NAIROBI LETTER:If you are a jobseeking young Kenyan, your fine CV may work best with a bribe or lurid offer, writes JODY CLARKE
HERE’S AN interview question you probably never heard. “So, I see you did an accountancy degree. Want to go out some time?” Or how about “You can start Monday. That will be €1,000.” Heard that one before? Right, sorry. Try this for size. “The job is yours. Unless, of course, you’re one of those filthy Devaneys from out Kilbannon way?” This might all sound rather ridiculous. But Irish graduates, heavy at the thought of queuing for the dole or sailing to Blighty, should take note. It’s the kind of nonsense young Kenyans have to put up with every day.
Take Sitinda Abdalah, unemployed and 21: “I wanted to join the police force. So, like everyone else, I paid a bribe to get into training – 20,000 Kenya shillings (€191), when the gross salary for a police officer is about 18,000 a month. Normally, if you are a woman, you are expected to go to bed with the instructor if you want to get off general cleaning or not get forced to get up a 3am every morning. So after the first week I left. I wasn’t going to go sell my body to get ahead.”
Then there’s Violet Opati, unemployed and 26, who once went for a sales and marketing job with a security company. “I was not the same tribe as the other person and I had four years of experience and . . . was a fresher.” Needless to say, the other person got it.
Men have no less of an easy time. Richard Musyoka (24) is a unemployed mechanical engineer.
“Even in the professions, you can’t get a job unless you have connections or can afford to pay a bribe. Of my 2008 classmates, 80 per cent are unemployed. If you have a bachelor of arts, my god, there are so many. You just have to pray for those guys.”
These are the kind of problems that you hear in many developing countries. But in Kenya, where youth unemployment runs at over 70 per cent (in Ireland it’s just over 25 per cent), it could be the precursor of major civil unrest, warned the head of the country’s Institute of Public Policy Research last year. His successor, John Atoken, is no less gloomy.
“When young people are not able to get jobs, it creates a lot of apathy. It can be a recruitment ground for groups such as al-Shabab, and recently there have been reports of Kenyans joining al-Shabab and going to Somalia. If they can’t get jobs, they will join these sorts of groups. ” Among such infamous groups are the Mungiki, a violent bunch of racketeers. “When the youth can’t get jobs, the income disparity increases and the poor get poor and the rich become less secure. And it is happening in Kenya right now.”
“You can blame corruption and the government, but that won’t get you anywhere” says Violet. She takes any job that comes her way, even if it means sweeping up or standing on roundabouts, selling knick-knacks.
Isaac, or “captain” as he calls himself, is pretty much in agreement. “I worked for two years as a chef in Uganda, but in Kenya I would be interviewed for a job and told afterwards, I’m sorry, you’re looking for 10,000 a month and somebody else will only cost 5,000. So I would say, okay, pay me 5,000, and they would say no, sorry, it’s too late.
“So I decided to use my own talent as an MC.” He has regular work, and makes about €80 a gig. “It’s always good to work for yourself and use your own initiative. You can’t wait at home for a job to come. The prime minister can promise jobs all he wants, but it won’t come on his promise. Let that promise land when you’re doing something else. So it’s good to be creative. Even if you’re just selling vegetables, at least you are doing something.” And what about emigration, that spectre hanging over the Irish for a good 150 years or so? Have any of them thought about it? “Oh yeah, plenty of my classmates have gone to Iraq and Afghanistan,” says Richard. To work as engineers? “Some, yes. But mostly to work as cleaners and in jobs like that.”
China as well, adds Sheila. “You see lots of Kenyans caught trafficking drugs in China. You can get 250,000 Kenya shillings for doing it. And you can’t blame them. If you are desperate, you will do anything. You are so stressed at home, you have younger brothers and sisters and your parents want you to get out. What can you do?”
London and Sydney suddenly look a lot more appealing, no?