Look ’pon di gully side, do you see anything fi smile about?

I am a massive fan of reggae music. I am not quite sure where I picked the habit, even though it is highly likely that my upbringing on the fringes of Eastlands is to blame for this. All I know is that there is a certain inexplicable comfort that arises from a well-produced reggae song. And for the lovers of reggae music, you will agree with me that Morgan Heritage are peerless and the quality of their music unparalleled.

I particularly love their song Nothing To Smile About, in which the chorus — which I know by heart— goes something like:

Do you see anything fi smile bout?

Look at that hungry child,

Do you see anything fi smile bout?

Look at the school weh deh youth dem go fi get dem education,

Do you see anything fi smile bout?

Look at the conditions of our police stations,

Do you see anything fi smile bout?

In the second stanza, Morgan Heritage ask “How can a nation believe in this way?” and “How can a government play so many games?”

I have been thinking a lot about this song and how, although it was written for the Jamaican market, it so well fits into our current national situation.

Two weeks ago I saw a video that nearly brought tears to my eyes. It was a young woman — probably in her early 30s — who had just lost her job, and so she took a video of herself leaving her former workplace, reminding Kenyans of a painful reality.

She says: “This is me, heading home. And here is my letter. It is a letter that says that my job is over. (At the) end of this month I won’t be coming back…. I am a mum. Everything is on me, basically; rent and nanny, which also means (the nanny) will get affected by this. She is also jobless. We need a roof over our heads and there is school fees to be paid…. We pay our taxes diligently yet most companies are retrenching, we can say we will be back, but how… with these hard, economic times?”

This was a woman in pain, and I hope that we find her and find her something to do to take care of her mother and her child. She is a woman who faithfully pays tax, a law-abiding citizen who probably voted for this government, but what did she get instead? She was laid off, probably not because of a fault of her own, but because her government let her down, just like thousands of young people who know the pain of joblessness too well.

The pain of joblessness is unimaginably unbearable. It is a dignity-stripping experience that robs you of your self-esteem and self-confidence. The agony of sending out your CV to an array of companies only to get regret letters does a number on your mental health, it makes you think that you are unworthy and doomed. Yet this is the current situation of many Kenyan youth who, if not struggling with poorly paying jobs, are facing retrenchment or having their CVs tossed into the bins.

That young woman’s video sparked a serious debate on the state of joblessness in the country, especially amongst young people. Many people began to share their stories on how they lost their jobs and the depths of despair they have sunk to because of unemployment.

The government might try to sugar-coat its achievements, but the ugly truth is we are having a highly educated but jobless young population that is increasingly getting angry and desperate at a government that seems to have forgotten them. And that is a dangerous thing.

This year alone we have seen companies like East African Portland Cement, Telkom Kenya, Stanbic Bank of Kenya, SportPesa and East African Breweries announce plans to retrench thousands of Kenyans who will most certainly not find jobs in the near future.

When Kenyans got a well-deserved break on Thursday to celebrate Moi Day, apart from the discussion on whether the former dictator deserves recognition, they were finding it difficult to locate something to celebrate in this country.

I don’t mean to be an agent of negativity — I like to look at the brighter side of life — but when you live in a country where the government plays games on its young population, it is difficult to find something to smile about.

Ms Chege is the director of the Innovation Centre at Aga Khan University Graduate School of Media and Communications.