Kenya Diary

We have been on the road for almost eight hours, but I hardly feel the long gruelling hours. Perhaps it is the Kenyan blue sky where the clouds are unusually defined or the Kenyan landscape that is almost surreal. Everything seems to be more colorful in this part of the world… you easily forget most of its population is living on less than a dollar a day.

I’m traveling with two roles on my belt…as a journalist and as a spokesperson for WorldVision.

It’s the first time I’ve seen WorldVision’s work outside of the Philippines and just how they serve the poorest of the poor. Today, Dr. Hector Jalipa, who is WorldVision’s Aids Prevention head for the whole continent of Africa, is taking us to Lambwe, a rural town in Kenya where there is no electricity, no water…and one school.

I’m very proud to be with Dr. Jalipa, not only because he chose to follow God’s calling and live in countries where strife, famine and death are commonplace, but moreso, that he is a Filipino.

We reach Lambwe after a very long and bumpy off road trek. I can’t describe the excitement I feel as over a hundred grade school boys and girls welcome me.

Kenyan kids–and I guess all African children–have such sparkling eyes and extremely big smiles. Their pearly white teeth literally glisten under the sun. It’s amusing how they welcome me as "the white woman."

The "white woman" I say, is from the Philippines–a country they will most likely never visit or see, but know of in the person of Dr. Hector Jalipa.

Dr. Jalipa is a doctor by profession, but lives his life in Kenya as a teacher. I was struck by how he spoke about AIDS and sex to these gradeschoolers not inside the classroom but under a big old tree in the field.

"How do you acquire AIDS?" he asks. "Is it from the tree….from the monkey…or is it from sex….sex with infected persons?" The children don’t seem fazed, shocked or surprised by such brazen honesty from their teacher.

And it’s not surprising, knowing what these children are fighting against. One is an age old cultural practice called "wife inheritance" where a sibling or a friend inherits the widow of a dead brother.

Another practice is "wife cleansing," where the widow has sex with her dead husband supposedly to cleanse her soul. And lastly, because of extreme poverty, young girls are forced into day-to-day prostitution for as low as one dollar or even less than that.

This is what WorldVision does in this part of the world. It’s a multi-pronged approach. Almost all the children in this rural school in Lambwe are WorldVision scholars. WorldVision gives them the opportunity to be in school and stay in school and learn about their bodies and self-worth, and in the process, help prevent the spread of AIDS.

Without WorldVision, they would be working in the fields, be forced into prostitution and consequently either acquire AIDS, spread AIDS or eventually die of AIDS.

As I listen to Dr. Jalipa speak to these Kenyans, I realize they are no different from most of the children walking the streets in Metro Manila or working the fields in the Visayas and Mindanao. For children to grow to become their best selves, they need to be given the opportunity and the access to become just that–their best.

I consider myself privileged not only to be able to tell their story, but that my own spirit has been filled seeing hope and transformation in a place where otherwise, there would be no hope.