For Love of Children 給孩子的愛

　　This slender volume opens with the story of Beniah, an infant rescued by sanitation workers from the stack of garbage in which he had been left to die. Without ever losing sight of Beniah and the too many other deserted children, the author, Sharon Emecz, tells the story of the two homes for abandoned children, Happy Life Kasarani and Happy Life Juja Farm, organized in the area of Nairobi, Kenya. Developed more than a decade ago by two indomitable couples, Sharon and Jim Powell from Delaware in the USA, and Faith and Peter Kamau from Nairobi, the two settings provide the physical and emotional comforts that would otherwise have been denied the 102 abandoned children now living there, as well as having nurtured the many more who have found adoptive homes. More than that even, the two homes have literally saved the lives of all those children. The book provides detail of the structure and functioning of The Happy Life homes allowing for an appreciation of their organization (as well as a pattern for their replication), and provides as well brief portraits of some of the children saved, of those adults who have opted to share a part of their lives with them whether through work or volunteering, and the adoptive parents who have pledged to share their homes and their love with the children who have become their own. Ms. Emecz gives the reader a real sense of the spiritual journey she has undergone in traveling from London to Nairobi, a journey she and her husband, Steve, now make at least annually.

Three Days to See( 節選) 假如給我三天光明

　　All of us have read thrilling stories in which the hero had only a limited and specified time to live. Sometimes it was as long as a year, sometimes as short as 24 hours. But always we were interested in discovering just how the doomed hero chose to spend his last days or his last hours. I speak, of course, of free men who have a choice, not condemned criminals whose sphere of activities is strictly delimited.