BACK TO ROOTS, BACK TO REALITY.

To be African and to be born in an urban centre is a dilemma. When Kenya voted in her new constitution, many anticipated the experience of going to shagz or ushago would be easier. One would not have to feed the whole village by buying bales of flour, rice and sugar then contend with whining about milk not bought! One would not kiss mere luxuries like tapped water, TV, mobile networks and electricity goodbye. One would not have to expensively host their countless relatives when they came to the big cities or towns to make a life for themselves. Trust a Kenyan politician to burst one’s bubble as they take their sweet time to never transit into leadership.

 Unfortunately the monkeys in the forest get richer while devolution takes longer to trickle to the grassroots, depending on the philanthropy of the leaders. If you come from an agricultural place, perhaps you return to town with the bales others take back to the dry-lands. Your budget is sorted but one will put in labour and early rousing to do what these farming Romans do. Your problems  might include requests for fish where marrow is harvested or wages for the harvesters when the farmers are yet to be paid for sold produce. When the bonuses arrive while you are at home, you might be shocked to come across requests for money. That is because the errant father or uncle has temporarily run off to have himself a good time regardless of the family needs he has to cater for.

If you come from the arid areas, diet will take a new formula.1-1-1, triple meal combo that rules in the town will change to 1-0-1 if you are not badly off. A heavy breakfast takes one through lunch, the latter might be included if you went to the farm and need energy for the afternoon chores. Otherwise, hold on until supper where you will indulge, forget that “supper like a pauper” nonsense. 0-0-1 is a harsh reality for many, our pride and nonchalant leaders will wish this was blotted out from any headlines. AID organisations will use it to push for school-feeding programs or community enterprise funding to make it 0-1-1 before it turns to life-enriching schemes for the corrupt officials. One common plate of the staple ugali ensures you are done early. This is a lesson town children learn the hard way by going to bed with an empty stomach because while they were playing, people were eating. Children from shagz are neither wheedled into eating nor do they have the luxury of TV distractions. In all fairness, this is replicated in slums or urban areas too, minus the flying toilets and suffusing insecurity. Light from the kerosene lamp costs more by the minute. For this reason, earliest to bed and earliest to rise means earliest to school or the farm. It gets easier with solar lighting options and mobile technology, much more tolerable for pampered city babes.

Back to my shattered hopes,this Christmas I return home as an employed single lady.People perceive me as a softhearted  daughter of the land who cannot say NO! I am the go-to girl for airtime or anything.I am already dreading the ride back home....