Maungu

The nights in Maungu are filled with the practiced laughter of prostitutes and the drunken silence of the truckers passing through. It is a profound emptiness of the human spirit that only the scent of desperation can produce.

Even so, beyond the poverty, beyond the alcohol, children are playing ping pong after school in tournaments, women who were once walking the streets are making jewelry with pride, strangers from distant countries are leading an effort to fill the rusty landscape once again with foliage, and one mother dreams the type of dream that allows her sisters to work knowing that their children are safe in a nursery.

I met a Brit from a neighboring town whose research was the connection between home made pombe (or alcohol) and women in Kenya, and she did the most authentic thing an anthropologist could do, she went to work at one of the pubs. She described the silent addiction, the need that leads to women turning tricks, the violence, and the lack of hope. Even as I watched her curly blonde hair swirl through the wind in our open Tuk Tuk, I couldn't help but admire the sense of determination she had in getting the story of hidden out in the open.

Louis, the volunteer who we were shadowing, represents the best of the Peace Corps, in that he works with those who dare to strive to smile. Even in his last two weeks, he still makes eco charcoal out in the open on a jiko, roasting peanuts afterwards to hand out to the kids, he may have not been born in Maungu, but he certainly earned his Kenyan namesake "Mwademe", which means "Born in the day". He is part of the solution here, in a town where water is so little you have to travel two villages over just to purchase some, and I hope to emulate that. In a place where water is scarce, hope is not.