Kenya Is The 6th Poorest Country In Africa

I got this news over the weekend and it surprised me a lot. In one of the dailies it said that 40% of Kenyans live under extreme poverty meaning 18 million Kenyans are not suffering but they are extremely suffering. I don't know what metrics they used to come up with the ranking but as a Kenyan I was a bit shocked and embarrassed to be honest. If you are to come to Nairobi or live there, you could be fooled to think we are ok, with proper public systems and skyscrapers dotting all over the land scape. Coming from here in a middle income household with high income dreams I have to agree I was bit ignorant of the facts so I decided to look further into this.

 
Here comes the rude truths and poorly executed jokes. There are people in rural Kenya who I have met who have no idea of what money is. They live in secluded parts of the country which have no resources at all to make use of. These guys wake up in the morning greeting their teeth and screaming angrily to the world because of the helpless state. These guys don't have resources to buy breakfast, lunch or supper when they wake up in the morning and the situation is made even worse because they slept hungry last night. They live in places where there are no access to schools, hospitals and government offices. They live in the periphery of the Kenyan dream.

 
It sucks because most of these guys suffer from these problems because of bad luck. The lottery at birth went wrong for them and they were born in such dire conditions. Their luck never changed and it's been downhill from the beginning. Sadly the struggle doesn't end but goes on from one generation to the next with little hope that the poverty cycle will break.

 
I don't want to undermine anyone's problems but these guys have serious problems. When I think about the issues that are bothering me as opposed to the lives these guys live I am ashamed to call them problems. I complain about my food having too little salt and there are people who don't have access to food at all. I talk about the frequent blackouts that we have and there are people who don't even have homes to sleep in.