LIVING by their wits and having to resort to sniffing glue and scavenging for food in rubbish dumps are just some of the hardships street children face in Kenya.

This is one reason Len Denton,of Lower Road, Hockley, has spent the past five years raising money through the Cheetah Project, to build schools and orphanages for Kenyan street children.

Last week, he published a book, Olapa Oibor Inherk – which translates as “children are the bright moon”. Len is hoping the self-published book will raise £6,000 to build an orphanage in the outskirts of Nairobi.

“The orphanage will take children from the ages of six upwards until they are 16 and we will have 40 at any one time,” explained the father-of-five.

“At the orphanage, they will be able to live and be educated there.”

Len admits he is never prepared for the horrors he witnesses on his trips to the slums of Kenya.

“I last went out there four months ago, and I try to go out there four times a year. There are several things they are in danger of. The other slums kids beat each other up. They roam around the rubbish looking for food – which they wouldn’t do it if they weren’t high on glue – and are also in danger of the police torturing them.

“You’d expect to see little girls pushing prams with dollies in, but you see nine and ten-year-old girls carrying their own babies,” said Len, 62.

“One of the things I kept hearing from the children about their future is they just want to stay alive.”

Len has raised around £20,000 for the Cheetah Project, hundreds of thousands in local fundraising and his previous employees, Tops Tiles recently donated football kits to the street children of a notorious slum. He thinks now it is more important than ever to contribute.

After working closely with the local community, Len received the ultimate commendation in 2007 of being accepted as a white Maasai, meaning he was officially a member of the Kenyan Maasai tribe.

However, his close proximity to the life of people in the area also meant he witnessed the increasing hardship they faced over the past couple of years.

He said: “The violence in Kenya in 2006 and 2007 has made life a lot harder for the street children and now there are 600,000 displaced people.

“There is still violence now and disputes. I try not to get involved with the politics, but focus on the children because they are the victims of this.”

Once home, Len confesses he finds it hard to switch off.

“I do find it hard to re-acclimatise when I get back to the UK. I feel bad about taking things for granted. If we leave our dinner and scrape the leftovers into the bin, I suddenly think there would be 500 street kids fighting over those cold baked beans!”

l To buy a copy of Olapa Oibor Inherk, which comes with a DVD and costs £10, send an e-mail marked “book” to lenoledenton@googlemail.com