New Beginnings

I stopped off in Nairobi on my way to Mombasa so that I could meet a good friend there - a woman I have known since this whole adventure started in the summer of 2003. Over the last few years I have written numerous stories about my friend and her incredible courage.

She asked to meet up so that she would learn how to make a website for a new initiative she has started. Its a small church which reaches out to people in the slum areas and gets them to work together and support one another.

We met at the hotel I was staying in which was situated in, lets just say, the 'less glamorous' part of town. As usual I had not done my research on the location of the hotel being attracted to its very generous one night stay rate! I really need to establish an income that stops me making mistakes like this..

Anyway, Mary grabbed my hand and led me through the crowds to a small cyber-cafe where we could work on building a simple website.

It seemed the most obvious thing to do was to start a blog. Within a few minutes she had grasped the principles and promised me that she would practice over the last few weeks configuring it to her needs. It was lovely to see her face light up when we typed in her blogname and she could see the beginnings of her site. As soon as she gives me permission I'll release the URL....

She had heard of Facebook and asked me how it worked and could I setup an account for her. I opened up my own account to show her how it worked and then got a shock.

I was looking at the page of feeds of essentially useless information with comments like how hungover people were, what filmstar they looked like, how much someone had spent on some new toy etc and I imagined how Mary would react to being bombarded with that kind of 'developed world' drivel every time she logged on.

Here is a woman who is desperately trying to get herself out of poverty, making sure her children go to good schools, setting up a church to support people like herself who are on the margins of society and all she needs is a chance to have a go. Her job is to feed 1000 children a day in a slum school for which she earns about 75euros a month. She works day in day out with every spare moment she has to try and further herself in life and make the immediate world around her a better place.

In the 'developed world' we really have no idea what its like to struggle and by extension I think we are creating a very indulgent, selfish model of society that us becoming more and more inward looking and blind to whats really beautiful in being human.

To be honest, I felt ashamed but setup a Facebook account for her nonetheless. I do honestly wonder is it the right thing to do but perhaps her connection her to the virtual world here can help us restore our 'site'....