A Year (or Two) in Kenya: Third journey into Pokot

Two Sundays back I returned to East Pokot for the third time. It's beginning to feel a little familiar, and it absolutely blows my mind to write that. East Pokot and its people are about as far from my twenty-two years of experience on this world as possible. To feel fairly comfortable with them is some sort of achievement. Of course, this may simply be a symptom of only being with them for a few hours on a single day every month, but it's still progress of some sort.


Still, as familiar as these people and their fan necklaces and low wooden stools and knife rings may become to me, I hope I am never comfortable with seeing the stragglers pick up loose cabbage leaves from the dirt or scoop up maize flour mixed in equal proportion with dust from the floor because they were the last in line. It did rain a few drops in the afternoon, though. I do hope very much that El Niño brings some respite to this blasted region.


For what it's worth, I was recently assigned to the Foundation's Voices team, the goal of which is to preserve and share the cultures of the tribes we work with. I have yet to be trained, but to start, I began taking portraits of the people waiting their turn for a scoop of maize flour. You can find them sprinkled throughout this post. The deeper I get into the team and its work, the more I hope to share including dances and songs and stories and explanations behind the meaning of particular designs and colors and cuts of clothes, but I hope you like these as a first course. You can find more on my Picasa album.


If you would like to learn more or sponsor any of these projects, scroll to the bottom of this page. Your sponsorship could help us bring another bag or two of maize flour and vitally important medication to some of Kenya's poorest.