KCB VENTURE 1 final

COUNTY: ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
According to Wajir County,
majority of the 700,000
residents had never seen
tarmack before. That is
now history for this north
eastern town
D
ubow Abdi has lived his entire life in northern
Kenya. Born 66 years ago 15 kilometers east
of Wajir town, one of the oldest hamlets
in northern Kenya, he has lived through
the colonial period and the village elder
has been around long enough to have seen it all. Or so
he thought.
Mr. Abdi has not travelled that much. He has only
managed to visit several towns within northern Kenya,
the likes of Habwasein, Eldas and El Wak.
But like most people in his village Mzee Abdi had
never seen a tarmacked road prior to 2014.
So, when the county government announced in
late 2013, that it had prioritized the construction of a
tarmacked road in Wajir town, he slaughtered a camel
for his family in anticipation.
On the day that Ogle Construction Company - the first
contractor to lay the town’s tarmac - applied the first
sealant, the section which protects water from seeping
through the foundation of the road, Mzee Abdi, his three
wives and eleven of his children literally camped in
Wajir town to get a feel of the tarmac.
“It’s very funny that we didn’t know that it was not
even tarmacked. But, we didn’t care because my wives
and my children had never seen a tarmac road before,”
he said during an interview in Wajir for Venture.
Since that day, almost two years now, Mzee Abdi has
made it his business to ferry people from the interiors
of Wajir County - one of Kenya ’s largest counties which
occupies 10 per cent of the land mass of the country - to
see the tarmac.
“We started by walking, then started using boda
bodas and we now use taxis. I used to charge Sh. 100
for someone to come and see the new road but I lost
business when people discovered that you can see, hold,
touch and sit on the tarmac road without paying a
penny,” he says with a cheeky smile.
Mzee Abdi is not alone.
According to the Wajir County Government, a
majority of over 700,000 residents of the County had
never seen a tarmac road before the county constructed
the first kilometer in 2014.
| 27