Our team and members of the community support group
We have been traveling around the Nyanza province in western Kenya. Starting from Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria, we journey inward and find amazing people doing amazing work. It seems like each day we venture down an uncharted dirt road and find ourselves in the middle of a community support group or with an outstanding individual changing their community.
Personally, today I was worn out, I admit it. I was less enthusiastic than I usually am. But in those moments when you think you’ve seen it all is when something extra ordinary happens.
Today we met Jemina Odo, a self proclaimed ambassador of Hope and the overseer of 4 support groups. She is an energetic and powerful individual fully living up to her title. Her groups deal with children orphaned from HIV/AIDS, widows, and women living positive. She has turned her land into a community farm, each group working the land and benefiting from the fruits of their labor either directly or through selling the produce in the marketplace. An adamant supporter of clean water and the PUR system, she has been a role model for the many women who are involved in her groups along with the orphans she supports who number over 100.
Her commitment to PUR is clear, as is her commitment to fostering an open environment that educates on the importance of clean water as well as HIV/AIDS, nutrition, and the empowerment of women. She has seen people come back from the brink, suffering from malnutrition and general poor health as she herself has done.
It was a pleasure to spend the day with this lady as she lead us around beaming, explaining the nuances of the different crops she grows and preaching the benefits that they have within the groups.
As she leapt across a stream that divides her farmland she was quick to point out the others who had helped her reach her goal and was insistent that she and her groups would continue to grow and educate the community. This commitment to others was evident once again as she waded back across the stream to help those who could not make it to the other side on their own, literally carrying some across the stream.
Truly an amazing experience with an amazing person!
-Mike