Kenya’s two divides

Am only hoping that this blog makes sense, causes no trouble and is thought provoking. Officially, there is only one Kenya, but for this blog I will talk about two Kenyas ruled by one government: “The two Divides”.

When you land in Kenya at night and are taken to one of the best hotels the country has to offer with a swimming pool at your disposal, tasting the country’s world-renowned cuisine, and then taken on a tour to the great Safari expeditions, you will not have experienced both sides of Kenya.

In this Kenya, the children’s parents can afford school, the children are not abused, they are well fed, their water is safe for drinking and they receive good medical treatment for their illnesses. Here, the children can afford to go on holiday with their parents and have a roof over their heads in a safe neighborhood where gunshots are only heard in movies.

In the other Kenya, the scene plays out very differently. The children here are malnourished beyond the emergency threshold set by the UNICEF and the World Food Programme. They die of preventable diseases, they are abused or at risk of being abused, they have no roof over their heads, and each day they are exposed to violence and live in neighborhoods where, at times, gunshots punctuate sentences in a conversation. In this second Kenya, your parents rely on the rain to survive, and they’ve been waiting for them to come for a long time.

When you know about the two Kenyas, it’s hard not to be touched by the work that Save the Children does for the children in the poorer part of the divide. Here, the staff save children’s lives every day; what they do for these children is priceless.