Spare a thought - Two

As you turn left at the end of the dual carriage-way near Uplands, and descend towards the Rift Valley on the newly-tarmacked old Nakuru road, as smooth as black silk, you could be excused for not noticing a turn-off to your right, opposite the tidy and trim Ngenia High School compound. A sign points you to St Charles Lwanga parish, my base for a visit to Kamirithu. Yet the small township of Kamirithu has its own story, and fame. In the 1980s, a people's theatre was set up by the best-known son of the community, Ngugi wa Thiongo, which the government of the time promptly closed down after the staging of some anti-establishment plays; and replaced it with an under-utilized polytechnic on the same site, which the local people have rebuffed in protest. The youth still cling onto hopes that Ngugi will help solve their problems of poverty and unemployment; the older generation are more sceptical, and judge more by deeds than by words.

The scenic panorama is breath-taking. The dry lands of Ngong, Suswa and Longonot in the distance, while Kamirithu is built on verdant slopes, surrounded by clumps of forest. The colonial government must have also thought the location attractive, as well as ideal for an Emergency "village", because that is how it originated in 1954. I was speaking with John wa Mwithukia, now in his mid-60s, who grew up there. The more settled Kikuyu exchanged sheep for the land, which belonged to the Ndorobo, and it was taken over by the authorities during the Emergency and became "home" for about 600 people from the surrounding area. John described the mud huts plastered with white chalk from the nearby Manguo swamp, as if he could still picture them: the watch-tower, where law-breakers would spend the night, stripped of all their clothing, in the Limuru cold; the moat and the wooden spikes. In the early 1960s the land was demarcated into plots and some sold to the landless - along with the title deed-, while some of the best land went to the former Home Guards. In 1963 the going price was 150/- for a 105 feet by 105 feet plot. John himself has a little success story: from the Emergency village he made his way through some private City centre schools to get a Division I in 1965 and, after a brief spell of teaching, walked into a job at Barclays Bank. With us was Mrs Chege, the headmistress of a provincial girls high school, who lives in Kamirithu. Why, I asked her, since the people around here are known to be hard-working and ingenious, and have initiative, do we see so many young and middle-aged men standing around idle? Fewer father figures, was her assessment. Fathers give up and despair when they cannot get a job. At most some will get up early and drive their wife in the pick-up to the market, and go back to bed. "Men cannot sell vegetables," John added. "Why?" I prodded. "Because they are too proud, chauvinists," she replied. John chuckled. The youth from a few slightly better-off families (less than 10% have a vehicle) are assured of a meal today AND tomorrow, and so are less motivated to look for work, even though they have completed secondary education.

Besides a handful of professionals, everyone else works on his plot of land while a few others are employed in the tea and flower estates close by or in Naivasha, where they earn between 3,000/- and 4,000/- a month, from which they have to pay house rent, medical expenses, food, and bring up their families.

Most young people in Kamirithu come from a less privileged background. Joseph Mbuthia, who will soon be 30, dropped out of school in Standard 6 and has tried his hand on building sites and selling charcoal, and is even a Grade 3 mechanic, but was discouraged from pursuing this further owing to police harassment. He is now working on a shamba rented for several young men by the parish priest where his future is more secure. He would like to complete his education but cannot afford to, and besides feels he is now too old. George Njoroge is 23 years old and recently married. He managed to get to the first term of Form 2 in a local secondary school, but could not afford to go ahead. He runs a kiosk by the dusty roadside as you climb up into the township. Before that he did kibarua jobs: digging, building sites, etc. He pays 500/- house rent and 1,400/- rent for the kiosk. The prosperity of his business is at the mercy of the surrounding economy. If people can afford a cup of tea, a mandazi or a chapati or plate of beans, he and his family will have supper  that night. His dream is to train to repair mobile phones, for which he needs 6,000/-, an impossible sum for a person living on such a narrow tight-rope.

Along that same road the car dodges between donkey carts pulling drums of water from boreholes, to sell to the people who don't have piped water, who are the majority. Each drumful will sell at about 60/-, of which 20/- goes to the owner of the borehole, 20/- to the owner of the donkey, and 20/- remains with the water-carrier. These are young people who cannot afford not to work if they are to remain straight and not give way to the easy solution of a life of crime. These have made the right choice: honest but poor, but often hungry and all the time wishing for a break, so they can bring up their families with some decency since they are ready to make many sacrifices for them.

Quietly but effectively working in the background, but central to the development of many Kamirithu youth, is a cheerful, energetic young parish-priest, Fr Sospeter, from Kiambu, who prefers to work with the poor, and who never stops thinking of how he can better the lot of the young people around him whose energies and talents often seem to be going to waste.

Poverty, despair, discontent, under-employment, unemployment, hunger and frustration display the same signs everywhere: malnourishment, drawn and sometimes sullen faces, second-hand or third-hand clothing and, once you engage in conversation, a deep under-current of disappointment, even resentment, mitigated by much patience, long-suffering, and trust in God. The only advantages Kamirithu has over Kibera and Mukuru are that the air is clean and fresh, not fetid and repugnant; the human waste goes into the ground instead of running along it; and the crime rate is lower.

Fortunately, many young men in the village have chosen not to be enslaved in a factory or on a plantation, but to be their own masters - at least to some extent-, and drag themselves up the hard way like their fathers and grand-fathers. But times now are different and more difficult, the opportunities are more scarce and less lucrative. One wonders how far they will go and how many will stick it out. One thing is as clear and luminous as the December noonday sun in Kamirithu: unless the private and more so the public sectors create a more transparent and corruption-free climate for investment, and training - and job growth - the future of our young people is not rosy, but rather a tangle of thorns.

As one thoughtful young man from the village said" "We are sitting on a time bomb". Not offering young people employment or training facilities they can afford is a grave fault on the part of those responsible and should be tackled with the sense of responsibility and promptness it deserves.