Food for Life

Our weekend was very relaxed; we spent most of our time "training" for our upcoming ascent of Mt. Kenya (playing soccer, swimming, and tossing a frisbee around the compound). We had Sunday lunch with some old family friends from the Miller's days in the Philippines who conveniently have a cute 16-year-old daughter (Camille) who goes to Ben's school. Apparently we piqued the interest of a few of her friends when we dropped Ben off on the first day, and we've already scheduled a dinner-date for this Wednesday with Camille and some girl named Jess. Lucky them.

Today was our first real encounter with rural poverty. Ben's principal advised us to volunteer with the Hari Krishna Temple "Food for Life" program that goes into different poor areas to give away food each day, including Nairobi's worst slums. Ignoring the religious affiliation of the program, it seemed like an excellent opportunity. We arrived early, wandered around the nearby market, and eventually found our way into the temple.  The truck was late, so we had a nice long conversation with a devout Hari Krishna follower about the principles of his Sanskrit religion. He was very agreeable and easy to talk to despite his proselytizing and occasional awkward contradictions. As soon as the truck arrived, we loaded about 100 kg of rice and 50 kg of lentil goop and departed for a very poor, semi-rural district about 20km north of the city. 

We stopped by at a small orphanage to drop off some food and got a quick tour of their meager facilities (hole-in-the-ground toilets).  We continued on to a small elementary school where we were greeted by ecstatic kids swarming the truck. We enjoyed rock star status as soon as the doors opened. These kids were hungry, and we had food.  Being Mzungus (Swahili for "whitey") definitely added to our allure as well.  We immediately set up a table and the kids formed long lines with their empty plates and tuppers. Some kids came up to us with as little as a plastic bag for us to put their rice in, and some didn't even have that. The woman Alex was spooning rice with said that we were probably the first white people some of these kids had ever seen.  

Anything that resembled a line quickly disintegrated into a chaotic scramble as the food began to run out.  We didn't have enough for the seemingly endless hungry mouths, but we remarkably managed to feed between 1500 and 1600 kids. After handing out the food, we went around with the camera and took some pictures.  Needless to say, the kids absolutely ate it up. After countless high fives and fist pounds, we said our final goodbyes and headed back. We stopped at the house of our Hari Krishna follower friend (who's name we can't quite recall) to drop off some sugar and pick up his broken bike, and we got to see his small concrete abode. Will had been engaged in a draw-out existential conversation about life and the Hari Krishna religion, and he generously gave us a book on the religion's founder. The gift obviously meant a lot - he obviously didn't have much money and Will graciously accepted.  

Along the way Alex had been snapping pictures out of the truck window, but didn't realize that this wasn't always appreciated.  Eventually a construction worker showed his distaste by hurling a rock in the direction of the truck.  Luckily we were pretty far away, but he definitely got his message across.  It's always hard to predict who will like the attention of rich Westerners with a fancy camera and who won't, and we might want to err on the conservative side next time. All-in-all it was a very eye-opening day and we had a memorable experience helping to feed Africa's hungry youths.