Glee and gloom along modern rail line's path

Mutunge Mutungwa(center) resident of Makindu in Makueni county is helped by her relatives to cross the Standard gauge railway line,she claims that she has been separated from her relatives who live on the other side of the railway since she cant cross the railway withought any help. (PHOTO BEVERLYNE MUSILI)

 

Marietta Mutunge Mutungwa is a perfect example of how the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project has changed lives for better and worse.

Marietta, said to be aged about 110, lives in a new two-bedroom house built thanks to SGR.

And although this is a good reason to be happy, Marietta is more often than not sad.

Every day, she frequents a spot at the edge of the new line and spends long hours peering at the homes across the line, watching her grandchildren and great grandchildren playing noisily. The railway line has separated her from members of her family who live across the line.

Occasionally, she is carried across the line by relatives, disgust written all over her face.

But it is her ratty attachment to the spot next to the railway line that is of great concern to her family. This is the spot where her late husband Philip Mutungwa Mutunge, fondly known as Umau, was buried in 2008. His body was exhumed and reburied seven years later to pave way for the project.

Marietta sits there for hours on end, mope and broody in the thick plumes of the dust raised by passing SGR lorries.

"Her old lungs cannot cope with the dusty load," laments Mercy Musembi, the wife of one of Marietta's grandsons: "Cucu (grandma) is fixated with that spot. It is like she has never come to terms with her husband's reburial about a year ago. She just sits there imbibing dust and we fear for her life."

The old man's body was dug up in February 2015 and was re-interred metres away from Marietta's new house. According to the inscriptions on the headstone, Mutungwa was born in 1895, meaning he was born a year before the construction of the Kenya-Uganda railway, aptly named Lunatic Line, commenced in Mombasa in 1896.

Marietta's family considers the Sh1.8 million compensation for their land measuring over five acres taken by the railway a raw deal.

"We had over 20 mature indigenous and exotic trees, cattle sheds and our grandfather's grave on the portion taken by the railway. These and much more were not considered in the compensation," says Philip Muteti, one of Marietta's grandsons.