Kenya is sinking under the weight of poverty

Kenya goes to the polls next year and players in the political game are all over selling their so-called “agenda” to the electorate.

Each one of them is trying to outdo their opponent in making promises of progress to the voters.

From now until the elections are held next year, political aspirants will shout themselves hoarse about the projects they will initiate in their respective constituencies if they are elected.

What these aspiring leaders need to know is that the greatest burden that Kenyans carry today is poverty. Sort that ‘little’ problem and Kenya is on her way to greatness.

The question of poverty is the subject of a few short stories in a recently published anthology of poetry and prose titled Fifth Draft (Lesleigh, 2015). The poems and short stories in the collection address a myriad of issues that reflect the state of the Kenyan society today but I choose to specifically recommend a reading of two short stories that lucidly paint the reality of poverty in Kenya.

Mwangi Gituro’s A Mother’s Anguish tells the story of a woman, Wa-Juni, struggling to raise her six children in a Nairobi slum.

Her husband is an irredeemable drunk who frequently assaults her, verbally and physically, for not bearing him a son.

Wa-Juni’s enduring question is: what did he own that could be inherited? Her husband drinks all day and only returns home to demand food — and a son. Tired of the violence, Wa-Juni poisons her husband.

She reasons that his exit would mean one less mouth to feed and a semblance of peace in her life despite the biting poverty. The story paints the all too familiar situation that afflicts many Kenyan families especially in the less affluent areas. The slum families have to survive harsh conditions and parents have to toil endlessly to feed and educate their children.

Women such as Wa-Juni and her mother sell illicit liquor to fend for their families and this trade not only exposes them and their daughters to possible abuse by drunk men but it also sets them on a collision course with the police.

The state of housing is pathetic and most of the time they have to sell the liquor from their houses. As a teenager herself, Wa-Juni dropped out of school after getting pregnant, a common narrative among teenage girls from poor families.

She procured an abortion, started taking drugs with her boyfriend, and was forced to get married at a young age because she got pregnant again.

The high rates of unemployment force many young people into vice — crime, drugs, violence, illicit sex — because they are looking for a meaning in their lives.

The sense of hopelessness that characterises Wa-Juni’s life as a teenager and later as a mother can only be resolved if she is lifted out of the poverty that she lives in.

The most striking thing about this story is not its reflection of the effects of poverty as we know them but its focus on poverty as a very dehumanising experience.

FUNERAL COMMITTEE

Poverty has the ability to detract from our humanity in a most profound manner.

For instance, after Wa-Juni’s husband dies, her neighbours see the funeral arrangement meetings as a harvest time. The narrator explains that it is not unheard of for people to raise money at such meetings and disappear with it.

Wa-Juni’s neighbours compete in their mourning hoping that whoever wails the loudest will get the chance to head the funeral “committee” because it is only in such instances that slum dwellers get to handle amounts of money that they have never seen before. The writer is satirical of poverty which reduces human beings to clowns who rejoice at death for the opportunity it offers them to just see some money.

Poverty is so destructive to the human soul that after Wa-Juni’s neighbours have collected a substantial amount of money, she lies to them that her husband’s family has taken and buried the body without her knowledge. She is sure that the City Council will know what to do with the body; after all not a single relative from her husband’s family has come to condole with her. In the meantime, she reasons, she could use the money to give her daughters a better life even if it is just for a short time.

She and her daughters had hoped that the money raised to plan for the funeral would lift them from the throes of poverty but she soon realises that it is neither enough to feed her children nor expand her changaa business.

It is a very disturbing thought that one would kill their spouse hoping that they can raise money to deliver them from their poverty but that is the kind of iniquity that poverty brings.

Kenyan news abounds with reports of domestic violence and suicides, often as a result of poverty. Some parents choose to kill themselves and their children when they realise that they cannot provide for them.

Poverty creates a sense of hopelessness in individuals and when they get to this point there is no helping them. This is the route that Wa-Juni chooses; she sets herself and her children on fire to escape the cruelty of poverty. This dehumanising nature of poverty is also addressed in Mwende Ngao’s Toilet Paper Thief. The main character, Koki, is a young woman working in Nairobi.

Unfortunately, her employer is often late with her salary and this makes it very difficult for Koki to pay her bills. She has to dodge her landlord because she has not paid rent for three months, she has no food or bus fare, and her electricity supply is disconnected.

Koki cannot easily quit her job because with the high levels of unemployment in country one cannot tell when they will get another job — even an unpaid one.

Chastisises the church

Poverty leads to humiliation as seen in Koki who has to keep borrowing money from friends, hiding from her creditors, and doing demeaning jobs for others so that they can lend her money. Besides, she has to constantly pray that the landlord does not lock her house. The writer chastises the church which has, ironically, become a place of fleecing instead of helping the poor.

Koki’s friend is convinced that the “holy” oil that she keeps buying from the “pastor-prophet-bishop-doctor” will one day offer a way out of her joblessness and poverty.

Ngao’s concern in this story is how poverty pushes people to do unimaginable things. Young girls such as Koki, just like Wa-Juni in A Mother’s Anguish, are often lured into relationships with strangers as they seek better lives. Koki is so desperate that when a man she barely knows offers her a lift home and a meal, she does not think twice about going to the man’s house.

One of the things she is most grateful for in that house is the opportunity to use a decent toilet. That is how low poverty makes us sink. In her miserable state, she has no qualms about stealing two rolls of toilet paper — yes, toilet paper — from the man’s bathroom.

These stories clearly paint the reality of poverty in Kenya today. They demonstrate how decent human beings can turn into monsters or engage in debasing ventures as they seek ways out of poverty.

As the ruling class and aspiring leaders strategise about getting elective posts, let those posts not be just about amassing power and wealth but instead focus on ways of delivering Kenyans from the jaws of poverty.

Kenyans are not interested in leading grandiose livestyles and all they need is the assurance of feeding, clothing, educating and affording medical care for their children.

All they need is a chance to restore the humanity that poverty has so mercilessly stolen from them.

The writer teaches Literature at the University of Nairobi. jennifer.muchiri@uonbi.ac.ke