Nairobi to Kisumu

After travelling for 21 hours from Seattle, and spending 2 hours clearing Kenyan immigration, I joined Hanna in Kenya. A joyful reunion for sure, including a hug so hard, her nose started to bleed. Wolfgang and Heidi had kindly made the 7 hour trip from Miwani to meet her flight from Malawi, and mine from Amsterdam. As it was not safe to travel at night by road, we spent the night with Dr. Shon and Kim Remich in Nairobi. Shon is involved as a physician with the administration and accountability for HIV/AIDS funding by the US government in Africa and previously participated in malaria research in Kisumu, where he and Kim had become acquainted with Nehemiah Center. The Remich’s were wonderful hosts for my first night in Africa. Sleeping soundly, reality hit at 3 am when I woke to the chanting call to prayer from the mosque next door. I truly was in Africa!

Kenyan HOV lane


We drove the next day from Nairobi to Kisumu. It was a dance between passing vehicles, pedestrians, herdsman with their goats and cows, and dodging potholes sometimes the size of quarries. Wolfgang was an apt driver, but there were several testimonies to those less able. I saw a burned out hulk of a gasoline tanker, a newly wrecked truck with fresh mud, bent metal and broken windshield just retrieved from the ditch, and a stake bed coke truck that a passing semi had ripped the side from. Glass and broken plastic boxes everywhere. The countryside varied from the green, almost subalpine valleys of the Nairobi Highlands, to arid bottomlands of the Rift Valley. We passed Acacia trees and zebras; lakes from a distance that appear to have an algae bloom, but are actually covered with Pink flamingoes. We passed tea farms and forests. We also saw poverty, camps for displaced people from the election violence of 2008, and hawkers desperate to sell their produce along the roadside.

Kisumu is the third largest town in Kenya, on the shores of Lake Victoria. It is a commercial center for the sugarcane farming industry and home to one of the highest HIV infection rates in Kenya. The central roads are packed with people, diesel belching trucks, buses, and mattatos (minibuses). Kiosks and roadside stands are everywhere, surpassed only by garbage on the streets. The road from Kisumu to the farm was rebuilt 5 years ago. It is littered with potholes, a result of substandard design for the weight of the sugarcane trailers that take their loads to the mill, and degraded by the corruption that resulted in even less money available for the materials that were specified. This is the reality of Kenya today, but not necessarily its future.

Nehemiah International Center, Miwani farm is in a beautiful, lush valley, the floodplain of Lake Victoria. The valley is farmed by third generation Sikhs whose grandfathers came from India at the turn of the last century, to work for the British building the Trans-Kenya railroad. Sugar cane is the only crop raised commercially and a dairy farm is a previously untried venture here. To the north rises a 2,000 foot escarpment which we were to discover, is an incredibly beautiful and very different place from the valley. The valley people are Luos and those that live in the highlands, Nandi. Each has a different language and traditionally, they would raid one another’s herds, which still goes on to some degree today. There is no garbage out here. This is a subsistence culture where very few consumables are available, let alone purchased. The villages are mud huts without running water or electricity. What you eat is what you grow, or barter. Cattle and goats are hard currency. Currency for a dowry, to pay for secondary school, or medicine if you are lucky enough to see a doctor. People are visible because there are few vehicles to ride in. You walk or bicycle. Bicycles are the equivalent of delivery vans. They carry riders, firewood, charcoal for cooking, and water. They deliver milk, maize, and even coffins. Single speed, heavy; patched together. A bike is a luxury.

Kenya's future, Chebirir school




July 14-15