Some women should be banned from bringing forth more children to a life of poverty

Nancy Roxanne September 21st 2020 at 11:41:11 GMT +0300

I was recently appalled to learn that my former neighbour is expectant. I know you are wondering why in the world I would be scandalized by the news of someone getting knocked up. After all, baby announcements usually call for a celebration, right?
Well, this isn’t her first baby and I witnessed first hand the shitshow that was her first pregnancy. I know it is intrinsically taboo to say this in Kenya but having children you can’t afford is incredibly selfish and irresponsible! A few brave people have said this in the past and, whew chile, the backlash!
In fact, I shared this very sentiment with a colleague when I was telling her about my former neighbour’s situation and she countered my reasoning with the old, tired line of ‘Kila mtoto hukuja na sahani yake’. If I had magical powers, I would have conjured up that viral ‘oliskia wapi’ meme because I honestly can’t think of a more appropriate situation to apply it.
So, yeah. Moliskia wapi ati mtoto hukuja na sahani yake? Guys, it is a song. You just can’t continue to pop out kids when you can barely take care of youself.
So, this former neighbour, whom we shall call Ann, is in her late 20s. To put it bluntly, Ann has been dealt a bad hand in life – all her life. She was an only child and was orphaned at an early age. She was unable to continue with her education because none of her relatives was willing to put up the money for it. She dropped out of school in class seven, shortly after her parents passed away. She was then bounced off from relative to relative until eventually, all of them decided that she would have to make do on her own at the age of 14. One of her uncles built for her a cramped shanty made of rusty corrugated iron at the edge of his compound.
Incidentally, this uncle was wealthy and owned some rental properties, one of which I was living in at that time. He could have easily given her one of his rental houses to live in but instead he ditched her into that decrepit shack that had no electricity or running water. She was still living there when I met her when she was in her mid-20s. She had made some minor improvements to the house. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a dump but I was told that it used to be much worse.
As Ann was uneducated, she could only get menial jobs that barely brought in enough money to feed herself. Ann decided to make her already difficult life that much harder by bringing a baby into this world. First of all, she chose to copulate with a bottom-of-the barrel loser who couldn’t even have helped if he wanted to. However, in true ‘Kenyan men’ fashion, he disappeared after he heard about the pregnancy.
Ann didn’t have any money so she never got any prenatal care. She didn’t even have money to go to the hospital when she went into labour. Some strangers took pity on her and got her a taxi to go to the hospital. She couldn’t afford to pay for the hospital so, once again, some people stepped in to help out.
Things only got worse when she came back to her shack with the newborn. She didn’t have clothes and couldn’t afford diapers for the baby. She would wrap him with her old clothes. The baby girl was always wet and smelly. Due to the unsanitary condition she was living in, the baby got every sick and the mother of the boy who had impregnated her, on hearing about the pathetic situation the baby was living in, came and took the baby away.
Ann was in no position to protest. She literally had nothing to offer that child.
Now, come to find out that she is bringing another child into this world while she is more or less in the same pathetic life circumstance she was in before? It is infuriating that she is going to put another innocent child through those hardships. She can’t provide basic necessities for herself, leave alone a child.
People like her should be prohibited from having children! We need to put an end to irresponsible rearing of children because at the end of the day, it is the children who suffer. Kenyans, you need to stop taking the Bible verse ‘go forth and multiply’ too literally. If you can’t afford to take care of kids, don’t have them. It is that simple.

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