St. Elizabeth of Hungary Parish, Nyadorera

St. Elizabeth of Hungary Parish lies in Siaya County, in the Archdiocese of Kisumu, near Lake Victoria and not far from the Ugandan border. Its people are a blend of Luo and Abaluhya. It is one of the poorest territories the Delegation serves.

The community arrived in December 2021. The parish was inaugurated on 20 September 2022, after an all-night vigil and a dawn pilgrimage on foot from the mother parish of St. Lawrence Uradi — a gesture of Luo inculturation: as a family accompanies a son to his new home, so the mother parish walked her daughter to hers. The following day, 46 infants were baptised.

Three chapels form the parish: the Parish Centre, St. Simon Peter Mahero and St. Christine Sumba. The community numbers four religious.

The Academy was founded in 2013 and began under a tree, in Lunyu village, with 45 students and three teachers. It has grown to around 280 students.

The B.U.I.L.D. project — Building Up Infrastructure for Learning and Development — is now renewing it, and in the right order: sanitation first, with septic works funded by Caritas Italiana, then classrooms, then a feeding programme. Dignity begins with a decent latrine.

Coordinated by Fr. Carlos Alejandro Ruiz, the farm is a genuine agricultural enterprise: it works Congregation land and rented plots, employs local people, and supplies markets — including the women who buy at the farm gate and resell along the roads.

In August 2024, sixty farmers were certified after a three-month training. Friends in Chile and Spain and the Embassy of Slovakia have supported the work.

The farm is also an argument. Many young people here survive by harvesting sand from the riverbeds — exhausting, poorly paid work that traps whoever begins it. The farm offers another road.

The parish chose to celebrate the Founder by doing what he did. For one day, more than eight hundred people received free services: food, medical care, legal and psychological counsel, haircuts, clothing and confessions.

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