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Welcome to Kenya’s remote and dusty Manchester

Residents of Manchester village in Wajir County hike a lift atop a goats’ van.
 Residents of Manchester village in Wajir County hike a lift atop a goats’ van. PHOTOS: PIUS CHERUIYOT/ STANDARD]
Wajir, Kenya: The little boy clutches onto his mother, hurting from what the young woman suspects is a chest infection. She is frantically trying to get him to the nearest hospital more than three hours away. Her dust covered face is pale, aged by life’s challenges. She is no mood to talk when we meet her in the driver’s cabin of a battered dark mini-van ferrying goats to Wajir town.

The driver, who operates the vehicle like a matatu, is also carrying three other passengers. But they are hanging precariously on the most unlikely of places - the overhead carrier. The driver tells me he had picked the sick child and the mother from Manchester.

Did he just say Manchester? Yes, Manchester, he clarifies.

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