It's time to reflect on planning the transformation of rural communities into quasi-urban centres

What will Kenya look like 100 years from today? A hundred years are four generations. You will probably wonder, therefore, why it should bother us to reflect on the fate of a society a centenary away.

Why should it bother you? Don’t we all have our bread and butter challenges here and now?

The essence of life in our village revolves around what we do for future generations. We bother, in Emanyulia, about such questions as, “What thoughts will narratives and memory of me evoke in unborn generations?” In this, we are not alone.

For, we read in the Christian Bible, for example, of blessings being futuristic. The active ingredients in the Bible are its various promissory notes – hence the notion of testament.

Both the Old and the New Testament are promises to future generations. “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky... Your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies...” (Genesis 22: 17).

The essence of blessedness is not, therefore, that you dress yourself up in purple and live lavishly today but, rather, that you are a blessing to future generations.

The true currency of life is to seek a better world for the unborn. If we are slum dwellers today, it behooves us to get our great grandchildren out of the slum.

If dire poverty is the coin of our life, we have the duty to pass a better coin to our progeny. That is why we must ask, again, “What will Kenya look like 100 years from today?”

The answer resides in the little things that we are doing today. Amidst our political and tribal wrangles, the theft in government and unending disasters around us, life goes on.

The street you lived in 10 years ago is changing – for better or worse. It matters not that you don’t seem to notice the change that is taking place around you. It is happening anyway. New kids are taking over the block, with their new ways.

They hardly understand your talk of things you did around here 30, 40 years ago. Such is as it should be, perhaps; for life is dynamic. Things must change. Even here, in Emanyulia, things are changing. This place will never be the same again.

Our tiny round grass-thatched houses are gone. In their place are iron sheet roofed houses with mud wall plastered in a mixture of soil and cow dung. We call them semi-permanent houses. Other people have ultra-modern edifices right here in the village, with all the mod cons.

We grew up in homes without fences and gates. You simply stumbled into a home in the middle of a maize or banana plantation. It is all different today.

The electric bulb with power from the national grid has replaced the tinned kerosene lamp. Even the semi-permanent house is connected to the power supply.

Courtesy of devolution, street lighting is coming to the villages. Emanyulia market is lit up. Emalinya market is lit up, too, and Eshikulu ewa Amasimbwa is lit up as well. 

Change is everywhere. The market centres in the villages have burst their seams and are steadily creeping into space we thought was reserved for our rural homes.

Concrete structures are spreading everywhere and, with?them, new paths that you could almost equate to “streets,” if only they were better developed.

In a word, the character of rural communities in Kenya is in transformation. They are steadily taking on urban characteristics. The buildings, the power, the commercial activities, and the occupancy of homes – they all point to rural communities yearning to be urban.

Yet, tied up in this transformation, are concerns that should worry us. The transformation is unplanned – without a doubt. It does not appear that any one of the county governments has spared a moment to reflect on planning the transformation of rural communities into quasi-urban centres.

What is happening is, accordingly, a deformation of rural communities into quasi-urban slums. Where we once had the beautiful Emanyulia Green Village we are now seeing the rise of a slum. Out of the force of necessity, the slum is expanding, every day. 

There is a high structure here and another one there. Everyone who owns a plot near the market centre suddenly springs into construction, with little or no reference to any authority.

There are no thoughts about future water supply or sewerage arteries. Nothing suggests that power supply will continue to be safe, once the emerging slum is fully-grown.

“Urban” unemployment is also catching up with us. The population of frustrated unemployed youth is growing apace. So, too, is the crime rate. The answer cannot be in beefing up the paltry Administration Police presence, important as this may be in the short term.

We have a huge challenge and crisis in our hands as a country. The urban slum has come to us in rural Kenya.

The Council of Governors (COG) must prioritise planned growth of rural market centres and human settlement around them.

The Senate must urgently legislate laws that will provide national benchmarks across the counties on a wide range of concerns in the transformation of rural Kenya as a factor of devolution.

There is an urgent need for reflection on water, housing and roads in rural market centres. Other concerns are on security, the proximity of schools and health centres to social places, sewerage, garbage disposal and the environment – in a chain of so many other concerns.

A national conference under the aegis of the Council of Governors and the Senate is a priority. If we do not address these concerns today, we are going to pass on to future generations a massive slum called Kenya. And it will come fully loaded with all the vices and dangers that inform life in city slums.