NAIROBI – Safari operator Pankaj Shah would usually show tourists around the beauty spots of his native Kenya. Instead, he is leading a volunteer effort to feed thousands of families left penniless, when the new coronavirus devastated the economy.

“An old woman told us that she had not eaten for several days – her sons had stopped her supply because they had no work,” he said, adding rice, flour, legumes and milk cartons for a long time. Walking a line of youngsters packing in.

Kenya reported its first case of coronavirus on 12 March. The schools were closed the following week. Businesses shut down, families left the capital and the casual work that sustained the vast majority of urban Kenyans dried up.

The government offered a tax break – to the poor who help little to pay the tax. The newspapers called for a “total lockdown” and started starving and exorcising the families living in the slums.

“People were getting hungry and angry,” Shah said.

Someone had to act, he decided, and he asked some friends to pitch. A local school closed by the virus offered its campus as its headquarters.

Kenya’s Asian Community – was officially recognized as the country’s 44th tribe three years ago. They brought checks or truckloads of food or vegetables planted for export and are now troubled by the lack of flights. The operation is going daily for three weeks.

Shah’s volunteers, who call themselves Team Pankaj, have sent 24,000 hampers since its inception on 22 March, each of which has been provided with enough food for a family of five for two weeks.

He is asking wealthy Kenyans to donate 4,000 Kenyan shillings each ($ 40) to fund Hampers – about the price of two pizzas and a bottle of wine, he explains.

“I just need half the rich people to take care of themselves,” says impatiently.

His phone calls for help from community leaders, imams, church leaders and heads. Shah tests potential partners with a small distribution – say 100 boxes – and scales, if they handle it well.

Last week they sent two lorry loads of food for a delivery to the Deep Sea slum, where residents presented orange tokens and inked their fingers before putting away boxes and bags of vegetables. Volunteers helped pregnant women and people with infants.

29-year-old Mary Wangui said she was desperate. “You can’t hug a child to sleep when they are hungry,” she said.

Although Shah has never carried out any kind of aid campaign before, he has a guiding spirit: Mother Teresa, whom he says he met three decades ago in Nairobi.

A Roman Catholic nun’s ancient pickup truck ejected a wheel and hit his new Mercedes.

He said the accident brings an unexpected friendship between a “young, wild” businessman and a world-renowned missionary who cares for the poor. He volunteered with her for three months, and adopted a baby girl from an orphanages.

“I think that’s what she would do,” she says after the coronavirus hit. “This is the inspiration of my life.”