Two Kenyans fight to save their homes after being caught in the collateral damage of well-meaning, large-scale aid projects in “Good Fortune.” The documentary debuts on PBS’ POV tonight at 10 p.m. ET and is available online through Oct. 12.
In the Kibera section of Nairobi, home to as many as 1 million people, Silva Adhiambo faces the destruction of her home and midwifery business when it falls in the path of the United Nation’s UN-HABITAT “slum-upgrading” project.
Farmer and school teacher Jackson Omondi looks across his family’s fertile wetlands in the rural countryside as it is being flooded by an American investor, intent on building a massive rice farm to relieve poverty.
The film explores how good intentions can go terribly wrong, especially when members of the affected communities do not share ownership in the change-making process.
“We are against the Americans, seriously, because they are dealing with us like animals, not human beings,” Omondi says in Good Fortune.
Replay a live chat with filmmakers Landon Van Soest and Jeremy Levine of Transient Pictures, and development expert Lawrence MacDonald, at “Ask the Filmmakers.”
Van Soest also provides an update on Omondi and Adhiambo, including photos from his trip to Kenya last month.
Related not-to-miss short: Troubled Water
For another perspective on how humanitarian efforts can fall apart when intended beneficiaries are not also partners, watch Amy Costello’s short, “Troubled Water,” from PBS’ Frontline World, about the effectiveness of the PlayPump in southern Africa.
