I have been visiting a middle-class cousin who lives in a two-bedroomed apartment with his wife, three children and a house gal. The boy is 16, and the two gals are 13 and 8.
Now, the guy and the wife occupy one bedroom, while the gals and the maid occupy the other.
The boy sleeps in the sitting room on a safari bed when time to hit the sack comes.
If a male visitor comes, he spends with the night on a safari bed, and the boy on the couch. If a female, the maid and the gals occupy one bed to make room.
It got me thinking, if such a “well-off” family can have such accomodation problems, what about poorer families who live in one-bedroomed and single-roomed houses? No personal space, no privacy. Intimacy is difficult, and even personal sanitation can be embarrassing (“Is that dad nyambaing like that in the loo?”).
Why should they be having a maid in the first place? Those kids are old enough to handle house chores on their own. Atleast that will slightly free up space for the girls
“Three Kids” and in their state, Hiyo ni shida ya kujitakia, the first kid is excuseable when in such a state. They should hold back from having other children untill they can better provide for them. Providing does not only mean buying food. Lakini utakuta it was the wife’s dream to have three children no matter what. and the more they give birth the more they sink into poverty.
@FieldMarshal CouchP, sometime back, I managed to see a first in Nrb. A five-storey bed in a single room in the Majengo area of Nrb. It looks like kwa vyovyote, lazima watu watoshee kwa nyumba.
For those glorifying poverty, let them know that POVERTY is only ROMANTIC in NOVELS and WESTERN SOAPS. You have to live it, in order to appreciate how deep it bites.