The survivor from Kibera.
The journey to the city center is nowadays a very normal thing for Michael, with the thirteen kilometers distance looking like a child’s play. Yet when he wakes up every morning, blows his name and wipes a bead of cold sweat from his stubby face, to prepare for his long trek to the vast sea of people to search for his destiny, his rickety joints tell on the amount of strain he is imposing on them. Life in Kibera, the largest slum in Africa sprawling on the outskirts of Nairobi city, is not easy. When Michael loos back, he realizes that he had little choice over his path in life from a young age. Anyone seeing him now can not tell the wasted brains in his scraggy head, worn out with the strain of carrying cement bags for the Indian Kalasinga in the industrial area.
Before the end of the thirty-eight-year rule of the independence party KANU, getting an education in Kenya was a humongous task that was left to the brightest students and those whose parents could afford it. Most folks, especially in the rural areas, had to contend with the possibility of dropping out of school at any age and level. Michael himself, a grade seven dropout, was not so lucky. Theirs was a polygamous family on the outskirts of Kitale town, his mother the fourth of his father’s five wives. In these parts of the world, polygamy is a beauty for the society, a sign of pride and splendor; though Michael isn’t sure about the glory. His old father had started having sensory conditions and was partially blind, perhaps a result of continuous exposure to the smoke that regularly filled their crowded hut. Yet he always felt that life was so enjoyable, jumping up and down the muddy village paths and playing ajua (a game of pebbles being rotated in holes dug in the ground) with his friends.
When Michael dropped out, he thought of pursuing the same path that most of his peers had taken. His former classmates had gotten married and started their families. He was the last of his group to drop out of his ordinary levels with a year to go. The last cow in the homestead had been sold to see him through high school to no avail. Now even the milk it provided was gone with the mirage of an education. The local member of parliament had promised to help, but no one heard from him for months after making any such promises. No one complained much about his behavior anyway; the norm was to wait for leaders to appear after every five years asking for votes. The funniest man or the one with the deepest pockets would win the contest to get lost for the next five years in the big city of Nairobi.
Hiking a ride on a supply lorry heading for the city, Michael called a halt to life in the countryside and went out searching for his destiny. A dilapidated shackle is his current home that contains his most vital and cheap belongings. In the event he owns anything expensive, he has to visit an acquaintance on the other side of the polluted river to store it, lest someone uses a knife to rip open his house and carry away his belongings. His landlord, Mbugua, is a good man who collects his ten dollars rent diligently and punctually. Fitting into ghetto life was the most challenging part for him. It took him some time to contend with the normalcy of answering his calls of nature in a polythene bag and swinging them into the Nairobi River. Although nowadays it is a bit difficult to obtain polythene bags with the government ban and he is forced to walk to the other end of the slum to answer a simple call of nature.
His small shackle is built under a railway line, which was almost destroyed during the post-election violence of 2008 that hit Kibera hard. The government promises better days with the Chinese government’s ongoing construction of the standard gauge railway. However, Michael already heard the news on the radio of inflation of the construction costs by Kenyan politicians who were arguing over the tender. The line on which his house stands is no longer in use, but he feels the vibrations every Sunday when he is sleeping late. Sundays are generally resting days with most shops that employ short hands, having been locked down. He takes this time to replenish his energy readying himself for the work ahead of him the following day. It is usually a welcome reprieve from the dust that is slowly taking a toll on him. Most of his friends have stopped working their subsequent attacks of pneumonia or severe coughs. Safety is always the last of everyone’s thoughts in the race to fill their stomachs and pay their house rent in the shanties of Kibera and other slums in the city like Mathare, Kawangware, Mukuru, Korogocho, and Huruma.
Michael makes between three to five dollars every day, although he can make up to eight dollars on a good day. On such days, he passes at the local drinking den for a few rounds of the cheap liquor that has been banned by the government. However, selling is not a problem for the brewing women who bribe the police with as little as a dollar for protection. Severe crackdown only happens when someone is blinded by the concoctions that stand in place of alcohol. The law enforcement officers understand that women who brew alcohol use the money to school their children, so they seldom interfere. He only hopes that more children might go to school by supporting the chang’aa (illegal liquor) business. The odds are always tight, but he is hopeful for others like the ladies who have to stand half-naked in the Nairobi cold along Koinange street every night, waiting for men who come to buy sex. As for his fate, Michael had called an end to it, hoping to hustle a day at a time.