Lenku eulogises first Maa woman to go to school

Governor Joseph Lenku on Tuesday led Kajiado residents in observing a minute of silence in honour of Loice Mpaiyai, who died last Thursday.

He said Mpaiyai, who died aged 96, was the first Maasai woman to go to school 85 years ago.

“She was a real trailblazer in the education sector,” the governor said.

Mpaiyai will be buried on Friday in Kimana.

Lenku was addressing hundreds of people who turned up in Kimana town, Kajiado South, to celebrate Jamhuri Day.

He said the 2010 Constitution which created devolution, envisaged bringing government services closer to the people and handed them the power to determine their destiny through citizen participation.

“In Kajiado, we picked the momentum quite slowly in the early years of devolution but accelerated it when I took the reins of leadership six years ago,” Lenku said.

He said devolution has made a tremendous impact on the lives of the people of Kajiado.

“Devolution has created an apt platform to decide and determine our future. A space that has unlimited opportunities for our people and a space where every Kenyan finds identity in diversity,” the governor said.

The Maa culture in Kajiado continues to blossom, he said.

“Today, we appreciate the role our culture plays in our nationhood. We are grateful to our president for accepting our culture to be celebrated every year as it happened in the Maasai Mara recently,” Lenku said.

“We are enjoying the fruits of devolution and every year, as we go through our budget cycles, there is always something new to offer to the people of Kajiado,” he said.

Lenku said the county has constructed health facilities across the region and upgraded many using devolution money.

The governor said a person who seeks medical attention for a chronic disease does not have to pay, courtesy of the county’s Mbuzi Moja, Afya Bora programme.

He said more than 25,000 households are beneficiaries.

“A person can now turn on a tap and enjoy clean water for both domestic and livestock use, courtesy of our water projects that are meant to improve access to water,” Lenku said.

He said development priorities change with the times.

“It is in this regard that we adopted a four-pronged strategy to navigate around the demands of the new reality of climate change,” he said.

Lenku said the county’s budgetary considerations on all major sectors have a strong component of climate change, all revolving around interventions and adaptation as well as creating communities that are resilient to the global phenomenon.

He said livestock production being the main source of livelihood and a major contributor to Kajiado’s economy, has received a harsh beating from the dramatic and unprecedented vagaries of climate change.

Long dry spells, he said, have made it untenable and unsustainable for the county’s livestock sector to continue applying the same old techniques and expect different results in the circumstances that the farmers find themselves in.