Disability is not inability. Meet one Francis Wasike Khayenje, a 63-year-old man hailing from Sitikho, Bungoma County and you won't believe how the blind man earns a living from digging latrines.
In a feature story aired by NTV on Thursday, March 12, the grandfather of one, detailed how he managed to focus on his venture, disproving many doubters.
"Kazi ni kazi. Bora ikupatie chakula kwa meza. (You don't have to despise a job, as long as it puts food on your table)," Khayenje narrated.
With the help of an assistant, Khayenje wakes up at dawn everyday and heads to work.
A report by People Daily on Friday, March 13, detailed that Khayenje has dug latrines for over four decades.
“I hope to continue working until my granddaughter is 15 years old so that I can rest," he disclosed his source of strength.
He, however, was not born blind. Khayenje was diagnosed with eye disease at the age of 26-years-old.
"I was referred to Kakamega, Mukumu and Sabatia hospitals for further diagnosis, but because I had no means to raise money for more specialised treatment, I lost my sight," he recalled.
Between 1976 and 1979, before losing his eyesight, he worked as a weeder at a sugar company in Western Kenya before joining a tea estate as a picker for five months, then resolving to his fate.
“I couldn’t continue working because of the pain. Eye specialists said they could not do anything apart from giving me a white cane,’’ the father of six disclosed.
His wife, Alice Juma, heaped praise on him, lauding him for undertaking such an extraordinary task. Before marrying her, he had parted with his first wife and lost the second wife he married later when she passed away.
“My husband is caring and hardworking, even with his condition he still struggles and fends for us,” the wife, who sells second-hand clothes stated, recalling how she met him at a church service in 1980 before he turned blind.
His work, however, is challenging as employers at times take advantage of his situation to demand cheap labour. He charges Ksh 150 per foot dug.
“If my children could have attained better education, they could have helped me but now," he lamented.
Video: NTV
