“I have been standing here… for almost three hours trying to hitch a ride… there is a sizeable crowd of would-be travellers with things to do and places to be and we are all waiting. Desperately.
So much about life here and now entails waiting. If you are serious about life, if you are a go-getter and you want to make things happen then you need to know how to wait. Seriously. You take a deep breath, put your ‘game face’ on, brace yourself and wait… and now here I am waiting. Again.
It’s what we do. We wait for transport, for electricity, for rain, for slow-speed internet connections at dingy cyber-cafes in town where we check our mail to see if a nifty little website has found us a job in Dubai or a scholarship to an obscure foreign university, or anything really to get us out of here. And there is never anything, mind you, but you know how hope is. It never dies.
So we tell ourselves that there isn’t anything yet. We’ll find a way out; in the meantime let’s wait. If you are serious about your life, about surviving, about the future, then you sow some seeds, invest in yourself and you wait. It’s my favourite oxymoron, arrested development,” so wrote the Zimbabwean writer Sandisile Tshuma in her short story Arrested Development .
Arrested development is development that has stalled. This is what I am experiencing in rural Kenya in the run-up to New Year’s. At the end of December 2023, my rural home in the Taita village of Buguta is a tropical homeland of colours, smells, warmth and light that’s very different from the bleaker, colder, and grayer Nairobi.
The village has all the clichés of the African countryside — smoke unfurling from houses in quick scratches, a rustle of the wind, a whiff of scent, a vision of storms, the outline of a branch drooping in the rain, the rolling green grass, and an angry sun that falls upon the steep slopes of a farmhouse roof. The wind moans, muffled by the thickets.
The breeze later picks up speed and something is blown over on the compound, skittering across the ground. December rain’s sudden violence. Outside the house is a carpet of a verdant lush, fast-growing vegetation. The air smells clean; there is cinnamon, something woody and sweet.
In the village, happiness always has a past, and sadness always has a future. And among the villagers, there seemingly are instances of regret for time gone by, for things unsaid and the sadness and loneliness like that of an abandoned child — the government seems far, far away.
Travellers board buses at the ‘Machakos’ Country Bus Station on December 24, 2023, to travel upcountry for Christmas and New Year festivities.
Photo credit: Wilfred Nyangaresi | Nation Media Group
And here, like many regions in Kenya, 2023 left many questions unanswered, huge tensions unresolved, and most people came off somehow with the sense of unfinished business. 2023 was a year spent wishing — the world seemingly flipped over in increasing terror that was ramping up to lunacy. A changed world.
There is a pervasive sense of uncertainty and general hopelessness towards what government can do to better the economic situation. The village drunks roam the paths like homeless vagabonds, distanced, at a remove from the ongoing dailiness of the activities of the central and county governments.
Alcoholics in the village don’t think they need help. And by the time they seek help, they are whittled down, haunted, and searching for a way to describe the mess they are in. Wild and untamed, by turns shocking, angry, witty, and ruthless, they depend on hard drinks for courage and consolation — people on the fringes, grappling with the most foundational questions of meaning and identity for a people forgotten by their elected leaders.
During the general elections in 2022, though a backwater, this village was one of the centres of focus. Even President Ruto has been here to campaign and villagers are hoping he will visit now that he is in power — that he won’t disappear like countless other politicians do until the next election cycle.
As for jobs, villagers don’t expect much from the government; they mostly look to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other countries abroad for jobs as house helps and other jobs that require no special skills or advanced education. Here, one of the greatest achievements for young girls is to work as house helps in the Middle East.
When it comes to government, in between the silences and lacunae, some villagers just shrug off their collective shoulders. There are still others who are hopeful that President Ruto’s government will deliver. Even the elderly know the village’s problems and they can articulate them well in Taita, in an intonation that drags the vowels, making them sound sadder — an old accent faint in the background of certain words.
The people here, seemingly thwarted by their government, keep looking for answers, only to be rebuffed — having the bearing of men who had bet long odds — and lost. The message seems to be simple: they are waiting for the government to fulfil its pledges especially for essential services from healthcare, education to infrastructure. And this seems to be the dream of every Kenyan elsewhere. Everywhere. That’s every Kenyan’s New Year’s wish. May the new year bring all we long for. Happy New Year 2024!
