The road to Chonyi, a town some 30 deceptive kms from Kilifi, is battered and bruised, beaten down by neglect and poor servicing – it will take huge public money and time to fix. Travelling on it is akin to white river rafting; big determined crevices and platoons of repetitive potholes for rapids and waves that shake you till your unsure if you are still going in the same direction.
It’s a dusty 45 minute test of ones ability not to fracture your skull of the side of the matatu.
The unusually lengthy rains has left the Chonyi countryside drenched in a rich, elaborate, wonderfully green veneer. Wise and timeless Baobob trees with their erratic pointy grey branches and thick ashen trunks are slowly replaced by long slender coconut trees with their floppy parasol leaves like carefree, gangly rastas as our journey takes us away from the coastline vista into the rolling interior.
As seamless as the road we ride, the driver changes the music from some hip hop to the subtle sounds of a famous foreign foursome - Westlife.
I take off one of my ear plugs, nudge my colleague in the side.
“These guys are Irish, from where I’m from” I tell her proudly with an affirming nod.
She doesnt hide the fact that this does not impress her. “Yes Colm, you’ve told me that before”. She returns to her own trance and focus ('In a mood'). I go back to listening to my i-pod taking in the mud huts with small hard worked shamba’s (small farms) that splatter the stunning rolling hills and valleys.
It’s 10:30 when we arrive at the Peer Educator re-fresher training course in a public library/ testing centre in a small village 10 minutes from Chonyi Location. SCOPE are training over 180 peer educators in three locations throughout Kilifi Division this week on a range of topics from HIV/AIDS, Counselling and Testing, Drug and Substance Abuse and Gender Equality.
My role, as is always, is to try help some Peer Educators and their support or youth groups with Business or market advice on their activities. I am meeting a few peer educators from Kaloleni District (a further 1 hour journey interior) and another peer educator who wants me to document some of his work with fellow HIV positives in his support group.
Peer-Educators (PE) are selected by village/town chiefs or school principles as worthy candidates to under-go Peer Educator training facilitated by SCOPE through funds from USAID to increase awareness of HIV/AIDS prevention .
The approach is a well thought out successful strategy to achieve higher prevention and awareness of HIV in local communities as well as improving access to services via referrals. .
So, Under a canopy of banana and coconut trees in Chonyi, I discuss with PEs the need to ensure their product – from coconut art to oils and honeys – needs to be of high quality, distinctive and better than the rest. They seem a bit taken a back when I appear to hint to them that creativity may well be enhanced artificially with the aid of booze and drugs. PE it seems are more concerned with poo pooing drugs and alcohol than harnessing (cough) its power.
After that I meet Mrima, the peer educator, who’s story I documented about him helping a female member of his community find out her status and receive arv’s, arranges with me a date in October where I can take photos of him and his support group. He is a nice fella who it seems refuses to smile even at a few of my witty tension breaking gags or (therefore, quite reasonably) I suspect even when challenged to smile under pain of death.
I sit in on a few other PE sessions (ironically and this is no joke, on Drug and Alcohol Abuse – ‘abuse’ being the key word) before departing early at 3. I have to wait on the side of the dirt brown road for about 40 minutes for a matatu back to Kilifi not failing to arouse the attention of the shoeless locals ambling slowly on there way to somewhere vanilla.
When I get back home, I wash off the dirt, it never fails to amaze me how much I collect when travelling to other districts and reflect on an altogether unremarkable day in Kenya. Except of course the fact that I’ve developed a pride in Westlife being Irish! What has Africa done to me? Or is it just Ireland being so far up shit creek that it is a sign of the times that Westlife becomes a beacon of hope for our battered and bruised ‘Chonyi Road’ State.
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