Back & Miserable

I am honestly grieved to come back to Nairobi. Within just one week of being in Isiolo I came to appreciate the people, the place and most of all the peace.


It was pretty fascinating. Because within one week I was hit on by more men than I have ever been hit on in my life. Other than having my ego stroked. The trip itself opened my eyes to the amount of work that needs to be done.

I have a huge responsibility to you reading and most of all the rest of this country to open their eyes of the reality of the plight and reforms that need to take place. Being in Nairobi is a fallacy of what life really is like in this country.

I am not down playing the struggles of those unemployed or living in the slums of Nairobi. But let me tell you something, unless you have lived in remote areas with access to nothing but bush and wildlife you have no clue of what struggling to survive is.

I met such a huge number of illiterate people in one place; it was shocking. I am amazed by anyone who has grown up in North Eastern Kenya and has made something of themselves. Beating the odds in the way they did is amazing. I am not patronizing, I ma merely sharing an observation.

In some cases especially in my rural home, most people don’t make it through school for lack of fee. Then there is not being able to make it through school because well, there are no schools. Or being in a society that barely has a clue of the importance of an education.

These are people who are in a society where parents, grandparents and great grand parents did not go to school. They don’t know the benefits of it; so rallying your children to go to school is rare.

They pride themselves in owning vast numbers of livestock. There is nothing wrong with that. But with limited education; trade and benefits of trade becomes limited. They are a people stuck in a cycle of both deliberate and circumstantial poverty. Deliberate because there are limited number of schools, and circumstantial because of generational illiteracy.

I am writing a series of stories on what the reality is in North Eastern Kenya which I will be sharing with you all. I am not writing them for you to begin to feel more helpless as a Kenyan. And neither am I writing this for the sake of you to simply pray and wish it away. I am putting it out there so you can be part of the solution.

If you want to begin trading in Camel milk, they need your expertise and business savvy ways. Help them. You want to build more schools, knock yourself out. You want to meet the people and get to understand them better and help them better their situation the better.

I just want you to begin to appreciate the fact that people out there are worse off than you are. It’s time you helped out and made this country a level playing field for everyone. And it doesn’t require money all the time. A simple conversation, a nod of acknowledgment, or sharing your expertise even teaching the alphabet in a school is enough.

And word out to all the Kenyan MPs I am heading your way, someone needs to keep you all accountable. Because no one deserves to live in a mansion, when the people who employed you to help them live in a bush with nothing to eat, or water to drink.