I thought that i had seen it all. After all, i spent two years up to my elbows dissecting dead bodies. I have seen people die horribly right before my eyes. But nothing…nothing could have prepared me for the horror of yesterday’s fire disaster in Sinai slum.
Seeing the bodies of people who lived, laughed, cried and loved mere hours before reduced to charred, blackened spots on the ground. Scenes of grim desolation.
Death is a part of life, they say. But the utter destruction of over one hundred people is a tragic waste.
But the real tragedy here becomes apparent when you stop and think about how these people – and so many others live. Try and imagine eking out a miserable existence, living from day to day, your life a constant struggle to stave off hunger and to keep a ramshackle roof over your head. Of course you cannot fathom it. This is why i just shake my head when i hear the middle class pontificating about greed and ignorance, saying, with condescension…Kenyans will never learn.
But how can they? When your life is a constant struggle to keep the wolves from your door on less than a dollar a day, when money literally flows past your doorstep, will you turn down the opportunity to make a few coins, and have your first decent meal in weeks??
The people who died yesterday were willing to wade into raw sewage to scoop up that which led to their deaths. In my view, that is not greed, or ignorance. That is desperation.
And that is the real tragedy.
Very thoughtful!
u choose to pity them, i choos to let them know there are more thatn abundant opportunities if and only if they are willing to go for it… Learning to fis is not an easy job and neither is it a one day job, they have the personal responsibility to get themselves out of the poverty rut, otherwise, we shall always keep on with them like that
This is what i call the middle-class smugness syndrome. In today’s society, true opportunity is limited to those that have attained a certain level of education..which costs money. These people literally live from hand to mouth. More fortunate people already find life harder these days…imagine how it is for the urban poor. I’m at pains to see what opportunities these are that you speak of.
i was one of those Kenyans who thought “they will never learn” then the reality hit me that some give for days without a meal leave alone a decent one. So whichever way death was lurking at their doorstep. Sad it is, more sad that it was death by fire.