This story from Inside Africa story on the plight of Nairobi's street children is positively heartbreaking. Though much of it is difficult to watch, the hardest part about the report on the abandoned children of Kenya's capital is how one of the children makes pocket change by selling paint thinner to other street children. As in the slums of Brazil, Nairobi's homeless kids looking to forget the desolateness of their lives, turn to sniffing the chemicals, thus killing brain cells and further disadvantaging themselves. "Living in the streets, especially if you are a girl, is very risky," 19-year old Joan told CNN's David McKenzie. "You can be raped any day, any time, by anyone who wants to do it."

Fortunately the news is not entirely bleak for Nairobi's street children. All too often the entire continent of Africa is represented in the West as such a lost cause that it is hard to imagine there is any laughter anywhere. Oprah's Book Club, this month, for example, is throwing light on the plight of Africa's children, highlighting the uplifting fiction of Uwem Akpan. Akpan, a Jesuit priest and writer, has written quite movingly about the richness of the inner lives of those trapped on Africa's streets.

Further, SOFAPAKA FC, a soccer club founded in 2004 and catering mainly to street children, clinched the Kenya Premiere League title. What makes the story even more cinematic (Hollywood take note) that they clinched the title the same year they made their debut in that league. In the words of Nairobi's The Standard, "Sofapaka, are raising eyebrows thanks to the organisational structure, prudent player signing backed by the financial muscle of Congolese preacher and businessman Elly Mboni Kalekwa." Prior to Kalekwa's stewardship, SOFAPAKA FC was sponsored by M.A.O.S Ministries and took part in small inter-church competitions. It is now not outside the realm of possibility that some of those former street children might achieve national or even international soccer stardom proving, perhaps, by example that nothing is impossible.

A blogger can dream, can't he?