Kibera Slums

Kibera resident

In the slum

Friday 21.01.11

After a very relaxing morning at the hotel we headed back to the shop we bought the oven from, only to be showed that actually it was working and we were ‘silly mzungus’ who didn’t know how to turn it on! Oops, slightly embarrassing!  But that’s a relief now that we don’t have to wait around for it to be fixed.

Then we headed back to the hospital to meet Joseph, our contact from Shape the Child Foundation in Kibera.  We were dropped at the border of the slums by a hospital driver, but there were 4 adults crammed into the tiny backseat of the car so it was a squishy, bumpy ride!  Kibera slums are actually the biggest in Africa, not just Kenya and are home to nearly one million people.  Most of the children are orphaned by AIDS and most of the families are made up of single mothers and up to 9 children.  These women are often abandoned by their husbands, who move on to another family when life gets to tough financially.  The women are then forced to allow other men into their beds for money to provide for the family, and this in turn produces more children, and some also take in orphaned children.

We were met by Francis another worker at the centre.  He works in the education sector while Joseph works in the Health area.  Francis and Joseph directed us to put our cameras away and secure our bags tightly and follow them quickly to the centre which is not far from the outskirts.  As we immediately crossed a dirty river, the stench was overpowering.  There is rotting rubbish and sewerage running through the river and alongside on the banks.  Children were even playing ball in the river.

The centre caters for 450 students of primary school age and they were all so excited to see us and laughed at our names when we introduced ourselves.  It is quite a good set up they have, especially considering it is in the middle of Kibera slums!  We were then offered the opportunity of being taken to the women’s project where 12 women are employed to make jewellery to sell in the markets.  The aim is to expand this and continue training other women to make a sustainable future for the women of Kibera.  This project is only very new and they are still in the process of training the original group.

Before leaving the education centre we were told to stay as a group, follow very closely, hold onto our bags and run when directed to.  It was a pretty daunting brief so we were expecting the worst but apart from the occasional “keep walking” and “increase your pace” we didn’t come across any hassles.  Joseph and Francis were explaining to us that thievery is rife amongst Kibera, especially from Mzungus.  Some of the residents trek the 7km into the city everyday in search of work, and have to walk the 7km home again when they have found none, so anything they can get their hands on to steal and trade or sell is worth it to them, often at any cost.

As we hurried our way through the winding paths, stepping over rubbish and sewerage we were constantly greeted by children yelling “hurryoo, hurryoo!” which is actually “how are you” but of course a bit gets lost in translation!  The expected reply is “fine, thanks” which makes them all start giggling and repeating “fine, fine!”.  It is pretty funny and to see them get so much joy out of a simple and brief conversation.  Another thing that fascinated the locals was my dreadlocks and everywhere I went I heard “mzungu dreads!” or “rastafarian!” and they would all be pointing at me with big smiles.

The women’s project was another small compound, similar to the education centre.  There were two ladies working at a table beading bags, bracelets, necklaces, rings, and more.  They informed us that one was the instructor and the other was learning.  It can take up to a week to make one bag even!  We met Mr Genesis here who had very good english, and he told us a bit about his life and how he had a mentor that had showed him the right way, and that he now hopes to do the same for other children in Kibera.

We were then accompanied out of the slum but the three men who at one stage had to chase a pestering local away.  The slum is actually huge and looking at it from above or in photos does not do it justice.  It took us 15 minutes of very quick walking, jumping, dodging and rushing to make it out of the slum to the matatu stage.  After a massive traffic jam we finally made it back to Nairobi and did some quick supermarket shopping.  In the supermarket I began to feel horrendously unwell, and had to grasp for a food shelf to stop myself from passing clean out!  This was inevitable really as I havn’t eaten very well since my arrival as I just havn’t been hungry!  We hurried through the rest of the shopping and stumbled along the streets to the tuk tuks.  By this stage I was not feeling well at all and made it back to our room where I slept for about an hour.

Upon waking again, I was also feeling quite nauseous which was a surprise as I thought it was merely a case of not eating enough, but the nausea was a sign that I had probably picked up a bug or something.  Tammi gave me two of her anti-nausea tablets and I snoozed again, skipping dinner.  But upon waking I knew that I felt no better and spent the next half hour in the bathroom.  Finally feeling somewhat better I managed to get some sleep for the night.