Kenya: Into the rural area

Last night we arrived in our hotel in Kakamega late at night, so didn't see much beside our room. Today I took a few pictures...

This morning after breakfast we set off for Navakholo. The short journey there - 42km - took us ages because of the bad roads. When the tarmac ended, we were on deep wet red mud sliding along at 5 miles an hour. Apparently, the tarmac roads only go as far as the funding does so because there's so much corruption, the roads just stop where the money ran out. So many roads here were funded to be double carriageways, but ended up only single because so much money was siphoned off.

And at last, there it was - the school building site!

We walked the last bit to the site and planned to get stuck in as soon as we arrived. Alas, last night's torrential rain had a knock on effect in that we couldn't do much at the main building, however the pit latrine building needed a roof so we got busy there.

At first the kids were very reluctant to engage with the local kids, who simply stood and stared silently at us! Trying to speak to them got no response, so the kids felt rather self conscious and clung to me. After a while, they started playing by themselves... and by the afternoon at last the ice broke and when we left we had to tear the kids away!

So we saw some of rural Kenya, and poverty. Mud houses amid lush vegetation, men sitting around idly because there is nothing to do, no jobs or work other than growing crops for sustenance. Sugar is the main crop for money here but it takes 20 months to grow it, during which time no money comes in; so when time comes to sell the sugar, they have so much debt that there's only just enough money to start another crop. And borrow money again to live. And on it goes.

People are friendly. Kids stand and stare. White people stick out so much, just driving along if someone got sight of my face they'd stare and possibly shout to tell others. I was told some kids may never have seen a white person in the flesh before...!

Finally, the journey back to the hotel was much quicker as we used a different road... which did require us to get out three times to get the car unstuck!

On to further adventures tomorrow. It's raining torrentially again now as I'm in bed with D, thunder and lightning!

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