Kenya: From the Street to the Stage, Bringing to the World a Message of Peace

By NewsfromAfrica

There were emotions and applause on the night of November 24 at the “Rossetti theatre” in Vasto,Italy for the show done by young acrobats from Kivuli Centre in Nairobi. Young Kenyans on stage, with the youngest being six and a half years and the eldest being 21, all boys that Father Renato Kizito Sesana rescued from the streets and returned to a life of dignity. And today the youngsters go around the world bringing their message of peace and solidarity.

The appointment at Vasto was organized thanks to the collaboration between the Adriatic association for immigrants, Caritas Diocesana , The Interreligious table and the municipality of Vasto . After the opening words of Hamid Hafdi , Don Gianfranco Travaglini and Anna Suriani, Father Kizito projected a video and spoke briefly about life in Nairobi where so many people live in extreme poverty and maybe about 150 thousand children live on the streets . Koinonia Community has as its main purpose to rescue those children from the streets and give them, after a rehabilitation process, the opportunity to return to responsible citizenship.

Then, on the frenetic rhythms from the drums, which never stopped during the show, the youngsters demonstrated their abilities in dancing, singing, miming, and above all in acrobatics, which left the spectators at Rossetti astonished. To close the evening, the boys took on stage some members of the public engaging them in a traditional African dance.  At the very end the boys sung their own Swahili version of the Our Father, accompanied at the drums by one of them, who at 13 years of age is already a master drummer .  “Among them are Catholics , Christians of other churches as well as Muslims” – explained Father Kizito-  “but they think these word expresses the common vision of human brotherhood, and never want to close a show without it”.