Parents in Tana River County struggle with birth certificate acquisition

Every parent wants to deliver their child to a hospital and then have a simple process of acquiring a birth certificate.

For the residents of Boka, it is the story of a long and expensive journey of more than 250 kilometres to the registry office in Hola to obtain a birth certificate.

The journey begins with a 30-kilometre walk on foot, followed by a motorbike ride before boarding a bus to Madogo, a distance of more than 100 kilometres, and then connecting to Bura, 108 kilometres, before taking a bumpy ride on rough roads in the boot of a probox for another 50 kilometres.

"We leave home and travel to Hola, with the bad roads and the huge cost of travel through the bushes in the boot of a probox with your child, it is a journey we take since we don't have a choice," said Fathma Ishmail, a mother of two.

Fathma stated that the travel to Hola takes a long time to arrange since, soon after recovering from delivery, she goes on a hustle to raise funds for the trip, which requires selling milk to intermediaries 25 kilometres from home every day.

It takes roughly seven months to earn enough money for the journey, as the hustle also includes feeding the family.

To secure a birth certificate for her first child, she paid Sh5000 in travel, housing in the busy Hola town because she had no relatives, and a bribe to some personnel.

"You would get into the registry of births office to find the clerks seated just chatting and laughing, they will assume not to have seen you until you approach one who will deliberately tell you the machines are down, you come the following day, only to see another person walk in and then out having been attended to," she said.

Many people are familiar with the culture at the registry office, and those who have acquired the beat of impunity in these offices have learned to dance to the music out of necessity, as the services are not simple to obtain.

Locals have attempted to inform the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, but all arrests have resulted in little change because the criminals have been released and permitted to continue their criminal activities.

Abdimalik Shukri travelled a long distance with his wife from Bangali, leaving his cattle with his brother and first wife to assist his second wife in obtaining a birth certificate for their son.

It was his third time making such a journey; the 62-year-old had done it with his first wife, and he knew it would not be easy due to the costs.

"I raised about Sh15,000 for this journey after selling some of my livestock, however when we got to Hola we found a very long queue of people from very far away as well, some from Madogo, some from Waldena, they had been there for three days and were yet to be attended to, so we had to wait," he said.

Little did he know that this excursion would lead to a life change.

His story was considerably different, as he remained at a family friend's house for 13 days while pursuing the birth certificate for his daughter.

Before he knew it, he was trading goats on the street with his friend, then selling khat to inhabitants in the hinterlands, hiring a vehicle to travel to the villages in search of money.

Abdimalik Shukri is among the parents in Tana River County who have struggled with birth certificate acquisition. Photo: Farhiya Hussein

The enthusiasm for the business led to his buddy giving him a plot of property where he settled with his second wife, who would soon be joined by his first wife.

"I did not see this coming when I got here, but the frustrations of obtaining this paper finally gave me a home far away from home, at times I feel bad, but there is life in this town at least, I can take my wife to a hospital nearby next time and just leave the nurses to do the birth certificate process," he said.

It took him more than six months to receive the birth certificate, which brought him great satisfaction.

Miriam Abshiro, a young mother, is going through a similar battle, with her condition worsening over time.

"I have made more than six trips to the registry of births office, I have waited for more than a year for that certificate only to be told to start the process anew, it is depressing," she described.

Her story is not unfamiliar to many, as scores of them recount their ordeals that cost them tens of thousands of shillings, while others have given up the quest.

The majority of residents of Bangale, Madogo, and Bura lack birth documents and hence are not enrolled in school.

"Back in the village some are very grown and don't have certificates or Identity Cards, you can only tell they are Kenyans by the Vaccinations, but they have given up this tiring process," she said.

A handful were lucky to have entered until class seven but were dropped due to a lack of the necessary birth certificate to register for tests.

Tana River County Commissioner David Koskei claims that the inhabitants of Tana North Sub-County deserve to suffer because they caused it.

"Before this agony, the people from those areas were allowed to do registration by representation, a privilege they abused by exposing the country to insecurity,"  Koskei said.

He claimed that because the constituency borders the highway to Garissa, Dadaab, and Somalia, the elders would defy caution and instead conduct a major registration of aliens, exposing the country to insecurity.

"One elder would come with documents of 100 people for registration in a month, but after another month, the same elder would come with 80 more documents, these are numbers of childbirths we were not recording even in the headquarters where the population is high and had easy access to the registration office," he said.

According to Koskei, further inquiry found that foreigners were being smuggled across the border in dubious ways, their documents were being created at a cost, and they were even going out of their way to obtain the requisite document.

As a result, the security team decided to move the mandate for birth and death registration to the headquarters, withdrawing the right of registration by representation and thus reverting to individual representation, to close the loopholes.

For more than a decade, residents of Bangale, Madogo, Boka, Nanighi, and other areas have had to go miles away with their newborns as proof to obtain birth certificates.