Copyright, 2006: Ali Torkzadeh 

When you buy a rose in the streets of Paris or London, you might be buying the product of poor, HIV-positive Kenyan men and women laboring for unbelievably low wages on corporate farms that decimate the environment and do next to nothing about the AIDS crisis that is killing their workers.

 The town of Naivasha, two hours northeast of Nairobi, sits on the highway to one of Kenya’s major national parks. Toyota vans ferrying tourists pass by all day. The highway is also the corridor to the neighboring Uganda, which explains why the region has been particularly hit hard by the AIDS crisis. Forced by unimaginable poverty, women sell themselves to the truck drivers, as they do throughout Africa. A local Catholic charity reports thousands of AIDS cases with little to no access to the lifesaving antiretroviral drugs; the local cemetery is full to the point that some of the bones of the deceased are surfacing to the top.

 Naivasha is also home to gigantic flower farms that dot the landscape around Lake Naivasha. The farms, owned by multinational corporations, traditionally are blind to the environmental consequences of the farms. The lake came to the brink of complete death a few years ago due to chemical runoffs before the corporations where forced to change their practices.

 The way they deal with their employees is similarly neglectful, people I interviewed told me. There is no incentive for the employers to care because poverty provides them an overabundance of day laborers. Typically, people wait outside the fences hoping to be picked for that day. Those lucky enough to have a permanent position do not receive any healthcare benefits, much less care for their HIV condition. They hide their ailment as long as they can because as soon as they are identified as HIV-positive, they will find themselves outside the fence.

 I find the story particularly poignant: white tourists and white-owned corporations using and enjoying this great land, while AIDS and poverty continue to ravage the locals. When I went back to Europe, it was impossible to see flowers for sale and not think of the irony. Beautiful flowers wrought on the backs of the poor and helpless.

Tod: Let me know if this story interests you and I will upload my pics from Naivasha.