A family in Eldoret's sprawling Langas Estate is undergoing serious mental and physical torture following a jigger attack compounded by endemic poverty.

The family's six children, aged between one and nine years, are almost bed ridden by jiggers, as hope to resuscitate their hitherto active lives is slowly escaping their parents' minds.

Alphose Lumumba and his wife Pamela Nanjalasay they have now left their fate to God but are in constant search for whatever sin they might have committed to warrant the kind of life they were suffering. When we visited them this week at their filthy one-roomed house they occupy within the estate, their six children, painfully nursing their jigger infested limbs and donning clothes full of flea remained innocently glued to their parents' bed, oblivious of what the unusual strangers were after.

Despite their sorry state of health, the visibly sick and helpless children surprisingly managed to throw some faint smiles at this reporter and two of his colleagues as they went about interviewing their parents about their problems.

Nanjala 27, unmoved by the crowd that had gathered next to her rental house after words went round of our presence in the house, went about her normal domestic chores with soft heart determined to console and give her children hope.

Though the children also sent faint signals that they were out to continue clinging on a thin thread of life, we were fast to conclude that the lives of the six youngsters was fast coming to an end unless the government and other well-wishers urgently come to their aid.

And as we were buried in heavy thoughts trying to decipher the kind of torture the kids and their parents were undergoing, as we waited to commence interview with the couple, a faint mumble hit our ears and we turned our heads in time to catch Mrs. Nanjalas' lips spewing out this lamentation.

“I am not sure what you will have for lunch but let’s wait and see,” she said to little Reiton Lumumba whose left hand thumbnail is badly infected .

The rest of the children blankly stared at her, not uttering a word. Some walked in difficult, seemingly due to the pain inflicted by the jiggers.

“I am used to this kind of life. I have just accepted my fate as there is little I can do about it,” she explained when we inquired about her lifestyle.

Talk of Christmas and she boldly responds, “It’s just like any other day. Each day is a struggle for me and that has become my life,” she said with a mild chuckle.

Nanjala reveals that her husband Alphance Lumumba who used to work in a nearby hotel is no longer employed. “The hotel where he was working closed down and he was left struggling to make ends meet. We rely on menial jobs to put food on the table and pay Sh 600 rent.”

Nanjala explains that for the last two days, she has not gone out to look for a job because her daughter has been crying all through because of the aching finger.

“She needs my attention and I have been staying around to attend to her. The wound became worse when a rat bit part of it at night,” she explains innocently.

The children do not go to school. They have to stay at home and help their parents. At their age, they have no problem washing clothes, smearing houses and fetching water for residents of the estate, at a fee.

Talk of child labour and the elder girl, Victoria is quick to respond, “We are never forced. We have to assist our parents otherwise we might go to bed hungry for many days.”

Curious neighbours interviewed say the family is tormented further by their landlady who does not understand and keeps on threatening to evict them from the house.

“Sometimes, she locks us inside the house demanding we pay outstanding rent arrears,” Mrs Nanjala confirms. “She even bars us from using the compound latrine and fetching water from her borehole.

The foul smell in this room is because my access to water is limited.”

But, the landlady who declined to be named denies the allegations and instead said it’s the family that threatens to beat her whenever she asks them to pay rent. “I am in business and I want them out of my house if they cannot afford rent,” she says.

Nanjala who hails from Kanduyi in Bungoma district says some of her children used to go to school but they have since stopped. She says they are busy helping them meet their basic needs and going to school is thus not a priority, at the moment.

“They cannot concentrate at school on empty stomachs. Besides, their classmates will make fun of them because of the jiggers and fleas on their clothes,” she explains looking at one of her children, Master Avedon, whose fingers deformed due to the effect of the jiggers. Juma Shikhulu and Joseph Shirotse who are village elders in the estate appealed to the government to consider intensifying public health services to slums and other areas inhabited by the poor.

Shikhulu decried rising cases of jiggers amongst the area residents saying the government had a duty to protect its citizens from unhealthy environments.

“Such families not only need financial assistance but sensitization so that they can own cleanliness as a virtue,” says Shikhulu.

He adds that relying on well-wishers is not a lasting solution to the plight of such families as all they needed is a way to live lives free from the jiggers that have made it difficult to get sustainable menial jobs.

“Such jiggers infested people cannot work in hotels and many people cannot offer them jobs for fear they may infect their families with the jiggers and fleas,” Mr Shirotse interjects.

They say neither public health official from the government nor Ahadi Kenya Trust, a Non Governmental Organization started in January 2007 to eradicate jiggers in Kenya had reached the area.