Our ONE Campus Challenge students are on the ground in Kenya. Tomas Moreno reports back:

Sorry for not blogging for a day, our time in Kenya has been very hectic. But amongst all of this chaos of going from site to site there has been a lot of hope expressed by the stories of the people we have been able to talk to.

More than this, they have shared their innovative ways of approaching the problems they face (such as the astonishing MPESA program). But that is not what we looked at the past two days. We researched the local health of the Kisumu area, which boasts the country’s highest rates of HIV/AIDS with a whopping 14%, and how they work to stem this and a myriad of other issues. What I focused on was the economic issues facing those with infectious diseases in and around Kisumu.

The most inspiring story was at Kagua CBO (Community Based Organization). Here, people that have HIV/AIDS live together in a community, supporting each other as well as finding hope and strength in the fact that they aren’t alone. But, the most inspiring part of this was when we were able to go visit some of the families in their homes. Here, we met Phieria Opende Agola.

Phieria is 65 (at least, she could not remember her exact birth date), and lives with her grandson and granddaughter who both have HIV/AIDS. She takes care of them because her son and daughter-in-law died from HIV/AIDS almost 10 years ago. Since then, she has devoted her life to her grandchildren and soon moved next to her other son and daughter-in-law (who was 21 with four children; she had her first child at the age of 11). They care for seven children between the two of them, but mostly take care of them separately.

This means that she must make the two-hour journey to Lake Victoria to get water for her family. She usually takes a 21-L jug that none of us could carry for more than a few seconds standing still, much less walking up and down hills.

Maureen, the other daughter-in-law, had a dream of opening up a business so she could work her way out of poverty but would need 3000 KSH (just over US$39). And she cannot save the money because currently they live off of a paltry 500 KSH (US$6.) a month. Put in context, four of us spent 680 KSH that morning for seconds of our breakfast…

The thought of living off of that for a month, while caring for two children, is crippling even at my age. To think of doing that at 65 is unimaginable. But Phieria did say that she found hope in Kagua and her grandchildren both had big dreams of being an attorney and a teacher. And I find so much hope in their hope; the fact that they, despite massive economic barriers, even compared to people in similar situations have these dreams and plans is truly inspiring.

-Tomas Moreno