Food, Water, and Faith During COVID-19: An Interview with Alloys Nyakundi
In this series, Abby Rampone interviews CTA members about their responses to the COVID-19 crisis. 2019 Re/Generator Alloys Nyakundi is a co-founder of Emmah’s Garden, a nonprofit that helps the people of Nyandoche Ibere in rural western Kenya stay healthy by providing filters for water purification. Listen to Alloys discuss Emmah’s Garden, new challenges presented by the pandemic, women’s empowerment, Catholic faith, the leadership of young people, and more.
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Transcript
Alloys: My name is Alloys Nyakundi. I’m from Kenya, though I live now in the United States. I moved to the United States in 2017 and I came to do my Master’s at Loyola University in New Orleans in pastoral studies. My focus was on youth and young adult ministry and I graduated last year May, that’s 2019.
Abby: So tell us about what you did after you graduated, tell us about this organization that you’ve been working with and what you were doing before the coronavirus crisis hit.
Alloys: Thank you, that’s a very good question. After graduating, initially I was working with the AMECEA. AMACEA just means an association of the Catholic bishops of eastern Africa [Association of Member Episcopal Conferences in Eastern Africa]. When I talk about eastern Africa, I’m talking about nine countries. So I was working with the youth ministry and my emphasis was helping young people start young people’s small Christian communities. And it’s still the ministry I still do even now when I’m in the United States. I also co-founded a nonprofit called Emmah’s Garden, which is based here in the United States but it’s helping people in my village in Kenya. So that’s where I’m focusing a lot of my energy at this time.
Abby: And so what did your work with Emmah’s Garden look like before the pandemic, what kinds of support were you able to offer?
Alloys: Yeah, before the pandemic, what I can say for sure is that we used to have people supporting Emmah’s Garden in terms of financial support because you understand, the nonprofits depend on the goodwill of people donating to the nonprofit. So we were able to raise a sufficient amount at least to help people with water and food. That was working well and things changed a little bit when the pandemic came in.
Abby: So what kinds of things changed? What kinds of challenges did you face as an organization, and what kinds of problems did you have to address that people in your village were facing?
Alloys: Yeah, that’s a very good question. What happened, you know, the focus shifted and people started focusing on the pandemic, that’s the COVID-19. Everybody was talking about it. And so people now drew back, the people who were supporting Emmah’s Garden. Some of them were laid off and some lost their jobs because for example in New Orleans, some of my friends here in New Orleans were working in the hospitality industry and so most of the hotels were closed and tourists were not coming in. It was very hard and it’s still hard for us to get the financial support from some of our friends who are laid off from work. So that’s kind of slowed down our work in Kenya because the money we are getting from these people went down and the nonprofit is all about the goodwill of people to donate, so that’s one of the main challenges we are facing. But we tried to cope with the pandemic and to try to still like not losing hope because the people we are helping have also been affected by the pandemic.
Abby: How have the people back home been affected by the pandemic?
Alloys: Yeah, so what I’ll say, I’ll try to answer that question by giving a comparison between the United States and Africa. In the United States, for example, I saw the government was very supportive of its citizens. For example, people can apply for unemployment, those people who have lost their jobs, and they get some money from the government. At the same time, there was a stimulus package which people were receiving because they were not able to go to work and they were not able to get a paycheck, which is very different from my village or the people in Kenya, whereby people- I can call it hand to mouth. People are working every day and at the end of the day, the money they get, they use it to buy food. So this, in Africa, we didn’t have anything like a stimulus check, we didn’t have applying for unemployment, we don’t have such benefits, so it’s challenging for people in my village. With the lockdown, some of them were not able to go to work. So that’s why it’s very important and why I felt it was very important as much as the pandemic was affecting us, all of us in the world, but still that I focus because I understand people in this village. I know what they’re going through. So that’s why I was like still focusing to help them, because of the challenge they’re facing.
Abby: Yeah, it sounds like you’re in a position to help them because you understand the context both here and back there.
Alloys: That’s very true.
Abby: So why is the organization called Emmah’s Garden? Is there a garden?
Alloys: Ah, that’s a good question. I mean, it makes me to think a lot about Emmah’s Garden. So it’s called Emmah’s Garden because I personally believe in the empowerment of women. And coming from the African community or culture, our women have their space and men have their space. And usually, men are regarded more than women. So coming from that kind of culture, Emmah, she’s a beautiful young woman and she has been doing a lot of good work in the village. And before the pandemic, she was helping young women to get sanitary towels, which is very hard for many young girls in my village to get because of poverty and some young women have to stay away from school for some time in the month when they are in their periods. So Emmah was doing all this kind of work, helping these young women. And so when the people who co-founded this nonprofit here in the United States were trying to look for the name, I felt like it’s good to appreciate the efforts of this young woman who was doing this work in Africa. So we formed Emmah’s Garden purposefully to support the efforts of this young woman in the village, because I believe in the empowerment of women. So that’s why we got the name Emmah’s Garden.
And the gardens, when we talk about the gardens, it’s the efforts of Emmah’s Garden as a nonprofit because we are trying to help people get access to clean water, and through accessing clean water they can be able to have so many gardens in the village because people in my village depend on water from rain, which usually comes once in a while and it sometimes takes a long time for it to come. People in my village totally depend on rain to do farming. And sometimes when we don’t have rain, it means people cannot be able to farm. And if people don’t go to farm, it means they don’t have food. So helping the village with water, it means people can be able to have gardens all throughout the year and they can grow crops and at the end of the day get food. Because the majority of the people are farmers.
