explore
Giving
Hope in
Africa
Local writer goes to Kenya to
learn, comes back with a new
sense of purpose
BY ROBYN DAVIS SEKULA
COURTESY PHOTOS
16
EXTOL • OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017
I am sitting in a quiet room in the home of
Philister, a farmer in far Western Kenya. She lives
on a piece of sweeping land under the bluest
skies I’ve ever seen. The only sounds I can hear
are chickens clucking, the wind rustling tall corn,
birds singing and the conversation we’re having
with a resilient farmer in a dim house.
It is quiet here, but it is not peaceful. Not for
me, anyway. That’s because here in Kenya, I feel
the weight of poverty in a way I never have before
– and it will change me.
But I don’t know that yet.
What I’m feeling here today in Philister’s packed
mud home is my first pangs of understanding
that Africa is both gloriously beautiful, sacred
and stirring – but it is accompanied by crushing
poverty. Philister has land – plenty – to grow the
crops she needs to feed her family. But she doesn’t
yet have the knowledge she needs to grow the right
kinds of crops or to have enough left over to sell.
Philister has an additional burden: she is HIV
positive. Most days, she skips meals so that her
children can eat at the end of the day. She takes
her HIV medication on schedule; the government
gives it to her for free. But the doctor is hours away,
and her only way to get there is to walk. She can’t
even afford to ride on the back of someone else’s
motorbike, which is a common, inexpensive way
for people to get where they need to go.
It might cost a quarter or 50 cents. She can’t
afford that.
When your choice is eat or ride, you choose
eat. Every time.
When your choice is to feed your kids or feed
yourself, you choose your kids. Every time.
And this is the great pain of Africa – or at least
this part of Kenya. It isn’t that people don’t have
electricity, or the stuff that we Americans have.
I thought that’s what would be sad, the contrast
between the ridiculous abundance of stuff in my
home and the sparsity of their lives.
But no. That’s not what’s sad.
Instead, what is sad is that they don’t have