Tom Bentley is the lead singer in a little known Reggae band called ‘Hakuna Pesa’ but while he hasn’t found fame and fortune through his music much of the money this group earns goes to funding a boxing club in a poverty stricken city in Kenya called Nakuru. During the golden era of Kenyan boxing the country won eight gold medals at the All Africa Games in 1987, with the team enjoying further success at the Olympic Games the following year when Robert Wangila became the first ever African boxer to win a gold medal.
Kenya’s most decorated boxer, Philip Waruinge, trained out of the now defunct Nakuru Boxing Club and represented the country at three separate Olympic Games winning a bronze medal in 1968 and taking the silver four years later. According to newspaper reports Waruinge is now living in poverty and his plight mirrors that of Kenyan boxing which had been in a steady state of decline for the best part of three decades. The club Bentley founded is unique in that it allows fighters to train free of charge and he says that the cost is what deters the current generation from taking up the sport.
“The Kaloleni Boxing Club started two years ago. I had the vision for years but finally met a few ex-boxers and we decided to make a free club in the slums because that’s where the best fighters come from. There were no free clubs in Kenya and the sport which was once prosperous has almost died out with no money, no sponsorship and no access for the youth.” he told Fightland. The poverty level in Nakuru is currently at 44% meaning that nearly half the population of the city is surviving on less than a dollar a day and as a consequence crime is rife, particularly in the five slums which are home to approximately two thirds of the city’s population.
Keeping Boxing Alive in Kenya
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