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Village Children

First off, sorry I didn’t follow up right away like I wanted to. Getting back into the swing of things has been more arduous than I thought it would be. That said, and without further ado, the life and infrastructure of Kenya…

From what I saw, it’s rough living in Kenya. There’s very little in terms of societal infrastructure that’s trustworthy, static, or reliable. While a standard of living that many of us would consider pretty basic can be found in the bustling urban areas, they’re usually sparse and really only reserved for the richest of the rich in the country.

For the rest of the tens of millions of residents, water is hard to come by, the average annual income barely breaks $1,000, electricity is unreliable (when available at all), waste management is a burning pile of trash on the side of the road, and the education system is really that in name only. It’s a tough life for most Kenyan families, having to choose if it’s preferable to pay for the uniforms and books for your kids potential education or to use that money to feed your family. More than often, they’re forced to side with daily survival.

In coastal Kenya where I stayed, I came to find that prostitution was a regular way of life and financial survival for many younger residents; not because they want to, but simply because they have to. In much of Europe, that area is regarded as the place people can go to get what they can’t get at home. Upon a quick sampling of the nightlife, seening an older european man with his arm around a 14-year-old girl is sadly a regular occurance.

In most societies, the way to lifting up the standard of living generation to generation is through education, and Kenya offers its residents free public schooling. However, the aforementioned costs of books and uniforms, keeps many of the children at home. If the decision to send the kids to school is made however, the situation isn’t much better. The public school I visited, had teachers that would be in charge of multiple classes of 80+ students – traveling back and forth between each classroom to give a new assignment and move on. This school had over 1,000 students, and gets by on a budget of barely $400 a year. With numbers like these, an education that actually uplifts and makes better citizens out of the next generation is a near impossibility.

Palm Sunday Parade

When it comes to the government officials that are meant to aid in this, local residents will tell you they’re main goal (as with many politicians) is self-preservation – not the well being of the country. My friend, Anthony Mulongo – founder of the orphanage I stayed at, Mudzini Kwetu – puts it frankly: when you deny people adequate education, a public can be easily controlled and manipulated to do whatever you want. The education system in Kenya is an intentional sham and exists to make people think they have access to it, but it’s never funded so much that it might be effective. This keeps the public in line and re-electing the same corrupt leaders over and over.

And the corruption proliferates throughout the government. It’s widely known that you can bribe your way out of any legal trouble you may face, and the jailing system is such that – even if you’re innocent – bribery is the only way you’ll last for very long. Many prisoners die in the first few days of jailing and before any trial comes along. As a result, it’s not unheard of for the police to arrest you sheerly to get money from you. It’s not uncommon for a Kenyan prostitute to persuade a European man to marry them, have them buy a house, wait for their visa to expire, tell the police, and for both the cops and the prostitute to share the resulting bribe money. It’s not uncommon for the cops to then arrest the prostitute they’re in league with just to get even more money. It’s a devastating and twisted system.

So, like I said, I stayed at an orphanage. A truly remarkable one at that, and that’s where the beauty within this dark blog entry will come in. While it’s not a broad sweeping wave of change to all of Kenya, it most certainly is a light in a very dark place, and I can’t wait to share more about it with you. It’s the hope in the depravity that is needed, so check back on the next entry to hear more about Mudzini, it’s mission, and what it’s doing to combat the overall systems of economic and systemic oppression.

This is part two of a four part series. Click a link below to visit another entry:
Part 1: The Masai and the Mara | Part 3: The Girls of Mudzini Kwetu | Part 4: One Home. Many Hopes.