Kenya Travelogue EN
Kakoi, Kenya - visited in March 2008
By the shadow of the candlelight I turn on my little notebook again. It is with the star light that we have cooked tonight. It is with the last light of the sun that I took my shower with well water. It is thanks to the oil light that I ate some Kenyan ugali tonight. We are in the tiny village of Kakoi, in the Rift valley. The atmosphere is quiet. It’s hard to think that the whole valley was on fire a couple of days ago.
Houses, towns, stores have been destroyed by a volcanic eruption. Nevertheless, the wash quickly drained itself into black lava rocks, even though we can feel the volcano is still active. We had the time to see the devastation during a 15 hour bus ride that from Kakoi to Nairobi. Only 300 km separates the two cities, but the deplorable roads forced us to concentrate on the green and black scenery. It was impossible to close our eyes or to read a book... If we dared to glance away from the road, a fall of half a meter would remind us that the road hadn’t been updated since English colonization. Our kidneys, backs and necks keep the memory of the strenuous trip. Fortunately, the landscapes of the tea fields continued to fascinate us throughout the journey. Curiously, green is the dominating colour. I would have expected the yellow of Savannah lions or the ochre red of the West African roads. I remembered to tell Steph that it looked like a Norwegian pine forest…
On the road, we also see burnt ground decorated with smoking ashes. All the same, everything has been quickly cleaned, as if someone already wanted to forget this sad event and to focus on the future. It is amazing how quickly people can forget. A week ago, they were fighting with machetes and matches, and today, they clean and plant again. I remember this feeling in Sierra Leone two years ago. Nevertheless, it only needs a small spark, a small declaration to create a fire once again.
At our arrival in Kakamega (the last town before Kakoi), Hedson met us at the bus. We looked like two zombies that just finished a trip of two years in the Sahara desert. We were sweating dust. The sun cast its last rays on a big red Indian temple. A mosque around the corner reminded us that it was time for the much of the village to pray. With our big bags of 30kg each, we walked towards a new bus station where we had to take a minibus towards Kakoi village. We got through the town and a strangely well outfitted market. We dreamt of fresh mango. We saw some of them tempting us from their stands. They were yellow, red and green, but our state of exhaustion prevented us from giving in. We hoped there will be some mangos in Kakoi...
We boarded the 14-seats matatu. According to tradition, we were around 30 people in the 70’s minivan. The driver sped above the 100km/h and after 30min driving we arrived at a fork in the road. Hedson told us that we had covered 7 km of ground. He also told us that the town of Kokoi was only 1 km off the main road and that we could easily walk. Because of his strange notion of distance, each of us tok a bodaboda – which is a bicycle taxi - to get there…. It was the appropriate choice because the distance was more like 4-5km rather than 1.
It was already dark. Stars lit up cyclists passing on the broken road – another one – of dry earth. The electricity wasn’t set up yet. We didn’t expect to be without power, so we panicked a bit because neither of our computers or our cameras were completely charged. We didn’t have enough time to download our photos the day before… Which was unfortunate for the kids we were to meet the next day..
We were welcomed by the amazing Rose. She had found us on Google a year ago. Her small school had already participated in an AiA ART Pen Pal program with a school in Malaysia some months prior. We were so excited to meet the kids. Rose comes from an extremely poor family but with courage and an extraordinary will, she succeeded in finishing her studies and then constructed her own school. Financing herself with small jobs or with some tiny family donations, she persisted in his educational quest. On her journey, she has met an ambitious orphan that has lived through the same difficulties. Together, they decided to help rural children. These kids are so often abandoned and are principally the reason that the number of families staying in rural regions is decreasing.
They constructed an orphanage and a school that already receives 150 students from the whole region. Despite the difficult life and limited funds, she succeeded in introducing the concept of "quality education". Unbelievable for a woman who saw a website for the first time 3 years ago… We realize how many small obstacles they had to overcome in order participate in our correspondence programs. Fortunately today, we can help them financially. A simple sheet of paper already helps them. Rose told us how the students and teachers were amazed the day they received the drawings from Malaysian children. They had never seen such a quality paper, just simple drawing paper.
The students did a tremendous amount of work, of a rare quality in a rural environment. It reminds us of what a 10 year old kid told us in a small town in the South of Egypt. He wanted us to broadcast the message that in rural environments we can also find talented individuals and artists, regardless of the very few means they are given in order to develop their skills. The 60 children especially enjoyed taking and composing photos. Their creativity and imagination amounted in creating beautiful drawings of blue elephants and birds of the Great Lakes.
Suddenly, the heat, the tiredness and doubtless the thirst had made me dizzy. I left Steph alone, and looked for a bottle of water. After some minutes of walking, I arrived at the first store – a wood stool with an umbrella of the World Cup Soccer '86. Each of these stalls sells an item. A Coke that had been burning under the sun for months, the rest of the rice for the week, cottons stems, an onion and tomatoes. I kept on walking and arrived at 4 new "shops" that offer the service "mobile charging". Today, it was technically out of service…as most of the days I suppose…
I turned back and ate a tomato and drank a hot Coke. It revitalized me for the rest of the day…and I rejoined Steph and the children…Next stop: another in Kampala…an urban capital…
Anthony
Kakoi, 8rd March 2008
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