COVID: Indian Origin Safari Operator Feeds 24,000 Kenyan Families

This man’s meeting with Mother Teresa changed him.

Pankaj Shah feeds 24,000 families in Kenya

(Photo: Screenshot/Twitter)

While most of us don’t know how to help those around us as we’re locked inside our homes during the novel coronavirus pandemic, Kenyan Safari operator has plans, and he’s executing them. Pankaj Shah, a man of Indian origin in Kenya, has delivered over 24,000 food packages, enough to feed a family of five to last two weeks. Pankaj Shah has become the hero in times of desperation for thousands of Kenyans and deserves all the praise he can get. After all, keeping one's sanity is hard enough in these testing times, and to have someone go out of their way to help so many strangers is truly admirable.

Kenya reported its first case of the deadly coronavirus on 12 March, and a week later, schools and businesses were shut, leaving many locked in their homes, hungry. In a Reuters report, Pankaj says “One old woman told us she hadn’t eaten for days - her sons had stopped supplying her because they have no work.”

Realising that something needed to be done, Pankaj Shah asked a few of his friends to pitch in and help. They found a local school that had been shut during the pandemic and was willing to let them use its premises for operations of food packaging. The Asian community in Kenya, recognised as its 44th tribe, got to work and brought truckloads of food which had to be exported but couldn’t because of lack of flights, and other useful things to be handed around. Now, they’ve been working on delivery of food for over three weeks daily, and have fed 24,000 families.

Pankaj wants the Kenyan rich families to donate 40$ to keep the operations going, and needs “half the rich” to care about the donations. Pankaj Shah finds his spirit for community service from his idol Mother Teresa whom he says he met decades ago in Nairobi. He says her pickup truck and his Mercedes had gotten into an accident, which bloomed into a friendship. Pankaj says he volunteered with her for three months and even adopted a baby girl from one of her orphanages - now that’s an inspiring story!

With inputs from Reuters.