Like I said in the previous posting, today was the first time I was really struck hard by the contrast between the vast, verdant beauty of the area around the Maai Mahiu Internally Displaced Persons camps, and the destitute lives people are living there. This part of the Great Rift Valley is lush and green, ringed by the kind of awe-inspiring mountain ranges I see when I travel through the American Northwest. In fact, the area reminds me a lot of the landscape around Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
But there are no rustically charming vacation homes here, or trendy cowboy bars, or golf courses or nouveau cuisine restauraunts with moose heads mounted on the walls. And I wonder about the thousands of displaced Kenyans living in squalor and degradation in white UNHCR tents. They're still waiting for the government to help them relocate, after languishing in tents a year and a half after post-election violence. Can they see the beauty from their point of view, from behind the tent flaps?
Check out more photos from my Facebook Album, "We Are Not Tourists" - IDP POV at :
No comments:
Post a Comment