By ThePlu correspondent
Half a century later, ageing Ibrahim Muhumed still ekes out a living in the most deplorable condition; it is furious poverty that is eating into the entrails of this embattled and marginalized villager.
Every other day, he watches sunrise over poverty-devastated Wajir town while sitting on a cracked floor on the threshold of one of the shops, just a few steps away from his donkey cart.
Since 1984, Mr. Muhumed relied on the cart to earn a living through loading goods and products from warehouses to shops.
Both his worrying past and unpredictable future lies a troubled world, a cosmos of biting and boring poverty that had made him one of the most suffering Kenyans even as Nairobi celebrates 53 years of independence.
His daily struggle to survive portrays how life has become tough for many like him, who had lived from hand to mouth for ages.
His daily needs are always unmet, as he tries to hold his head above the harsh living conditions that he has been braving over the years.
“I pay my family bills in dribs and drabs and it is like life is still hard to come by” says the listless villager. “We are just surviving by chance”
These days he walks with unsteady gaits treading lightly, his eyes looking downwardly to calculate where to put his foot as the donkey-cart waddles behind him in the dust-infested roads.
“My strength is sapping these years, I cannot work like I used to do some years back because I am very old, but hunger dictates my way to live” says the grizzly bearded father of two.
Despite his age, Mr. Muhumed leaves nothing to chance and he always puts his best foot forward to make an average of Sh.150 a day.
“I try my best to earn a living, but it seems poverty rages on and on year after year” he explains.
The fuming frustration and agony made him to take the rough with the smooth just to overcome the devastating destitution in his vulnerable family.
“The economic stress is just too much, for me I cannot rest a day even when I am ageing and ailing, by all means I have to wake up early everyday” he notes
His unbounded ambition of staying alive and kicking is what that moves him out to tussle for survival in a region where prevalent hunger is biting like a boozing buff udder.
Few people have some type of sidelines and some few options of survival; the ones who can sell knick-knacks, cooking tea along the roads are trying their best in this region where marginalization is too much to bare.”
Although devolution has seen some form of a success, this part of the world still remains harsh like a desolate red desert.
The region’s story of marginalization has become monotonous with the hopes of the overwhelming majority waning. Marginalization still stands as it was 53 years ago.
Even as the country’s urban growth and prosperity is beginning to spread to the countryside, the overwhelming majority in remote hamlets continue living on the edge.
And there is still a long way to go given that more and more people in Northeasteern, mostly labourers, peasants and drought-hit herders live on less than $1 a day.
“My Worry is that, my economic condition remains stagnant despite my struggle, there is no big difference in the early 1980’s and now, for me I am finding life harder by the day” notes Mr. Muhumed
For people like Mr. Muhumed, there seems no light at the end of the tunnel, and they will probably remain poorer.
“There is no way out of the woods for now” the old man says as he tries to pull a seemingly heavy bag of sugar into his breaking back.
It is 53 years of marginalization and still counting………………….
