Somewhere in Suba

It felt like the race around the world - I took a plane, a bus, a boat and then a four wheel drive. I think total travel time was about 15 hours with stops in between to visit projects and talk to people...but it was a long, bumpy ride and everyone was happy to hit the sack last night.

I have come to a remote part of Kenya to see the progress we are making with some projects funded by the Dutch. And I can see clearly that, still, there is indeed a good deal of poverty in this world.

We met with group who started rearing chickens. They made the chicken coup (coupe? koop?) from sticks and mud and put some chicken wire and then started feeding these young chicks. Low and behold, they had numerous visitors who came to check out the new chicks! Four snakes, a few mongoose and something else which I am still not sure about. For the snakes, they got old oil from a local garage and poured that around the coup every few days. For the mongoose, they shored up the chicken wire. But for the other predator, they need to put cement around the base of the structure for fear that it will simply bore into the walls and there go the chicks.

Poverty...oh, poverty. These projects are just near Lake Victoria and there is no water for most of the families. The harvest in most of these areas is poor given the poor seeds used, lack of fertilizer (organic or otherwise depending on where you fall in that debate), and that leads to poor health and poor health facilities and things just tend to spiral down from there.

But the resilience demonstrated, the joy found for a few minutes when welcoming visitors, the laughs had when English fails and mother-tongue takes over...there is a sense of joy that is cannot be explained when all other indicators used in our world should point to gloom and despair.

And here is sunrise from our 'hotel'. We are in some community project which is designed to bring some income through tourism...why not - a few bucks spent here is indeed a good way to support hope.