Sense of despair that the new leaders must address

I was born in Vihiga at the dawn of Independence. My earliest conscious interaction with the environment was in Navuhi Village which, like many other villages in Vihiga, was like a big homestead without barriers.

Children would gather in any of the homesteads to play. All adults were in charge of discipline and so we were bound to behave ourselves.

And although much has changed, traces of this kind of life still exist. People still care about others and smile with their eyes.

But even more enchanting they are still people of Mirembe — Peace. I look back on my early life with a mixture of nostalgia and a sense of loss and betrayal.

In my childhood, people were filled with hope. Parents struggled to take children to school because they saw education as the best way out of poverty.

Many years later, Vihiga is poorer than it was 30 years ago. Signs of decay are all over.

A good number of parents cannot afford to take their children to school; dilapidated classrooms characterise both primary and secondary schools; I see street children in shopping centres and the coffee factories have collapsed while a sense of hopelessness has engulfed the county.

Scenic landscapes

And there lies the challenge to anyone aspiring to lead this county. In many ways, the county is endowed with resources that should be tapped for the benefit of the people.

Vihiga has one of the most scenic landscapes in Kenya. It is no wonder that those born there have a lifelong bond with it. The hills, valleys and big rock boulders present sites to behold.

I fell in love with this unusual terrain as a child. . . with its intensely farmed smallholdings, snuggled among undulating hills and valleys, and a celestial network of streams.

The lush but boulder-strewn landscape gave me fodder for the images I visualised as I listened to our folktales.

With this scenery, I sometimes wonder why this county has not attracted movie makers. If the county gets the best leadership, I believe it can attract movie makers from all over the world.

Being culturally rich, Vihiga should inevitably market itself as a haven for cultural enterprises.

I vividly recall that as a bare-footed village boy, I always missed school on Wednesdays in order to harvest coffee and take it to the factory.

But the more I did this, the more my peasant parents slid into poverty. Coffee did not pull people out of poverty and so they uprooted it.

Now new strategies have to be found to harness resources and transform agriculture to adopt green house technology.

Being the most densely populated county in East and Central Africa, Vihiga has the human resources to move its economy forward. But because of a lack of opportunity many people are simply idle.