I just had a most unusual Christmas yesterday. I am used to spending Christmas with family with plenty of food and lots of merry-making. Christmas has always been that time to eat to your heart’s content and have loads of fun. As a kid, I remember always looking forward to receiving the gift dropped off by the fairy Santa on his sojourn around the world. There was a particular Christmas I had vowed I won’t sleep till I’d set my eyes on Santa Claus in person. I’m sure you know how that story ended, of course I slept off and my mum told me with a twinkle in her eye that I’d just missed Santa by the whiskers, he stepped in the just as I slept off and all of his efforts to wake me weren’t successful. Who doesn’t love Santa, at least until older siblings burst the bubble.
This Christmas I’d this awesome opportunity of joining with several young men and women in spreading the joy of Christmas to some indigent communities. The drama unit (they are aptly called Reflections) of Daystar Christian Centre has a yearly outreach tagged ‘Breakfast with Bros J’. It’s a very simple plan; they prepare breakfast of bread, egg and tea for about three thousand people, play music and dance with them. As early as 7am, we were at a community in Ayobo area in Lagos. Some members of the team actually camp out in church overnight to make preparations for the following day’s event. They had peppers, tomatoes blended, onions sliced and all other condiments required for preparing fried egg available. They’d apparently booked for freshly baked bread with a bakery, I saw rows and rows of bread neatly stacked and wrapped in polythene bags. Several crates of eggs and gallons of oil were all available. I didn’t remember us running out of anything the entire time, such was the level of preparation that had gone into making this successful.
I was actually amazed at the level of turn-out. When you hear that people live on less than a dollar a day, they are not in Kutuwenji, they are just probably across the street from you. These people came with enthusiasm and were glad for this simple meal. The team had set up a canopy tent with party tables set around with kerosene stoves set on them. We had about 7 or more points where egg was being fried, a few of us were cutting bread, and some were preparing tea and icing it. A few other tables were set up to distribute gift items that had been donated, mostly clothes and shoes. Others helped with the logistics, replenishing stock for the cooks, helping to serve the people that had come while others danced and encouraged some of those young men and women.
I hadn’t seen anything yet. The team later decided to go to Agege, the venue of the event in previous years. There was a community of indigent people living along the rail tracks, mostly in shacks and many of them in the open. Majority of them were from the northern part of the country, a few of them blind, some crippled and many of them destitute. They thronged us the moment we got there and some even accused us of coming late. They had no prior notice that we were coming, just an expectation from previous year’s event that we’d show up again this year. Imagine waiting one whole year to make merry! They eagerly assisted us in setting up our tables when we arrived and helped to tidy up when we were about to leave. Some ‘areas boys’ also gave us cover, unsolicited though, they helped in calming things down when it got rowdy but we had to package their meals separately.
Some of the kids’ hands were dirty and blackened from playing with the soot from the railway track. They tug at your jeans leg and demand for bread. You could see the excitement in their eyes as they ran off to get egg and tea. There were mothers with babies strapped to their backs, dragging along two or three other kids with them. Some came and after collecting for themselves, also requested for a blind or crippled relative. Some came with the blind relatives feeling their way through with a cane in hand. An elderly man approached me, he said he is a retiree, spoke very good English, demanded to know what organization we represented. After we’d chatted a while, he blessed us and asked that we give him some bread because he was hungry.
I salute the young men and women who made this happen. They are not solving world hunger, but they have made a difference one day in one person’s life. The God they have gladly come out to serve will bless them. They have donated generously to make this happen, volunteered their time and skill to pull this off. There were about two or three mothers with babies strapped to their backs gladly serving in the hot sun. Quite a number of the women had young families at home they still had a responsibility of going back to prepare delicacies for. But I’m sure it was such a fulfilling experience for everyone who attended. They’d started talking excitedly about the next one.
If you are reading this, I urge you to in any little way to remember the poor living amongst us. And if you are interested in volunteering for this event subsequently, I might be able to hook you up with the organizers.
God bless.
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Kayode Olawale, lives and works in Lagos. He writes in his spare time
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We all have a measure of grace for service. Most times, we want to have everything to be able to serve not knowing that God blesses at the place of service. This group have been very consistent at this and this time they took it further by serving at three’ different points. God bless them and open our eyes to the areas we can be a blessing and grace to do what He asks us to do.