Women in Africa still have a blank cheque

The International Women’s Day was marked yesterday, with fanfare and you guessed it right, the usual platitudes: “a lot needs to be done, we want to give women a voice, we are making tangible steps, and “you name it.

While countries have made efforts to advance the cause of women, save for Rwanda, in most African countries, women occupy the lowest rungs of economic and political leadership. They remain disproportionately underrepresented in corporate board rooms.

I toast for the African women and urge them not to relent!

The best Maths teacher in the country(Kenya), judging by performance of schools last year’s national exams, is a 25year old chap, a rookie to be precise, whose teaching experience span just over 2 years. So, and they keep telling you that you need 10 years experience, my foot! to perform?

Whenever I see a street child, like I did today, I see not the kid sniffing glue but the bated hopes, the dreams deferred by the ugly scars of poverty and pangs and scars of indifference, the opportunity to grow with dignity nipped in the bud. I hear the cries of a kid who clings to the frail hopes that her/his woes would prick the teats of our milk of human kindness.

Yet in our endless search of prosperity and the pleasures that excellence portend, we forget the downtrodden among us. We toss coins to massage our guilt and think that will be worth a meal for a kid who has not eaten for days.

A cold chill sweep over my body more so when I imagine the pain of realizing and knowing then that homes are closed to practically every one of these children just because they are poor.

In retrospect, I see a people who can give, and assuage the perils of indifference. I see people who like a waterfall emanate from drops can give and shatter and dissolve the shackles of neglect. I see a multitude of philanthropists who can rekindle the dwindling fortunes of these kids.

I juxtapose our dreams and the harsh reality of the revised aspirations of these kids, and the lowered bar and their unending hope that their suffering will speedily go away, my eyes turn teary.

I amass the comfort of this song:

“Open my minds eye so I may see and feel Your shinning light presence close to me. Give me inner strength for my stumbling feet as I battle the crowd on life’s busy street. And widen the vision of my unseeing minds eye so in passing faces I’ll recognize not just a stranger, unloved, and unknown, but a friend with a heart and soul that is much like my own.

Still my pain can’t subside, more so when I think of the grandeur and opulence that describes our sumptuous houses(or dreams of our houses) and think of a kid crying to have a roof on top of his head. I imagine this chilly weather, I cast my eyes to the threads of giving that dwells in the heart of every man. I cry for the street kid. Theirs is a page, an odyssey from the chronicles of pain and suffering.

Surely, humanity can be more humane, we can help these kids.

WACHIRA