They are starving and dying, can we save them?

How lucky are you and me that yesterday we had three meals. May be you had two, even one but you could have had three given time. Well that is not the case in the surrounding world, that is not the case in our beautiful country. As I read the story of a Turkana Lady Ms Ethuuko Nangole, on standard newspaper, who had gone without food for three days and her last meal was porridge. At that time she was not sure where and when if ever her next meal would come from. At the same time the story of a man eating a snake, confirmed by the government local administrator. These are stories of very hungry people starving and it is high time we as people do something about it. Many a time we wait for the world to come and save us. For real the world has its own problems too this time round and it is aupon us to pull ourselves out of the ditch.

In many rural areas especially the local economy has been left to fend for its people. But as we have seen the already strained agricultural sector that relied mostly on subsistence farming can not cater for ever hungry nation. First we have to note that we have young energetic people who with a stroke of passion and strength have the ability to reverse the situation . But there is a mindset and discouraging factors to consider when talking about that. Declining produce prices and low wages are not ingredients that attract youth to agriculture and neither does stagnant wages in the local tea, coffee or flower farms as the case may be. In the cities the lure of the bright lights bring young men and women to the centers in search of good paying jobs and opportunities for business. But at the end they quickly find themselves in dark alleys of our slums with deplorable conditions, no envisioned good life they have been told about the city, no milk and honey they thought they will find in the city. What a wasted energy? What a wasted talents?

The vision 2030 whatever it means should be reversed to simply read food stability and end of starvation. For real how do we expect starving Turkanas to contribute to achieving this, how do we expect the starving Maasais to contribute to the building block of the so called vision, how do expect the starving Kambas to forget about their stomarch and think of the vision 2030. For start the government should pour all its resources to the agricultural sector, then encourage all the citizens to be farmers. Yes we all can be farmers, what we need is favorable conditions. At the moment poor crop rotation and lack of diversity leads to soil erosion, susceptibility to disease and pests, and the need to import products in the coutry that has the capacity to be self sufficient.

That brings me back to a question which i might have answered already. Why is Agriculturally rich country starving? Here is where the blame game begins, and there are so many people and factors to be blame chief among them the corrupt government. I wanted to strongly go on that direction but i realized that that wouldn’t save the starving Kenyans, that wouldn’t put a meal in front of Ms Ethuuko Nangole, that wouldn’t relieve the snake eating man. The food crisis in the country has reached a level that we as good people of this beautiful country can’t sit back and just watch. We urgently need to do something, and that should start with small donation form you and me, first to save those in dire need of something to eat. Then put a concerted effort to make Kenyans understand that they are the holder of their own destiny and for that food insecurity can be a thing of the past.

So what next from here? In a country where most people survive below a dollar a day and as i write this the Kenyan shillings against the dollar rate is about Kshs.75 per dollar, a donation of just kshs.200 can put smile in somebody’s face for two days. I don’t know how good that would be, how greatful would that person be but i can just imagine the smiling faces. Now at the moment i have no idea how this can be done, may be though the red cross, may be through NGOs, may be through the media houses. If we put our minds together we can come up with a way out and save our fellow Kenyans. Your suggestions and action here could surely save a life…………

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