166
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LIVING THROUGH CRISES
Table 6.1. Consumer Price Index, 2009–11 Percentage change from previous year (weight in total) Category Food and nonalcoholic beverages Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels All items
a
Feb. 2009/ Feb. 2008
March 2010/ March 2009
March 2011/ March 2010
34.8 (50.50)
4.5 (36.04)
15.1 (36.04)
6.1 (4.2)
5.3 (18.3)
6.5 (18.3)
25.8 (100)
4.0 (100)
9.2 (100)
Source: Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, http://www.knbs.or.ke. a. Fuel and power in 2009.
region and the wider world) in late 2010, with food price inflation reaching 15 percent in March 2011 (see table 6.1). In anticipation of severe economic impacts from the global economic crisis, the government of Kenya put in place a stimulus package in the second half of 2009 and planned to increase social spending by 25 percent in 2010–11 (KNBS 2011). An initiative to distribute subsidized maize announced in the 2009–10 budget ultimately collapsed, but a national youth employment scheme, several cash transfer programs, and other initiatives have been rolled out since 2009 (Mwega 2010). A World Food Programme (WFP) food-for-work project was abandoned in 2009 because potential beneficiaries were too weak to do the manual labor required (WFP 2009; see also Hossain et al. 2009), but WFP programs and other nongovernmental activities contributed to a new policy emphasis on social protection provision. We turn next to an exploration of what these complex shocks have meant in the lives of people living in poverty and vulnerability in two areas of Kenya. This discussion draws on evidence from three rounds of participatory learning and action research throughout the peak crisis period, in early 2009, 2010, and 2011. With its unique microlevel perspective on the shocks as they unfolded in people’s lives, the research offers insights into their strategies and responses for coping. It also offers rare glimpses of the usually ignored social and well-being impacts of these crises and coping strategies, including how they affected men and women. The chapter draws on the longitudinal qualitative research in the two “listening posts,” one in Nairobi, and the other in communities in the Lango Baya sublocation of the coastal Malindi district. It draws some preliminary conclusions about the pathways on which these shocks may have set people who were already living on low incomes or in poverty.