Reflecting on My Kenya Tour: A Friend Laid Off

I recently received an email from one of the friends I made during my Kenya tour, informing me that he had recently been laid off from work. This got me thinking of just how far and wide the currently economic crisis originating from the United State could be hitting. According to my, friend, whose name is George, his being laid off from work is as a direct result of the global economic crisis.
Due to the global economic crisis, few people are traveling nowadays – with many having to resort to money that they had saved for things travel and holidays for their subsistence after having been laid off from their respective places of work in the west and the far east. Indeed one of my other friends who tours Kenya every year told me that he wouldn’t be doing so this year as he is not sure of his finances. And mark you, this is not a poor fellow – but his woes are resulting from the fact that the shares he held in various companies have slipped down and are actually still slipping - and he is not sure just how far down they’ll go.
In the other side of the world, George’s lay off puts him in an even more precarious predicament as he is living in a country where he cannot file for unemployment benefits. Indeed, according to a number of people that I met on my Kenya tour and talked to, telling a person who is begging on a Kenyan street to go get a job (as we tell our vagrants in the west) is an insult because getting a job – and any job at that – in these developing countries is usually a very tall order. Meanwhile, all I can do is to pray for George, and perhaps send him a few bucks to shore him up as looks for another opportunity. Life can be tough.