Current climate – quick action to combat Covid-19 in western Kenya
As Covid-19 took hold globally, the Nasio Trust was concerned that their communities' rural location and living circumstances put them at great risk.
For one thing, “social distancing is incredibly hard when nine people spanning three or four generations often occupy a single mud hut.”
What’s more, “there are none of the financial safeguards for people in lockdown equivalent to those in developed countries.Quite simply, if you and your family want to eat in Kenya, you need to go out and work. And work, in the main, is manual industry that cannot be undertaken from home.”
In addition, “many households have little or no access to transmitted media”. This means that “lack of access to information becomes the largest threat to people’s wellbeing.The Kenyan authorities are imposing severe penalties for breaking lockdown, in some cases on people who didn’t even know they were locked down.”
If these challenges weren’t enough, the area also suffered a natural disaster. Extensive flooding struck at the height of lock-down.