Nairobi News

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Starving mum shocks market by trying to sell owl to buy food


A mother of five children on Tuesday stunned residents at a market in Kitui town by trying to sell an owl to raise money to feed her family.

Looking gloomy and emaciated, Ms Kamene Kakai from Museve village placed a Sh250 price tag on the nocturnal bird to enable her buy food.

She said she had nothing else to sell to raise money. She saw the living owl as godsend to push away hunger, at least for a day.

She could not cook the owl for her children because it is not fit for human consumption and trekked for 15km to the market with the hope of selling it instead.

Unperturbed by the huge crowd of onlookers, she pleaded for people to buy the bird – to spare her children another night without food.

STARVE TO DEATH

“My children will starve to death unless someone volunteers to buy this bird. I wish I can get a buyer offering Sh500 or even Sh1,000,” Ms Kakai narrated to the Nairobi News.

“I was left with the choice of watching my children die and opted to bring this owl to the market” she explained.

Her presence interrupted business at the busy Kalundu market for more than an hour as traders and shoppers came to terms with her suffering.

Sh250 can only afford her a two-and-half kg of the subsidized unga.

Her struggles captures the hurdles that starving families are going through in the current food crisis.

None of the onlookers was willing to buy the bird. Trade in wildlife is prohibited under Kenyan wildlife conservation laws.