My community is majorly comprised of sugarcane farming, animal keeping, maize farming and all other food crops such as sorghum, sweet potatoes, cassava among others. This is majorly because it is situated next to a very prosperous sugar company called SOUTH NYANZA SUGAR COMPANY (SONY). This makes sugarcane farming a major source of income.
The THREE major challenges that are facing my community and has greatly hindered its proper development are as follows:- 1) Lack of infrastructure such as roads, electricity and water: this is the main challenge that we face in my community. The murram roads leading to my community are in poor conditions and become really muddy during rainy seasons and very dusty during the hot dry spells. This greatly hinders easy transportation of people and goods in and out of the community. Being that the roads are not tarmacked, the heavy-duty tractors that aid in the transportation of sugarcane to the factory contribute a lot in the increased destruction making them more bumpy and the transport very hectic. Lack of electricity is another catastrophe that affects my community a lot. Electrification is quite expensive and this is something that most people living in my community cannot achieve because of the poor living conditions and the meager income that they get from selling their farm products and working on the company’s sugarcane plantations. Therefore, electricity is very sparse and only the few who have the capability are able to use it in their homes and charge the other people’s mobile phones at a small fee. Lack of clean water is another challenge that makes my community’s infrastructure to be poor. We mainly depend on streams, boreholes and river water. River Sare, considered the main source of water for domestic, farming and animal use flows through my community. It not considered safe because it is usually not clean, but it is used because it is a source of water that doesn’t run dry unlike the boreholes and the streams. This usually makes so many people end up sick. 2) Illiteracy:- most elder people in my community did not go to school and some children drop out of school at an early stage because they prefer to stay home than study. This is majorly caused by them disregarding the importance of education in a person’s life. This often leaves them mainly idle therefore, they turn to drug abuse mainly alcoholism and end up with early unwanted pregnancies and marriages, leading to living in continuous poverty from parents to children who have to depend on their farm produce for a living. Others are also unable to read and write and the only language they can fluently speak is our native language. This majorly hinders development and communication with other communities with different languages. 3) Lack of proper jobs: - being so illiterate, most people in my community lack the proper skills to get a good job. The mostly end up jobless or either as hard working labourers in the sugar factory’s farms under harsh conditions like the scorching sun and sometimes pounding rain or as law income labourers in the factory or as just retailers in their small shops and at the end of the day, they come back home with very low wages merely enough for their upkeep.
For my community to prosper and be a better place to be in, roads, water and electricity problems should be administered. The roads ought to be tarmacked and then properly maintained in their good conditions to open up the community to the other communities who would wish to engage in trading activities or to invest in the large tracts of land that are left bare. This would improve our infrastructure and by doing that, they would build income generating projects thereby leading to creation of jobs and a definite rise in income. The people in my community ought to be educated on the importance of education to their children and to them as well, the problems accompanied with early pregnancies and marriages. This would have a positive impact on most parents who forcefully give away their children up for marriage at an early age and teenage girls who drop out of school due to unwanted pregnancies.
Finally, with the foreign investments in the community comes with the benefit of construction of proper roads, electrification, better hospital, good schools and clean water supply. This will contribute so much to opening our community to the outside world and flexibility in the transportation of people and goods in and out of my community.