After a day of traveling, they arrived safely at their destination, despite a number of roadblocks and the roving tribal gangs they saw along the way.
Chapter 14
Changing the Land
The sixty-five team members crammed into the MCF compound in Eldoret that had once been the Mullis’ home. The smell of smoke hung in the air throughout the city. That evening Charles held a special prayer meeting for the work that the group was about to undertake. Afterward he urged everyone to get a good night’s sleep. They would be getting up early the following morning to head to the internally displaced persons camp.
The next morning, Mueni and Ndondo told Charles that they had seen a group of men attempting to scale the compound wall. But before the men could slip over the wall, someone on the street had fired a shot. There was shouting, and then the men scattered. Charles wasn’t surprised. Eldoret was a very dangerous place to be at the present time.
After breakfast the team loaded huge cooking pots, firewood, and food supplies into the back of pickup trucks and drove to the Agricultural Society of Kenya Show Grounds, where the IDP camp was located. Although Charles had been there only a week before, the sight of thousands of hopeless people still shocked him. When the team arrived at the camp, they all set to work.
Charles divided the team in half. One group unloaded the large iron pots and food supplies and set up a kitchen, while the other group set up large tents to be used as classrooms. As the two teams worked, Charles and Esther quietly walked up and down the rows of tents, praying for the people inside them. They stopped at one tent that housed a mother and daughter. Charles stepped into the entrance.
