This archive report was first published on 20 December 2019.
As the curtains fall on another year, many elderly Kenyans are left to face Christmas alone, abandoned by their children who have moved to cities in search of better opportunities.
Former Attorney General Githu Muigai once said, 'When the music stops, when the curtains fall, you have to go home and be yourself; a father, a husband, a brother, a villager coming to bury the dead with the other villagers.'
For city lawyer Robert Chesang, that homecoming was in a casket, leaving his father, Mzee Chesang Kiptala, in lonesome grief outside his mud-walled house in Kalabata village, Baringo County.
Chesang's case is not an exception. Thousands of elderly men and women are languishing in poverty in villages, while their sons and daughters live large in cities.
According to the 2019 census results, people aged 65 and above constitute about 2.7 per cent of Kenya's total population.
Charles Mwangi, a 70-year-old man, has been living in abject poverty despite his children working in the city. He depends on casual jobs and well-wishers in the village to put food on the table.
'My children have deserted me. I can't remember the last time they visited me on Christmas. I struggled to raise them, but when they became adults they forgot about me,' Mwangi said.
However, Mwangi bears no grudge and has given his children his blessings.
'Even though it hurts, I still love them. Young people should love their parents because it's a command from God,' he said.
Moses Mutua, a sociologist, blames some children for neglecting their ageing parents due to shame, peer pressure, and bad spouses.
'There are people who are ashamed of their parents because they are illiterate. They don't want to be associated with them so they end up not going to the villages,' Mutua said.
