The face of conflict

It's easy to become immune to the doom and gloom in the news if you've got no experience of a place. But the events in Kenya, of late, have really shaken me to my core.

I know these people, or people just like them. I lived with them. Called them my friends. Now they're watching as their country -- long an anchor of stability in the region -- spirals into chaos.

It's heartbreaking.

I remember years ago, while working at CARE during the height of the Somali famine, that many of my colleagues had fond memories of Mogadishu as a jewel of a city. A beautiful port. I hope that this is not what Nairobi will become for me.

My BFF and I spent six months at CARE Kenya, working on a project that still remains one of my proudest accomplishments.

It was a magazine called Pied Crow.

When the AIDS crisis in Africa was still in its infancy, Pied Crow was packaging messages regarding HIV transmission in a language that children could understand and distributing the message to every primary school in Kenya. And it didn't just focus on AIDS. The magazine had entire issues devoted to water and sanitation, sustainable farming techniques, girl's rights -- everything you could possible imagine.

We worked with a team of Kenyan designers, illustrators, and animators. Every one of them was an artist in his or her own right. Brilliant and immensely talented. Plus the project was guided by a team of spirited teachers.

We travelled with them -- deep into the Kenyan bush -- to teach teachers how to use the magazine as part of their lesson plans. In some cases, this little publication was the only resource material teachers had at their disposal. More than once, we witnessed the teachers reverentially removing back issues of Pied Crow from a locked cabinet in the teacher's room.

A few years after we left Kenya, we learned that CIDA had stopped funding Pied Crow.

I never learned what happened to our team. I hope that life has been kind to them. To them -- to Change, Peter, Lucy, Alfred and Ham Kamembo, and others whose names have faded as the years, I send my best wishes to you. Be safe.