A Nairobi shoe shiner on Wednesday woke up to a rude shock after he found his work place smeared with faeces.
Morris, who is in his mid-30s, arrived at his shoe polishing work station opposite the GPO stage very early in the morning and found all the three seats covered with human waste.
“Nilitoka jioni na nikawacha kila kitu iko sawa but asubuhi vile nilienda kufungua hivi nilipata kinyesi,” the shoe shiner narrated.
He spent better part of Wednesday looking for people to clean up the mess but no one was willing to take up the job.
A source who spoke to Nairobi News said she suspects it was the street kids who smeared the place with faeces.
“Hii si mara ya kwanza… kuna wakati mwingine walifanya hivyo tena. Huyo mama mwenye hapa alikosana nao ndio wakafanya hiyo,” said our source.
The street family has become a menace for city dwellers with many of these kids begging and following people all over the city.
It has become hard to walk around the city centre without being stopped by street kids begging for money or something to eat.
STREET MENACE
Every now and then the street families get arrested and locked up but within no time they are released and back on the streets.
In 2015 former Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero announced that his administration was putting up a street children’s rehabilitation centre in Ruai.
Four years later, all there is to show for is a semi developed structure that has since stalled.
In July when the Nation team visited the site, building equipment and other construction materials were found unused and rusting away in the compound. Some sections of the fence had rotten.
To date, the project has cost taxpayers close to Sh1.6 billion.
Experts estimate that there are 250,000-300,000 children living and working on the streets, with more than 60,000 of them in Nairobi.
According to Nairobi-based charity Kenya Children of Hope 63% of the cities’ homeless children have been on the streets on a part- or full-time basis for up to five years.
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