OBIO ALI OKUMU

Ali Okumo was born in 1954 in Navakholo. He was the third born in a family of ten children, coming after his older brothers Shabani and Ramadhani.

Ali began school but only reached Standard Two before he had to stop, as his father could not raise the fees needed to keep him there. While some of his brothers continued their education, he was among those who could not.

Once he left school, Ali began working for other people in the village, doing casual labor for a wage. He worked steadily, earning small amounts, and used what he saved to buy his first cows.

Those cows became his dowry. He married for the first time and stayed with his wife for about four to five years before later marrying a second wife, with whom he would build the rest of his family. Together they had four children—a son who died while still young, followed by three daughters.

Ali supported his growing household through his hands, working first as a bicycle repairman and later also as a butcher, slaughtering cattle for others. He carried both trades for many years.

"Nilikuwa nafanyia tu watu kazi," he recalled of those years—simply, that he worked for people to get by.

Around 2010, age caught up with him. The bending and lifting the butchering work demanded became too much for his body, and he had to let it go, keeping only occasional work cutting and selling firewood. In 2017, his wife died, leaving him to face old age largely on his own, with little steady income and a home that increasingly depended on whatever he could gather day to day.

His path to help came through a friend, who noticed his situation and encouraged him to apply for support. Ali gathered the documents needed, made photocopies, and had them delivered to the chief, to a local office, and eventually to Nairobi. Some months later, he received the call that changed his circumstances: he had been enrolled at the Mama Ibado Charity and could begin collecting food supplies.

Since then, Ali receives maize flour, rice, cooking oil, salt, sugar, and porridge flour through the program.

"Hiyo chakula inanisaidia sana," he said—that the food helps him greatly, because before, there was often nowhere for him to turn.

At his age, alone since his wife's passing and no longer able to do the physical work that once sustained him, Ali continues to depend on this support simply to keep his household fed and remains grateful for the difference it has made in his daily life.