WANTED: A MARSHAL PLAN FOR KANGEMA CONSTITUENCY

‘’By some mysterious happenstance, Kangema may have the highest concentration of billionaires of any constituency in Kenya outside Muthaiga and Parklands.’’

Gitau Warigi,Sunday Nation,February 26,2012.

Growing up in the mountainous hills of Murang’a in the 80’s, my most vivid memories include chasing after tough Chevrolet pickups trucks laden with coffee cherry headed to the local factory. One of my dreams was to own one one day. This was because every little hamlet had several of them, bought mostly during the coffee boom years of the late Seventies. The villages and market centers were abuzz with activities revolving around coffee, and villages lanes were always full of busy people. The coffee benches could as have well been paved with gold.

Fast forward to the current times. Most of the former bustling market centers are poor images of their former selves, with derelict buildings long gone into disrepair. Lanky dazed young men laze about, looking forlornly at the passing newcomers, hoping one of them will toss them a coin for their next high. Despite being hardly out of their youth, their faces are full of bruises earned from many liquor brawls, and thus look like a road map to every dirty shebeen in the area. These sad images are replicated in almost all the shopping centers in the District.

So, when did the rain start beating the people of Kangema, and Murang’a in general? Needless to say, people from the County are famed for their entrepreneurial spirit, especially in the informal sector. It’s an open secret that most of the buildings and business in the older parts of Nairobi, are owned by people from Murang’a.Infact,Nyakamakima,that hub of business in the River Road area, is a small village in Kangema but the name was transported to Nairobi as most of the businesses are owned by people from that area. The region has also produced some of the best entrepreneurs in Kenya, something that Nation journalist Gitau Warigi alluded to in the above lines picked from an article in which he was eulogizing the Hon John Njoroge Michuki, the late illustrious MP for Kangema.

Despite the affluence commanded by people from the Murang’a in the metro, the County lags behind in most of the social-economic indicators. The rural folk only come to enjoy the largesse of their well-endowed kin during Christmas when they invade the rural homes in their intimidating gizmos. Poverty levels are alarmingly high. Youth unemployment and runway alcoholism are some of the major problems affecting the area.

Kangema and the County in general, is a replete with contrasts. While one part of its populace is busy setting new business trends in Nairobi and other towns, the other is living in abject poverty back in the villages. While some feast on dainties, others are dirt poor, living on conditions that may make their lives, to borrow from Thomas Hobbes,’nasty, brutish and short’. Little wonder that the jigger menace is a real problem in the area. While some of the best sons are leading business magnates in the country, others are into organized crime groups like Mungiki which is rampant in the area.So,why does this region suffer this contradictions? Why does it express this Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde personality?

One doesn’t need to be a nuclear physicist to get to the root cause of the problems afflicting this region. For a start,the collapse of the rural economy that was based on coffee and tea farming has been one of the enduring problems.True,coffee farming may not go back to the lucrative coffee boom years but the leaders of the region need to come up with ways of reviving it. Tea may not be doing as bad, but sadly it’s not widespread as coffee to have a large impact in the area’s economy. Farming in the area has been left to aging pensioners who do not have the energy to pursue it productively. This is because most of the youth have migrated to the urban centers to look for greener pastures or worse are too drunk to bother about it.However,if it has returns, the runaway rural to urban migration will be checked.

Murang’a County has also been mentioned in the same breath with rampant alcoholism and high levels of crime. Various efforts steered by the Provincial Administration and the clergy have been made to curtail this with little or no fruits. The people of the region need to address the dysfunctions in the society that produce young men who thirst more for liquor than water. It’s not enough to go around pouring these liquor from every shebeen for tomorrow more will crop up.

Almost have a decade after independence, most of the people here live in abject poverty and the villages are full of people trying to break from the bonds of mass misery. Its a crying shame that some cannot afford the most basic wants, and Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘unholy trinity’ of poverty, ignorance and disease stalks most of the locals. Come every election time, the region is awash with money as the contestants dish freebies to the impoverished locals to sway their voting.

True, flinging a coin to a beggar is a compassionate act but it has never removed beggars from the streets. To end this culture, the rural folk have to be empowered. It’s the system that produces beggars that needs restructuring.The tycoons in from Nairobi won’t achieve much by throwing money around every election time as this perpetuates a cycle of dependence. The rural folk need efforts to help themselves, not freebies. Efforts must be made to tap the regions entrepreneurial spirit even in the rural areas so that jobs can be created for the large hordes of angry unemployed youths roaming the village paths.

Thus, it can be argued that the major problems afflicting Kangema are unemployment, failing rural agriculture, crime and alcoholism and the gaping chasms between the rich and the poor. The society needs a leader who will will galvanize the people of the region around this burning issues of the day. A leader who will not chart some agenda for the constituency not from a posh Nairobi hotel, but involve locals from even the remotest hamlets hidden in the chilly hills of Tutho near Aberdares.

Its only by doing this that Kangema Constituency will come up with its home-grown Marshall Plan to set its development agenda.

Gilbert Mwangi

Freelance Writer