We have a safe but exhausting Matatu journey to Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city, where we install ourselves for the first time in the cybercafé in the Megaplaza, which will become our main communication channel for the next weeks. We meet Philip, the future managing director of the orphanage, and like him at first sight.
It takes us a while to brief family and friends, so that we arrive in the village in total darkness, after a long bumpy tuktuk-ride. We are welcomed by Philip’s parents and a group of children, some of them orphans, and we shake many small hands. Philip has prepared a room with a mosquito net (recall this is right next to Lake Victoria, with a real risk of malaria). To take away any worries: we are not infected, and our Kenyan friend Eric who does contract the germ will take a few days to recover to full strength. So we sleep right away, awaiting our first sunrise in the Kenyan countryside.
This photo is part of another project we do en passant. We collect portraits of people around the world with a grimace and local flowers in their ears. It would make an awesome poster. Humanity, unite. You can send your photo to kamielverwer at hotmail.com.