2023-10-17 01:30:09
Dennis Mumo Mwamati is the ultimate illustration of the Kenyan “Black Tax”. From his first year of university in Nairobi, this model student, no member of whose family had ever reached this level of studies, managed to get a small job. Not to enjoy the student joys of the capital, he who had arrived from a rural village in the Kamba country (South), but to start paying the school fees of the five brothers and sisters born following him, in a family of eight. “The youngest will graduate next year, I was looking forward to it so much!” »says the architect laughing, ten years, and tens of thousands of euros later.
Car Dennis a ” help “ well beyond his own siblings: at 38, he financed the education of seven other children, some of whom he never met. Between primary and secondary, a term in the public sector generally costs between 7,000 and 11,000 shillings (45 to 70 euros), a figure which rises at university and to which must be added books, uniforms, sometimes accommodation and food. “At its highest, it must have represented up to 30% to 40% of my income, without even counting the work for my parents,” he calculates on the fly. In the village, his childhood home made of dirt and thatched roof is unrecognizable: tiles and cement, running water and electricity, television connected to a satellite package.
Paying his tithe, in turn, was not a question. If Dennis works today in the immense and green United Nations complex in Nairobi, a very comfortable situation, it is because two guardian angels financed his studies when his father, a bicycle repairer (“he earned 70 shillings a day, less than half a dollar!” »), was no longer able to pay. Not even relatives, but simple acquaintances – one a tourist guide and the other an employee in the tobacco industry – visiting the village when the high school kicked him out. “They had been there too. They only asked two things of me: good grades and good behavior, period. If I am where I am, it’s because of them. »
Buying a roof, a car or a cow
The « Black Tax”, also called by research – quite limited – “family tax” or “forced solidarity”, is an omnipresent subject in the lives of Kenyans. For this article, each informal discussion carried dozens of anecdotes from urban workers who are constantly in demand, here to support their parents; there to pay the famous tuition fees of a brother, nephew, cousin – or stranger –; contribute to a pot for a hospital bill; or even complete the purchase of a new roof, a car, or a cow.
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