The campaign was greeted with sneers and jeers when it was launched eight years ago. Residents were scandalised when their leaders protested that Murang’a was getting bad publicity after it was exposed that jiggers were a major problem in the region.
Belligerent administrators to confrontational politicians hit out at the anti-jigger crusaders at public gatherings for soiling Murang’a’s good name.
But today, the leaders have nothing but good words for the anti-jigger campaigners and its leader Stanley Kamau.
And it is not hard to tell why they have changed tune. The other day, I visited Murang’a, the county where jiggers once terrorised many a families.
Lying between two important landmarks – Mount Kenya and the Aberdares – Murang’a, is one of the best-endowed regions in the country.
Rich volcanic soils have over the years seen the propagation of Kenya’s two main cash crops; coffee and tea.
But in the midst of the flourishing economic activities in the county, thousands of men, women and children could hardly make any sense out of life due to the debilitating bite of the jigger menace.
On this chilly Friday morning, we set out to meet some of those who have recovered and are now engaging in profitable economic ventures.
We branch out at Kaharati junction and join a dirt road towards Samar with Makuyu ridges in the distance. The narrow path terminates at a well built house where some young men are tending the compound. “These are hardly the recovered jigger victims we are looking for,” I tell myself.
No peace
“Some of the people you are looking for are working in the shamba,” said a middle-aged man whom we later learned, was a pastor and one of the co-ordinators of a farming project initiated by recovered jigger victims.
Leaving the vehicle at an open field, we walk a short distance to a well-tended banana garden. A man and a woman emerge from the thick plantation, heartily shaking our hands. “Ukai mugunda muone wira witu (come and see our work), she said. The woman is the more talkative of the two. The man hardly speaks unless spoken to.
Salome Wangari, 50, had no peace until a couple of years ago. Jigger infestation had made her immobile, hardly venturing out of her house in Kirere village, several kilometres from this field.
“I just don’t know where they (jiggers) came from,” she tells us. “For two years I was a prisoner in my own home. Nobody would associate with me nor my family. It was bad.”
We are now standing at a small clearing in the garden where young butternut and pumpkin are growing. With her face beaming, Wangari spreads her palms towards me as if in deep prayer. The palms look very clean for a person whose daily chores include working in the soil.
“These were disfigured by the jiggers. But look at them now. Can you tell that I ever had a jigger here?” she asks me rhetorically.
Wangari is a single mother of eight. All her children were jigger-infested too. The worst affected was her four-year-old last born daughter who is now in school. Her first born son is now working “on his own”.
Wangari says she is still trying to overcome the trauma and stigma that came with the jiggers.
The banana garden is among several projects that were initiated by Ahadi Kenya together with other sponsors to aid jigger victims who had lost all means of livelihood.
In April 2013, over 100 families came together to plant over 2,000 bananas in the six-acre piece of land. The proceeds are deposited with Kenya Commercial Bank who co-sponsor this project with a view to initiating even bigger projects in future.
Communal projects
Things were equally bad for Peter Maina, a 42-year-old father of four. He was jigger-infested for four years and this, he says, was the worst phase of his life.
“Visiting people was out of the question. Everybody would laugh at me. Some even feared being around me,” he says.
“My brain was also affected. You see, when you have the jiggers, you cannot think properly because you are focusing on your condition every single minute.”
There are hundreds of such former jigger victims in the villages here. Many have been roped in similar communal projects. Besides the banana project, there is bee-keeping, chicken and rabbit rearing in different parts of the country.
According to Dr Kamau, Ahadi Kenya’s CEO, such people are expected to replicate the success of the communal projects in their respective parcels of land back home and become self reliant.
Apart from such older ones, hundreds of other young people, also former jigger victims have been enrolled in the many schools in different counties. Currently, there are over 300 such students in various schools. Kamau hopes enough sponsors will come forward and see them through the university.
From the success stories so far, the jiggers’ reign of terror might not last much longer in Murang’a.
