Money crossed oceans. Wisdom didn’t.
The money wasn’t just for today—it was for tomorrow. The women bought goats, chickens, cows, and even iron sheets, one at a time. Bit by bit, they saved for a better future, building their families brick by brick. When the men returned from their long trips, they found their homes in perfect order. The children were fed, clothed, and educated. These women accounted for every coin. They were the backbone of the village success.
But the villagers whispered about those whose wives were less noble. Women who squandered the money in meaningless pursuits. "ûyû ndoí rûciû," the elders would say, meaning she was a wasteful soul. It was an unspoken truth that the success of a man depended not just on his hard work, but on the behavior of his wife back in Gitithia.
Then came a new era. The children of these men, the next generation, flew to faraway lands. They traveled to places beyond Kenya—Dubai, the UK, the US, Saudi Arabia, name it. Like their fathers, they sent money back home, hoping it would be put to good use. Their dollars, euros, pounds, dirhams, and dinars flooded Gitithia, filling the village with a wealth it had never seen before.
But this generation, the one left behind, was not like their mothers and fathers. They were a people with no financial wisdom. They didn’t know the value of saving, of building slowly and steadily. The abundance of foreign currency became a burden they didn’t know how to carry.
Instead of goats and chickens, they chased the latest fashion. Instead of saving for a rainy day, they spent their days in butcheries and Karûmaindo, drinking and feasting. They became regulars at the beer dens, known by name at every bar in the village. Worse still, they fell prey to the allure of quick riches. Churches, pyramid schemes, and betting companies promised them more, and they gave in, pouring the money meant for their families into the hands of swindlers.
By the time their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, returned from the far lands, Gitithia had changed. They found malnourished children, dressed in rags. Many had dropped out of school and were the new village DDOs (Daily Drinking Officers). The houses they had sent money to build stood incomplete, roofs missing, walls crumbling or non-existent. The investments they’d hoped for, the better lives they had imagined, were nowhere to be found.
Their partners and parents met them with downcast eyes, too ashamed to explain the waste, the greed, and the betrayal. Gitithia, once a village of noble women and hardworking men, had become a place of broken dreams. The wealth that had flooded in had dried up, leaving nothing but regret in its wake.
