The populations of Nyakach village have been adversely affected by HIV aids scourge. This had been brought about by the fact that during the late 80's and early 90's there was once a road construction company that camped amongst the people here for four consecutive years and the workers in the company did take advantage of the naive character of the local people and infected them with HIV/aids.

The impact of this immorality by then is now being felt in the area about a decade after they had left the area. They did infect the majority of the young women and men at the ages 20-35 yrs old and as a result we have very many homes left vacant due to deaths of the villagers who were infected by then, almost a quarter of the homes in the area have so far been abandoned and most kids have only single parents in most homes. The only less affected by this were the elderly in the area since they were not involved in this immorality.

I know it may sound very weird to anyone reading this but this is the reality down here am from the same village and I have seen all these events unfold in my own eyes. These kids who are now left are vulnerable and needs your support so that they may pursue their goals in life and become independent people of the society.
These elderly grandmas and grandpas have been forced by circumstances to take the sole care of these orphaned kids and they are unable to do this due to their economic instability and hence they need assistance from those who may be willing to do so.
The impact has adversely been felt in most homes in the area either directly or indirectly as the most potential and energetic age sets in the area has been swept by this scourge and the remaining ages groups are the children and the elderly who cannot depend on each other for support. So in most homestead in the village there are fully orphaned of partially orphaned kids who are being taken care of by their grandparents after the death of either both or one parent(s).

I do believe that these kids have not chosen to be in this situation but are due to fate that they found themselves into this and if given hope they will prosper in life but as per now their future lives are blurred. I once talked to the head teacher at one of the local schools and the story is the same, he told me that the ration of orphaned pupils in the school is very worrying as the number is very large and it even out number those with both parents alive. That’s translates to about 50% of the total number of pupils in the school are orphans/vulnerable pupils.

Some of the homes have been abandoned completely due to the fact that aids killed all the parents and the kids had to seek refuge somewhere else either with their relatives or some well wishers and leaving the home abandoned like that.

The economic activity in the area is only peasant farming as the climate is not favorable enough to practice large scale farming. Most of the families in Nyakach survive on either selling firewood in the local market or burning charcoal fro sale. From these sales they hardly get enough money to sustain their families. From estimation nearly 90% of the population here lives below the poverty line that’s they earn less than a dollar daily.

Their only source of raw materials for both charcoal and firewood is Koguta forest, which has been over harvested and now can hardly provide these raw materials anymore.

So therefore to most of the families here their main struggle is how to get food for the family at least to keep them going and therefore they do not have much to offer for the necessity of their kids at school, its kind of that they do not have hope for their kids education which is a very sad scenario in deed These kids have bright future and they should be given a chance to get good and quality education. These kids are vulnerable and I think it’s better if we may join hands to see that they succeed in life. By doing this they will become better people in the society in the future. I do have a dream of seeing Nyakach in future where everyone will be living a good life. And this can only happen if we do give this future generation the hope to live their lives in a better way than what they are currently experiencing here. Let’s do it together.