A Gift of Worth

My name is Kennedy Krezi, and I was born in the Mathare slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Mathare is about 5 square miles and hosts almost 1 million residents. It is a place of poverty, hopelessness, drugs, illiteracy, prostitution, high crime rates and any social negativity you can imagine exists. It is not a place you can proudly say you are from.

When you are born and raised in Mathare, like I was, you are assumed to not have much potential or purpose in life. The society looks down upon you. They want you to believe you belong there.

It is even believed that if you are born in Mathare, your life is pre-scripted. A male in Mathare is supposed to live only up to 16 years of age before dying as a result of crime or drug abuse. A female is expected to live only up to 13 years of age before either dying as a result of diseases from prostitution or being pregnant at an early age. Mathare, in other words, is a place of unworthiness. Living and coming out of that place is a miracle.

It wasn’t until I was sponsored by a family through Compassion when I realized, that no matter where I come from, I can have big and different dreams and the dreams can be valid. I had grown up being told of the script of my life that was full of unworthiness, hopelessness and shame. For the first time, I believed I had worth.

My sponsors often wrote me letters, and in those letters I first heard the words, “I love you.”

I had both parents, and I knew that they loved me, but they were so busy trying to earn the money to provide for us, there was no time left to say those words to us.

So you can imagine how it felt when my sponsors told me that I was cute and had a lovely smile and they thought of me and prayed for me. They often referred to Jeremiah 29:11, that God had a good plan for my life, with a great future and a hope for me. Were it not for them, I could have been part of the negative statistics of the slums. I could have probably been illiterate, not knowing about Jesus, a criminal, into drugs, or even dead.

Today, I have been freed from poverty in Jesus' name. I am a husband to my wife, Hannah, and father to my two children, Gabriel and Malkia. I am a proud member of the Army Corps of Engineers, and I am stationed in Colorado. I also run a successful business that manages African local talents in arts entertainment. My wife and I now sponsor a little girl, Loreen, from the same slums I grew up in. We are honored to be able to provide to her the same love, inspiration and sense of worth I got from my sponsors.

Kennedy is one of Kenya’s most renowned poets, lyricists and gospel hip-hop artists. He is also the founder and CEO of Krezi Global Management, a support and management agency for artists. He is currently studying business administration in Colorado where he lives with his wife, Hannah, and their son, Gabriel, and daughter, Malkia.