Poverty is the process of dying a little each day

The monthly budget of Naiyanoi who is single mother to 8 children is less than 300 shillings. To Naiyanoi poverty is a process of dying a little each day as more and more pressure is brought to bear on her frail body and tortured soul.

By Michael ole Tiampati

A shaft of light illuminates the dark interior of Naiyanoi Mure’s Maasai hut from a crack in the sun-baked dung-roof. Crouched beside the two stones forming the fireplace, scruffy Naiyanoi is busy preparing porridge for her 8 children, the only meal for the day unless, according to the 32 year old Naiyanoi, “a miracle happens”. Seven of her children dressed in tattered sheets hardly can take their eyes away from the steaming black pot.

Outside in the cold April morning, 13 year old Montet, Naiyanoi’s eldest son, whistles as his thin fingers squeeze the udder of a scrawny goat managing to get just a few droplets of milk into a tin cup, to add to the porridge as the young one of the goat bleats incessantly at its mother’s side.

Across the ridge, in Narok district’s Mau range, a sleek pick-up truck pulls up an immaculate driveway of a princely stone mansion. Facing the eastern skyline, the house’s glass windows reflect the rays of the morning sun as it commands the scene on William Ole Solitei’s 500-acre ranch. As he emerges from the driver’s seat, three girls and two well-nourished boys dressed in trendy clothes run towards him and greet him with a bow.

William Ole Solitei has just returned from Nkorkorri, about 100 kilometers away to inspect his 3 tractors preparing a 1,500-acre wheat ranch belonging to some “big farmer”. As the children file past their father with their beautiful mother in tow, the eldest girl pet named “Queen” by William, asks in crisp English, “Shall I get ready to go back to school now that you are finally home?” One hardly misses the contrast of such refined language at the heart of what Ole Solitei calls, “the middle of nowhere”.

“Queen” is a third year student at some high cost private university in Nairobi. The rest of the family, William candidly reveals in the characteristic Maasai style, “are in boarding school where the principal is European” and the annual school fees are about 2,000 US dollars. Affluence exudes from every corner of this household.

Back at Naiyanoi’s humble aboard; she calls out to Montet to bring the milk before the porridge gets ready. On asking her whether she has taken advantage of the free primary education, she retorts, “education might be free, but the nearest school is 12 kilometers away and there’s school uniform to buy for a person who can hardly afford a single meal for her children”. She adds that in the current state of affairs in Kenya, there are those that are meant to access education with ease and “everything good in life” and those, “condemned to virtual hardship”. Stabbing upwards in the air with the cooking stick, she observes at length with a husky and pained voice, “When you are condemned to this curse of a life, without anything to provide for your family’s basic needs like other normal families, the thought of school becomes a luxury you cannot afford thinking of”.

William Ole Solitei’s charmed life

In total contrast, Marianne, -Ole Solitei’s wife, is a well-educated and groomed lady. She is a staunch advocate for education for all children, “Any parent who cares enough for the future of the children must invest heavily in their education”, she asserts. In the spacious and tastefully furnished living room with log fire crackling in the fireplace, one does not help but admire the abundant class and comfort that Solitei’s family enjoys.

“I owe much of my current success to a good education,” William affirms, as he turns to look fondly if proudly at his children playing in an adjacent room. His father, he narrates, was an illiterate Maasai herder whose early contact with missionaries and politicians triggered in him a desire to educate all his children.

Says Marianne, “The late Solitei Ole Mpoe was what you would aptly call a well to do man by Maasai standards”. She adds that the old man had several thousand acres of land, hundreds heads of cattle and more than 1,000 goats and sheep. William interjects, “he ensured that he used his influence and connections to his children’s academic advantage”. William opines that today, terming Ole Mpoe’s family as very successful is more of an understatement as they are, “almost super successful by local standards”.

Naiyanoi Mure’s Struggle Story

About 750 meters away behind a huge acacia tree, Naiyanoi Mure’s life is what would best be described as a tragedy. Married off at the tender age of 14 to a 75-year-old man, she depicts herself as a “pawn in a game conceived by two elderly cronies”. She confides that her husband was her father’s best friend and she was “given away” to further consolidate the relationship.

Though her father was by any standards well to do, hailing from a big family with pedigree, he did very little to assist her after the death of her husband 11 years ago. As the youngest and favorite wife to her husband, Naiyanoi was a source of envy to the man’s elder children. The animosity, she reveals, ensued even after her husband’s death and a time came when the pressure got unbearable. She says she was, “forced by these circumstances”, to leave her marital homestead at the foothills of Mt. Longonot and took refuge in Narok town. Her paternal family, she says, consider her “a very spoilt brat”.

Naiyanoi managed to set up a small business, selling second hand clothes but she says, “The competition was so stiff that I could hardly keep up owing to my village upbringing and illiteracy”. Her stay in town further compounded her problems as she got 5 more children and she was afraid to go back to both her marital and parental homes due to “embarrassment” as a result of the “many strange children trailing me”. She sighs, “You know the rain tends to pour heavily in the lake” describing the tendency of problems besetting those already overwhelmed by hardships. According to Naiyanoi, her elder brother offered her a goat and settlement at some far off farm tucked, “away from inquisitive eyes and running mouths”.

Like the almost 60 percent Kenyans living on less than 70 shillings a day, Naiyanoi has resigned herself to the poverty that she sees as her fate. “When you have tried everything to no avail, it is foolhardy to continue being optimistic as your fate is already sealed” she says. She, however, was comforted by one of Montet’s paternal uncle’s recent enquiry on whether the boy could go back home to be circumcised and become a warrior. She sees this as a window of opportunity in that there is a likelihood that her children may end up inheriting a share of her husband’s property. Says she, “I am at least happy that they have shown some kind of interest in their son,” adding, “I am grateful to the culture that takes care of boys”.

But with a far away look in her already wrinkled 32 year old face, she concedes that her monthly budget is less than 300 shillings. Naiyanoi defines the poverty afflicting her as, “the process of dying a little each day as more and more pressure is brought to bear on one’s frail body and tortured soul”.

On the other hand, sitting by the log fire, William concedes that he is immensely affected by the appalling state of poverty around him. “Our society” he asserts, “seems to be in a hurry to render the rich extremely rich and the wretched poor a thousand fold more miserable”. According to the 43 year old India trained agriculturalist, being rich, “is living with the constant guilt of knowing that I have more than I need while half the Kenyan people live in abject poverty”.

So near yet worlds apart

With each dawning day, Naiyanoi prays that her life is somehow a bad dream that she will eventually wake up from. Were she to win 150 million shillings, she says at length, “I am quite weary of further expeditions into the cryptic nature of life, all I would do is to hire private tutors for my children, set up a fund to pay their university education, purchase a big herd of livestock for them and get into real estate business to ensure a safe and stable investment for their future”.

Inversely, with property valued at what Ole Solitei calls “several millions” he concedes that his monthly budget is, “enough to buy an economy return ticket to America (about 1,200 US dollars)”. “If I were to get 150 million shillings today, I would sponsor an additional 1,000 students to the current 10 that I am already helping, through high school and university because that would mean alleviating about 12,000 people from the yoke of poverty and despondency” William asserts.

In the mean time, Naiyanoi has to make do with working as a house help for other people for a pittance (50 shillings) in the hope that her children will outgrow the current hardships bedeviling them at this cold corner of the world where each day provides a whole set of new challenges and survival hardships.

Michael ole Tiampati is Freelance Journalist & Media Officer of Maa Civil Society Network.