Mbakalo

Gonna have to make this a short post since im working on battery power. I got to Mbakalo yesterday, which is about an 8-9 hour trip northwest of Nairobi. The scenery along the way was beautiful, a landscape of lush green forests interspersed with cleared fields for the cattle. A good portion of the trip we spent paralleling the edge of the great rift valley, which i always pictured as brown and dry. thank god i was wrong. steep green edges, miles across and with small mountains and lakes on occasion rising up out of the flat green bottom. I kept thinking of hemingways book green hills of africa; now i know what he was talking about. but leaving the high rises of nairobi also brought another change in scenery. no matter how many times you see it, the true poverty of developing nations still hits you inside. sporadically along the route, shanty towns of mud huts mixed in with rusted corrugated tin dwellings advertised the extreme lack of opportunity offered to the people here, many of whom could be seen gathered by the roadside in bunches watching the rich people on the buses pass by, while their bony cattle grazed in the discarded piles of trash alongside of the highway. eventually we got into mbakalo, which is more of a region than an actual village. we stopped by the medical clinic and met some of the workers, and arrived at mama ann's for the night. today we met with all of the workers of the clinic, about 6, to discuss how we could improve the operation to better serve the needs of the community. i also was able to visit the first IGA, income generating asset for the community, a field of passion fruit that was planted with the help of UKs equivalent of USAID. the grant also provided for a rubber lined pit to collect rainwater for watering the plants. i believe the whole grant was less than 5,000 dollars, but after 6 months the profits from those fruits will be able to pay the salaries of some of the nurses into the foreseeable future, which is essential because they currently are on salary from a grant which will soon end. in a place like mbakalo, where so few children will ever have access to see a doctor, its amazing what such a small amount of money can do to improve the lives of so many people. economic development is a necessary, but not sufficient, component of helping the poor improve all facets of their lives. economic growth must come first before health and disease rates can be changed, corruption and government issues can be tackled, and human rights issues can be addressed. when you are in absolute poverty, the idea of eating today trumps any thoughts of working towards the future. to focus on other issues in the developing world, without addressing economic growth, is putting the cart before the horse. speaking of which, i actually saw one of those today.. actually it was two cows, pulling the cart, but the cattle were in the front of the operation, and it was working fine, so im assuming that statement must be true. tomorrow we will be going to look at some of the other IGA projects put in place in the area. its time to go to bed, the mosquitos are killing me. hopefully i have saved enough battery for another post in a couple of days. stay warm back in the states!! i am absolutely sunburned :)