This CNN Hero upcycles old computers to open new worlds for young Kenyans
Kenyans have to fight fire with fire. Some time ago, I was told about this little community in Kenya called Lake Macologo, located in the Rift Valley area of East Africa.
Lake Macologo is an isolated village of just over 40 families in a small area of the Rift Valley that sits between the hills of Mt Kilimanjaro and the flat plains to the south.
This place is so isolated from the rest of the world that not many people knew about it at first. They only heard about it from the old woman of the community who told me that they were the last on earth, and that they were now living in ‘one of the last houses on earth.’
This community was founded by the British in the mid 1930’s and the people still live in the same style and with very little regard for modern life. The women make traditional cloths, the men drive buses around the area transporting tourists to the nearby tourist attractions, the children go to school and the men go out hunting for animals in the surrounding bush.
If you visit this place, you’ll find not one single car, not one single shopping mall, not one single restaurant, not even one single hotel or even a hotel annexe. There are only these houses and only these people.
The only time there is electricity is on festival days, for cooking and for lighting the shrine. The only radio is here in the one house where there is one working radio, and there is no TV or Internet or telephone here either, despite the fact that there is no cell-phone tower in the area. This is truly isolation.
Kenya is a developing country and is home to some of the poorest people on the planet. Even those who live in the wealthier suburbs of Nairobi know that people here work hard for just enough
