TURKANA DIARY 3 - A walk through the village

Girl in the village

Next to the mission, there are two villages where a few thousand people live on a semi-permanent basis. Their houses are huts made with reeds or straw, or made with iron sheets, or a combination of the two. There are many more villages scattered around the vast area that makes up the Todonyang parish. It takes hours to drive across the parish and most people walk for a full day, or even days, to go from one village to another, stopping along the way wherever they can find shelter.

After our arrival at Todonyang, we took a walk around the village, and it was a roller coaster of emotions. I had seen videos of tribal villages before, but now there I was, walking through one of them. I was touched by the extreme poverty that I was seeing. The houses are small, circular and, when you look inside, there is nothing in it. Often only a couple of cooking pots and a mat. Nothing more. They are so small that not even two people can lay down inside. In fact, people sleep outside on a mat. Also, there is no kitchen. They cook outside on wooden fires, and eat outside, using a mug or a plate, if they have it. And there is no toilet. Some people use the public toilets that the mission have built for them. Others just go to the bushes.

Of course, there is no water. People go to the nearby lake to wash themselves, and they are not bothered by the crocodiles that live in there. Clearly, there is no drinking water and that's why children and women take turns at fetching the water at the nearest borehole with round yellow barrels. Food is scarce. Most families own and farm animals, mainly goats, or cows for those more fortunate, and the main source of food is traditionally goat's milk mixed with goat's blood, which is taken from the animals without harming them. People eat once a day if they are lucky; and if there is no food, they keep going and carry on.

I was surrounded by a sight of extreme poverty, which was very painful to see. However, people were joyful, they smiled and waved at us. They were welcoming and there was no sense of feeling threatened at all. They celebrated our visit with kindness and joy. Meeting the children was an amazing experience. There were many of them and they all ran around us, laughing and smiling. They wanted us to hold their hand and were proud of being with us. The children have nothing to play with, little food to eat, they walk barefoot and are dressed in old and dirty clothes. And yet, they looked happy and thrilled to see us. They gave us the most wonderful smiles. I realised that their expectation from life is so low and simple that, whenever something different happens, they embrace it with wonder and joy. But more than that, they embrace life with joy despite having nothing, or perhaps because of that.

As I was walking through the village, I thought that I was seeing the most extreme poverty possible. Life could not be more basic than that. But I was wrong. Over the next few days, I visited other villages in Turkana, even more remote and, almost impossible to believe, less developed.

LINKS

To sponsor a Turkana child, please visit: Children Sponsorship Programme

To contribute to Manlio's trip crowdfunding, please visit: Manlio for Turkana

To support New Ways, see: Fundraising - New Ways

Read all the Turkana Diary stories here: www.indcatholicnews.com/search/TURKANA%20DIARY