Who would want to be poor in Kenya? We treat the poor no better than chewing-gum stuck to our shoes.
If you are poor in Kenya, you must never fall seriously ill. If you do, your descent into hell will begin. Assuming you have a local clinic, you will in all likelihood be given the shoddiest treatment there. Misdiagnoses are legion; but because the victims are poor, no investigation is ever conducted. If you are sent to hospital, you will not be allowed near a bed unless a sizeable sum is deposited. Seriously injured people often go from hospital to hospital pleading for treatment. Many die in the process.
If you are poor and in hospital, your kith and kin will be treated like animals when they come to visit you. They will be kept waiting at the gate for hours, even though you are in a serious condition inside and might be in your final hours. Watchmen take a particular delight in tormenting the poor, even though they are poor themselves.
If you are poor and you die in hospital, your grieving children might not even be allowed to see your body until the bill has been settled. Your children will be faced with the twin traumas of coping with the shock of your departure, and raising the money to clear your final bill (an amount beyond their collective reach). If your bereaved children gather the guts to ask the doctor why you died, they will very likely be shouted at and thrown out. Because you were poor.
If you are poor in Kenya, don’t expect the state to be your friend. Someone I know recently spent a night in jail. His ‘crime’? He happened to be crossing the road when the Head of State’s majestic convoy was passing, and he didn’t make way in time. Because he was poor, he was tossed into a cell without any further questions. It took the intervention of his employer to stop him from languishing in gaol for days.
If you are poor in Kenya, you are the easy target of every policeman. You will be frisked on any pretext, and more often than not relieved of your mobile phone and what little money you have in your pocket. If you are poor in Kenya, you don’t want to be in your slum when the police come looking for criminals. Because your life has no value, it will be easily extinguished in the melee. No questions will be asked later.
If you are poor in Kenya and have a job, you will spend every penny you earn putting your children through school. You will have outstanding loans hanging over your head all of your life. Despite this your children are unlikely to prosper, because they will have only received the most rudimentary education which will not allow them to rise out of poverty. They will inherit your poverty, your loans and your outstanding hospital bill.
If you are poor in Kenya, you don’t want to be a young female. Your poverty will sufficient license for every lust-filled male to view you as easy game. Your body will become the playground of others.
If you are poor in Kenya, you have no protection: not against criminals, not against the state, not against daily insults and derision.
If you are reasonably well-off in Kenya you may never experience these things. You will generally be treated with respect. Doctors will take the time and trouble to talk to you. Watchmen will never block your entrance. Policemen will be wary of incurring your wrath. Teachers will give personal attention to your child. You will lead a life of dignity, like every human being should.
Poverty is Problem Number One in Kenya. We can lose ourselves in all the fancy discourse we like; it doesn’t go away. The chattering classes can analyse the likely political scenarios in December; they can discuss how many tourists are coming to Kenya this year; they can have forthright debates on Tony Blair’s legacy, or whether Nicolas Sarkozy is a good French president for Africa, or whatever else preoccupies them. If they lifted their noses from their glasses and closed their mouths for a moment, they would see that they are a tiny minority, an affluent little island of fun surrounded by a heaving, seething sea of abject misery.
There is no easy answer to this problem. A certain amount of poverty is inevitable, after all. But to strip a large part of the population of all esteem is inhuman and unforgivable. Those with means, education and know-how are painting silly castles in the air, when those around them eat off garbage sites.
The causes of poverty are complex; its solutions have many dimensions. Better health, better education, better opportunities are pre-requisites. A thoughtful approach to economic participation is necessary. This requires big ideas and innovative schemes. But more concern, more awareness, more sensitivity is within each person’s grasp. A poor person is just you with less money. Step one is to realise this.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for your important article; what you are saying is true. I am a Project Coordinator running a non-profit-making organization and we have seen those challenges in the different communities at grassroots level. God bless you to continue to share good articles with Kenyans. I am based in Kitale, Kenya.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have the curse of the middle class; my appreciation of poverty is at best academic. I know the numbers and I hear the stories but I cannot pretend to relate. Having said that, I don’t believe a dignified life is a commodity to be bought and sold and for that reason a preserve of only those who can afford it. It is a right, one we should demand for ourselves and for each other this coming election.
One way of doing this is by asking our representatives to account for our taxes, a proportion of which have been coming back to us as CDF. Do my children have better access to health facilities and to schools and are the roads in my area a little more passable for me to get my tea and milk to the factory? I believe that’s what the funds were meant for.
Not to be simplistic, but it’s these little steps that measure our progress towards a better quality of life and better life chances for our children.
Thank you for your inspiring articles. Keep up the good work. God bless you.
Nkatha:
Thanks for the eloquent and honest contribution. Indeed, let us use this election to demand better. But let us also, each one of us, make ourselves more aware of the plight of the masses and their daily tribulations. There is a great deal of help each one of us can give out – in skills, in time, in attention – if only we can wake up to doing it. Poverty does not always need grand schemes: sometimes a thousand smaller efforts can yield better results.
Poverty is a relative figure/state that measures one’s prosperity relative to others. Therefore, before colonization we were not for the most part poor. The effects of colonization and the system it left behind is what caused the differences (read poverty). Access to education, finances and health changed because the traditional methods to deal and access them were altered to other forms that required resources that we did not have. It’s not just the fiscal resources we don’t have to deal with the changed systems but the cultural resources to navigate them.
I am not advocating for a return to traditional methods of health and education. What I am calling for is a re-assessment of all our education, health and financial systems. We have to weigh their relevance and practicability to our situation given our lack of “resources”. An example of this is the micro-finance movement that turned banking on its head by questioning the basic foundation of what it’s built on.
I would like for us to particularly focus on the role of the government in poverty reduction.
Thanks for the best observation made by you. Many of the affluent and influential have tended to assume that there is no problem of such magnitude. None of us has tried to get the straight truth to them. We need to make them realise that Kenyans are watching as they are pretending not to see nor hear, especially this special year to State House. Sunny! Your work deserves reward. I can not afford it. May God reward you abundantly.
Having experienced both sides of the divide, I relate to what you have highlighted in your article and the way you have expressed your views is profound. Living in poverty is like committing a crime that makes everyone else the accuser, investigator, prosecutor, judge and executioner. Alleviation of poverty should be one of Kenya’s priorities as it will free Kenya of the many ills that assail us.
Sammy:
You are right to point out the condescension and pomposity with which we address the poor. As though having less money is a measure of intrinsic worth. Those who have actually committed the crimes that cause other people’s poverty are often found passing harsh judgment on a poor person.
Your writings are very cardinal in human development.
Keep it up.