By Peter Kidi in Kakuma
This piece responds to the language of procedures, targeting, and “expressed interest” that increasingly shapes humanitarian programming. In the documentation from aid agencies, participation in livelihood opportunities is often tied to registration, assessment, and demonstration of “interest”. In camps like Kakuma, such requirements can become barriers that leave entire households outside the safety net.
He stood in the sun at registration,
his name trembling on dry lips,
his ration card pressed flat like a prayer.
But the officer shook his head:
“You were not in the list.
You did not express interest during ESR.“
Interest?
His children’s bellies were already
shouting interest,
their tears were already
signing every form.
He walked back to his shelter,
dust heavy on his shoulders,
to find his children crying,
their hands clutching emptiness
as if it could become bread.
That night he dreamed of sneaking in
sliding into the back of the training hall,
listening through walls,
stealing knowledge not meant for him,
as though hunger itself needed permission
to learn survival.
They call it procedure,
they call it policy,
they call it fairness.
But he knows its other name:
exclusion.
Forgotten households are not silent;
they are songs sung in cracked voices,
they are footsteps tracing fences,
they are fathers turned thieves of hope,
trying to steal a future
because the present has abandoned them.
And when he sits at night,
watching his children sleep,
their ribs rising like questions,
he wonders if tomorrow’s training
will ever teach the world
how to count the ones it leaves behind.
This poem was first published by the New Humanitarian
