This is what Ron Artest told Ken Berger of Newsday.com about his current Kenyan Experience;
Larry Jones has a community center in the middle of the slums, and a slum meaning, people live in dirt. You walk in their house, the same dirt that's outside is the same dirt that's in their little huts and tents. They have no running water, no electricity, no tissue. Lots of AIDS, lots of disease. When they go to the bathroom, they throw their feces outside so little babies - 1-year-old little babies, 2-year-old babies - are walking in feces. They have no shoes, very dirty, and it smells. We had to make sure we washed our hands afterward because they've got a lot of disease in there.
But all the players, we were picking up the babies. We were really touching them just to let them know that people care about them. And we've got pictures of everything.
Like 10 minutes away is a market, like a Wal-Mart, because they're trying to build up Kenya. So 10 minutes away there's a Wal-Mart, real nice. But when you get back in the slums, it's horrible. And like two blocks away or three blocks away are like really rich people. You know? Really rich people. Big houses. Kermit Washington, he's the one that put all of this together. He's the one who had the famous fight with Rudy Tomjanovich, and he's deeply sorry about that. But he put all this together. He has an AIDS clinic right in the middle of the slums. It's so dangerous. There's like a million people in the slums and they have no running water, no electricity, some of them have no food. If we didn't bring that rice, they didn't know where their next meal was going to come from. Kermit built a classroom for young HIV kids. He's doing a great job giving them medicine.
We picked 10 families to come to the supermarket. So we're in this Wal-Mart area with these people. They smell, they have AIDS, and this was the first time they've ever been to the market - some of them 40, 50 years old - and we took them shopping. We bought them rice. We bought them powdered milk. We bought them concentrated juice so they can dilute it. We bought them tissue. Some of them never had tissue in their life. We bought them tissue, Q-tips, lotion, Vaseline, a lot of sugar, flour so they could cook, and some bread. They were real, real happy. We bought them some clothes. And we also met little babies that their mothers abandoned. They brought them over to Larry Jones' complex in the slums, and some of the babies had broken legs, broken arms, heads damaged. And Larry Jones is just taking care of all of these babies, as many as he can. He's actually going to help me get an orphanage in my name in Kenya. I appreciate that. It's pretty creepy right here.
It was sad. I'm filming everything. I've got everything on film. When people see this film, they're going to be like, "Wow.' You see it on TV, but you really don't believe it. … So I encourage people that have a stability in their income, stability in their house with money … any chance you get to help people in poverty and you have the money to do it, you should. I spent $400 in the market and all we bought was necessities, things they never had. That was the best $400 that I ever spent in my life.
When the sun comes up, the guards come and they have their guns and stuff because we have hippopotamuses right next to us. You know, hippopotamuses kill people. So it was pretty freaky. We had bats in our tent. The guards come and wake you up. They give you wake-up calls, you know, just, "Wake up!" There's no phones or nothing. They escort you around the property.
There's monkeys. Oh, my goodness. Elephants have come around here. Bats, mongoose, it's so crazy. So crazy. Cheetahs and lions are like literally right down the street and they can get in here. It's so crazy like that.
We went over the gate right next to where the crocodiles and the hippopotamuses were, and I almost fell in the damn lake. I was scared for my damn life. In my mind, I was like, "What would have happened if I fell up in there?" So I had to make sure I don't walk too far past that gate.
The good thing about the kids is, when Theo came through he took up the babies and everything. And these babies, you don't know what disease these kids have. But we just were like, yo, we gotta pick up these babies, you know? We gotta touch these kids. And we went over there and we made sure we made contact with them.
I can't save the world. I don't have enough money to do that. But I feel like if I can donate a little money to Larry Jones, I think it'll get in the right hands. I know the impact that I want to see and I know Larry Jones will make it happen.
I've always been a person that gave back to my community from the first day that I got in the NBA, but this makes me want to give more. It makes me want to think a little bit about what I spend on, and it makes me want to help folks and it makes me want to give and just not look forward to anything. Just give, give, give and make sure my family's stable. After that, it's really important that I help.