Yuppies feel the heat of the economy

By Dann Okoth

The routine Friday nights, the flashy vehicles and an air of optimism may just be a faÁade. Behind the high stilettos and tuxedo suits are a population buckling under the harsh economic times.

On face value one may regard these individuals as fairing better or even enjoying their status, however, a closer look tells a different story.

Scratch the surface and the sleek car parked in the garage and the cool home could mask deeper financial problems affecting the middle class even as households move to drastically adjust lifestyles and cut down on costs to cope with the prevailing harsh economic trends.

Most people in this category, who would otherwise splash their cash on luxury, have been forced back to the basics — buying food, paying rent, servicing mortgage or paying school fees. Those who are hardest hit have even withdrawn their children from upmarket schools as demand and souring prices outstrip income.

"I hate to admit it but the Friday night is now history for me, unless I land a freebee here or there," confesses city lawyer W J Njoroge.

Weekend jobs

He adds: "My weekends are now occupied by doing a side job or searching for a client."

The assumption has been whenever a financial crisis grips the country it is the poor who suffer.

To debunk this myth, The Standard on Sunday conducted a survey on popular night spots frequented by this class of Kenyans on Thursday and Friday and interviewed individuals on how they coped.

We almost drew a blank in almost all joints in town and upper-middle suburbs of Nairobi.

In some spots in estates like Buruburu, Jacaranda and Donholm there were a few patrons while many others remained deserted and ghostly.

But there was a rider to the full bars, most clients were patronising their home pubs and according one bartender drank on credit regardless of the month’s date.

When we caught up with him in a rather empty pub in Donholm, car hire company operator Dan Ndung’u complained of a string of events that have made his life miserable.

Electricity bill

"First the electricity bill has more than tripled in the last two years and I pay for water that I do not receive and rising oil prices means everything from running my business to basic things like unga have become expensive," he says.

For Sh1,000, two years ago, Ndung’u used to live comfortably arriving home with a kilo of meat, 2kg of maize flour, a loaf of bread, two packets of milk, six eggs and a packet of sausages. But with dwindling income, Ndung’u would consider himself lucky to afford a modest dinner and breakfast. "We get very few clients these days. The money is little. I now buy half a kilo of unga and quarter kilo of meat enough for my wife and me. In the morning we settle for a half loaf and a cup of tea each," he says.

His peer, Mr Peter Mutua, a pharmaceutical technologist has been forced to abandon his opulent life and also settle for the basics.

"I only use my car during the first week of the month when I can fuel it. The diet is mostly vegetables and potatoes," he says. But while Mr Jeremiah Owiti, executive director Centre for Independent Research, agrees the consumption patterns among the middle class has moved from luxury to basics, he insists this cannot be pegged directly to the economic crisis.

"It is wrong to claim that a crisis in global financial market would impact immediately on ordinary Kenyan lives. This is because Africa accounts for a paltry three per cent of global financial market," he says.

A new report by Oxfam GB says more than a third of the country’s urban population lives in poverty.

The report paints a grim picture of how nearly two million of Nairobi’s population live in slums with limited or no access to water, sanitation, housing, education, and health services. The report, ‘Urban Poverty and Vulnerability in Kenya’ says falling household income, rising prices and poor governance are making life miserable for the poor in Nairobi.

"An increasingly disenfranchised and poverty stricken urban class is set to be the country’s definitive crisis over the next decade, unless the Government and international donors act urgently," said the head of Oxfam GB, Kenya Philippa Taylor, in Nairobi.