• We are the generation that was born on the advent of the HIV-Aids pandemic and grew up when the stigma associated with it was more ravaging than the infection itself.
•Hundreds lost their breadwinners —fathers and mothers —and a host of relatives who would have cared for them once their parents departed.
Image: BRIAN OTIENO
Every generation has a dark period they can vividly recall and narrate to a future generation, but millennials in Kenya have endured more than enough. From the HIV-Aids scourge to political upheavals of the 1980s and 1990s to joblessness occasioned by state-sanctioned graft to the Covid-19 pandemic, one cannot deny that my generation, the millennials, somehow arrived on this world at the wrong time.
We are the generation that was born on the advent of the HIV-Aids pandemic and grew up when the stigma associated with it was more ravaging than the infection itself. Hundreds lost their breadwinners —fathers and mothers —and a host of relatives who would have cared for them once their parents departed. Being orphaned and re-orphaned condemned dozens to a life of squalor in the streets and slums where survival for the fittest was the mantra.
Those who were partially orphaned had to grapple with relatives from hell riding on repugnant cultural practices, who spared no time to remind their hopeless mothers that the property left behind by their sons and brothers were not for widows. What followed was disinheritance, early marriages and school drop-outs of many who would have cultivated a bright future for their generations. And because HIV testing had not taken root and Anti-retroviral drugs had not been in great supply, many a millennial was born with the once called dreaded and killer virus, setting the stage to a life where they had to endure numerous storms, the storms of being treated like a plague by those privy to their status, the storms of seeing life to be worthless every passing day because what you could stare at was your possible death and the storms of having to put up with “benefactors” who fell short of reminding you that you were a burden.
People born in the 80s and 90s saw it all: If it wasn’t the snaking queues at mortuaries when relatives were picking their departed loved ones, it was the countless funerals dotting virtually every home in the village. If it wasn’t your parent in the casket, it was your uncle, untie or a family friend. You could be at your father’s funeral and knowing to well that the next funeral could be that of his friend present at the burial.
Those whose fathers were politically active suffered the ignominy and agony of continuous and heart-rending arrests, torture and detention of their parents, often on flimsy grounds of disagreeing with a tyrannical regime. It was a bleak experience of politically-imposed curfews where ruthless security officers could flagrantly break into homes and maim anybody in sight, including women and children. It was the rule of the jungle where common sense was thrown out of the window only to be replaced with high-level mediocrity.
Later, those who made it to school, which quite often was through acts of philanthropy extended by friends, relatives and well-wishers, another indelible dark moment awaited them: Joblessness precipitated by bad policies. We’ve seen the millennials commit suicide and resign to a life of alcoholism and drug abuse to word off depression just because they cannot easily land job opportunities like their predecessors, The Baby Boomers and The Generation X. They endure a life of destitution which they never foresaw while in school, and have to perpetually put up with derision from a society that believes that they are lazy, entrepreneurial idiots, half-baked and harbouring a false sense of entitlement. Government officials have even challenged them to create jobs, knowing very well they lack even the seed capital to venture into income-generating activities.
They have hustled to make ends meet, abused by the insensitive political class and had their kitties, the Youth Funds set up by governments to lure them to vote, raided by gluttonous technocrats and dubious businessmen with tentacles rooted from the powers that be. My generation has known no happiness.
And when they were about to come of age and resign to fate, the fate of leading a life of penury, the Covid-19 came knocking. This virus has shaken the core of humanity, with many describing it the worst since the infamous World War II. It has ashamed and negatively impacted the economies of world powers, something that could have far-reaching effects on third world countries and their struggling millennials. Millennials whose SMEs had not taken shape now have to go back to the drawing board, the drawing board of just sitting at home, watching government declare a lockdown and thinking of the next meal. My generation has known no happiness.
Joab Apollo
@ApolloJoab