From the harsh weather and dehumanising squalor, to depending on alms and scavenging for food in the trash bins, homelessness and street life is not for the fainthearted.
Such is Rodgers Oloo's life after his mother died in 2011, making him a street boy whose life depended on the mercies of nature and well-wishers.
Oloo's life turned for the worse in Nakuru city, his birth place and where he completed high school and scored a mean grade of D. It is during this period that he fell in love with birds.
During the recent protests, he has become a ubiquitous fixture along Moi Avenue and at the Tom Mboya statue in Nairobi. He is known as the bird man because of his birds, which are always perched on his head and shoulders.
Oloo says while he was in high school, he would go to the shores of Lake Nakuru to enjoy the chirping of birds and magical multitudes of flamingos.
“The love for the birds grew in me even more. It is a romance I don't even understand,” he adds.
He currently has three birds that he recently rescued. After rescuing them, he gives them a name as a way of bonding. He also ensures they get treatment before releasing them back to the wild once they get well.
“I have a vet here in town who volunteers to treat and vaccinate my birds,” Oloo says.
He currently has a two-year-old bird he has named Johnson. Another one is a five-year-old crow named Corona. The last one is five months old named Jamie.
So, is there any time when the birds are not on his head and shoulder? Oloo says he has a box he uses as a shelter for birds during the night, when it rains and when he is sleeping.
And he has a unique way of communicating with his birds.
“When they are thirsty, I hear them make a groaning sound and I dash, buy them water to quench their thirst. When they want food, they use their beaks to gently hit my head to alert me that they are hungry,” he says.
Do the birds release their waste on him? Oloo says the birds are keen not to soil his clothes.
“It is a spirit-level connection with the birds. I think in my other life, I would a bird,” he said.
The bird man is also ambitious, despite the tough life in the streets. He has since completed some short courses offered for free online and hopes that one day things will change.
“I know there is a day I will move out of the streets and live a decent life. I hope that one day I will get a job and settle down with a family so that my children don’t have to live the life I have lived,” he said.