When the pandemic came, our focus kind of shifted, you know, we are trying to readjust to fit into what is happening in the contemporary society. In the contemporary society, people have been affected by the pandemic. And some of them cannot be able to go to work. So we came in to help people with food, that’s a short-term work we are doing, not our purpose. That’s our emphasis as Emmah’s Garden, to help people have food, but through providing them with water. But now we started buying them food because we realized that most of them cannot be able to get their basic needs. I know that most of the people live for less than a dollar in a day. So there are some families that have like five children and without going to work, it means the parents are suffering, the children are suffering… so that’s why we came in as Emmah’s Garden and say that like, now we have this pandemic with us, how can we help these people? This became an immediate need, and so that’s when we decided to help them with food.
But there are so many other things because like medical services, many people are not able to access medical services, and so as Emmah’s Garden we have been thinking, we have not been able to do that. But we have been thinking about how we can help people access Medicare, because if I can again give a comparison between Kenya and the United States, the majority of the people in the United States are able to afford the health insurance and so whenever someone is sick, they walk into the hospital. But in Kenya, not everybody has insurance. Few people, the “haves” are the ones who have this medical insurance, but most people in my village, they cannot be able to access medical insurance. So as Emmah’s Garden we are thinking about providing clean water because they are some diseases like typhoid which can be avoided if people can drink clean water.
Abby: So I’d love to hear a little bit about how your Catholic faith and identity shape your response to both the coronavirus crisis and the ongoing crises that people in your communities are facing.
Alloys: That’s a very good question and being a Catholic, I feel it’s not just identifying myself as a Catholic. That’s why I’ve been able to work with different Catholic organizations. I’m currently working with the Catholic Church Reform International. I’m also working with Call To Action. I’m also working with youth and young adults in Africa. And why I do this is because I believe just like the disciples who were gathered and sent by Jesus Christ, as Christians, we are being gathered and also we have been sent out for a purpose, for a mission. We are not just Christians by name. That’s why this work means a lot to me as a Catholic.
For example, if I talk about Call To Action, we are trying to advocate for equal rights for all people in the world, men, women, LGBTQ people, all those people are going to have a society where we all have human dignity. That same experience I’ve had in the United States, it has shaped me, it has shaped my faith in that I’m thinking now about people in my village. Because I got an opportunity growing in that small village, I was able to go through all those challenges, at the end of the day go all the way to university. So that changed my way of understand or looking at life. Not from one mirror but from different perspectives in that I see, how can I contribute to the wellbeing of all people, once you realize that we are all called to love another. And loving one another means uplifting those who are low and helping other people in the society to make sure at least they have a smile. So that gives me, when I wake up in the morning to pray, or when I work with these different organizations within and outside the Catholic Church, I’m also thinking, how can I help these people from my village? Because part of being a disciple, as I said, is being gathered, and I have been gathered to be a Catholic. And so being sent is going out to reach out to these people, at least I give back to the community by helping other people – who have never got an opportunity like me to get that opportunity to go to school, to get access to food – at least make them smile. So that’s how my Catholic faith has shaped me and I really appreciate my Catholic identity. But not just- I don’t want to identify myself as just a Catholic. I always want to identify myself through the deeds I’m doing to other people.
Abby: Your response to that made me think- so I know that you do a lot of work with young people, so I wonder if you have thoughts about how young Catholics particularly, what their responsibilities are and how they can transform the Church, because I know that you work with communities of young adults.
Alloys: Yeah, I appreciate your question and working with young people- first, it’s happy to work with young people because it makes you feel young. After finishing my college, I realized still I’m working with high school students. So when I’m with this group of young people, they give me new energy every day. So it’s so exciting to work with young people.
But having said that, I want to say that people- in my working experience, people are more concerned about justice. I’ve never seen such a group like young people, they’re really focused on justice. And you find, for example here in the United States for example, we have racism in the United States. Africa also we have our own challenges. We have tribalism in Africa. But I have African American friends, I have white folks who are my friends, and when I meet all these groups of people, they’re more concerned. When I was looking on my Facebook page like when we had the murder of George Floyd, most of my friends, my white friends who are the ones who are advocating seriously on the justice for George Floyd. That shaped my thinking when I saw my white friends being in the forefront, fighting for justice. So working with young people gives me a lot of hope because I see in this generation leaders who are going to come out of these young people as people who bring change, as people who try to fight for justice in this world. People who are filled with compassion, people who are filled with empathy because when I see young children, for example, two year olds, you see white children playing with black children and they don’t look at one another in terms of skin, I start asking myself, where does these differences come from where you are looking at yourself as white and the other person is looking at himself or herself in terms of being black? So it gives me a lot of hope.
Even in the Catholic Church I’m always advocating that whenever we have leadership positions, let’s have young people on board. Because if you don’t give young people an opportunity to be leaders, how will you be able to know the challenges the young people are going through? So that’s why I’m always pushing for many young people to get leadership opportunities, to be in the round table wherever decisions are being made, because there’s a new energy that these young people bring. And just to finish with that question, just imagine a 90-year-old trying to lead a group of young people who are twenty years old. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but there will be a big disconnection between these two groups of people. A 90-year-old doesn’t understand the experiences of the 20-year-old. So that’s why a 20-year-old will easily understand what another 20-year-old is going through. So it’s easy for them to bond compared to a 90-year-old and a 20-year-old. Thank you.
