Sukuma wiki is a scrappy little plant in the collard green family, and it usually looks just like this—wiry and half-combed; a mass of leaves perched on a knobby stalk. Its name means “push the week” in Swahili, as it’s a popular culinary choice when one is short on food and long on week.
Several of our KKC schools have seeded gardens with sukuma wiki, cabbage, or potatoes, and as the plants mature, the schools augment lunches with chunks of vegetables....
Continue Reading
It happens at nearly every school. We step from the car with skin veneered in dust, and half the students constellate around us. The brave among them press in as close as breath to hold my hand and twist my hair through their fingers, hair that hangs in a bewildering sweep instead of wisping into proper clouds on one’s head. The shyer kiddos risk furtive glances before skittering off to giggle in the shade.
And nearly every time, at nearly every...
Continue Reading
It was a side trip tacked to the tail of a long, blistering day. We’d been out visiting KKC schools, and I’m sure we looked a fright, sporting grime and sunburn, our hair blown tumbleweed-stiff.
But still the good folks at Oiti Primary welcomed us like dear friends. They’d been writing for months with a candid plea: Please include us in your feeding program. When we finally made it out to their school, they pumped our hands with gusto, radiating nervous...
Continue Reading
The road twisting down from campus to the valley floor cracks me up every time. We braved that bumpy guy again last Friday, a small crew of us riding out with Mark to visit a couple schools, and as our teeth rattled in place Mark joked, “You know, lots of people pay money for seats that shake.”
We arrived at the first school as the kids were washing up for lunch, scrubbing small hands under a ribbon of water poured from...
Continue Reading
The whole school has turned out to see us, kicking up dust as they dance and wave us in. We climb from the car into a river of children with smiles bleached white in the three o’clock sun.
It’s Wednesday, and Todd and I have tagged along with our friend Mark to open a solar-powered computer center at a school smack dab in what Kenyans call The Interior–undeveloped land, mile upon mile of scrub brush and dirt and sheep.
I’ve never known...
Continue Reading