During my first week in East Africa, back in January, our program made a trip out to the two largest slums in Kenya. I didn't have the time then to write an entry that would do justice to my experiences there and the incredible people that I met, but here is the story now. I apologize for the length!
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| The main road in Kibera |
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The slums, or "informal settlements," that we visited are some of the largest in all of Africa, and each is home to 200,000 to 1 million ppeople. They are "informal" because the people living in them do not have any rights to the land. It is usually owned privately, and the reisdents usually pay the landowners to live in pretty terrible housing conditions. Waste management is pratically non-existent, mostly since there are no actual roads for garbage trucks to drive on. Often as an attempt to get people out, large portions of the slum area are just bulldozed down. But that does nothing to solve the problem, since the people just resettle in another part of the slum, squished into even smaller spaces.
There is a lot of work going on to improve living conditions in slum areas. Top-down governmental and UN programs are involved, as well as grassroots initiatives beginning in the communities themselves. These efforts are made even more vital since about 70% of the African urban population resides in informal settlements! A huge rural-urban migration has left people living in unhealthy, dangerous environments without basic services. Knowing this, I thought the experience of visiting Kibera and Mathare, Kenya's two largest slums, would be very difficult to get through. But at the close of the day, I was surprised at how calm and (relatively) unrattled I was. Albeit, I believe that I was, at least in part, still in shock. I had anticipated absolutely tragic and desolate places, and while I would never want to have to live in these slums, I had also been taken to places of deep community ties and laughter.
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| View of the slum as we entered Kibera |
The first thing you notice upon arriving at Kibera is definitely the smell. The stench of human waste rises from the drains lining the main road, the start of which was built by the Kenyan government, the remainder by UN-Habitat (but, it has yet to be completed). Before you even enter the main slum area, this smell has overwhelmed you. All along the road, vendors sell fruit, meat, clothes, shoes, and coffins. Hair salons are also abundant. The most unsettling experience of the day may have been the sight of old meat in a butcher's window. it was piled high against the glass. The top two slabs were thick and red, identical to what could be found in a North American grocery store. But the pieces at the bottom of the case were barely identifiable - having sat out in the heat for who knows how long, the meat had turned into what very closely resembled a tie-dye t-shirt. I couldn't believe such badly rotten meat could be for sale or that people would be forced to consume such dangerous food.
We had discussed the night before our visit the notion of "slum tourism," and we were very conscious of not treating the people living in the slums or the community as a whole like a spectacle or a trip to the zoo. Odlly, as we were walking along the main drag, I felt a bit like a spectacle myself, as the people in the community stared at me, wondering what the heck we were doing there, in their space.
Members of the local community affiliated with UN-Habitat led us on a kind of "show-and-tell" of some of the projects associated with the Slum Upgrading Program: the main road; drains for water to prevent flooding (which can do a lot of damage to homes made from mud); showers and toilets for improved sanitation; a community centre in-the-works for various community and health servies; as well as the Youth Workshop. As we were "touring" the bathrooms, two local women were loudly laughing at us (which only heightened the sense of being a spectacle), but I guess taking a tour of their toilets was a bit odd!
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| New shower built by UN-Habitat |
Walking through the slum and seeing the layers upon layers of garbage, floating in muddy canals and embedded in dirt, goats wondering freely and feeding on grass and waste, and women washing their clothes in water spewing out of a leaky pipe (part of an extensive tangled network of twisted, broken pipes weaving exposed through the alleys) was a lot to take in. It was all so far from the world I grew up in that it was impossible for me to truly imagine what it would be like to actually live there.
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| Goats feeding on garbage and grass |
While the trip to Kierba was very informative, a large "distance" was maintained between us and the people living there. We were not really able to interact with the residents, except for briefly with the youth leaders at the youth workshop, who were very happy to speak with us. A completely new experience was waiting for us in Mathare. There, much of the updrading and beneficial work done in the community is not organized or funded by large parties, such as the government or the UN, but rather it is the local people with local independent groups that are working toward positive change and upgrading in Mathare.
When we arrived, dozens of children were hanging around near where we unloaded from the bus. They were dressed in tatty sweaters and school clothes, but their smiles, laughter, and sheer numbers immediately lent a completely different feel to Mathare. We were welcomed by members of the CME (Canada Mathare Education) Trust staff, graduates of the program, which provides funding for teenagers to attent secondary school, as well as members of the Mathare Roots Youth Group. We divided into smaller groups and were led on guided and often personalized tours through the "streets" of Mathare.
One of our first stops was a primary school on the edge of the slum. We were greeted by a dance group of12 very talented and obviously dedicated young girls, backed by a young male drummer. The dancers wore plan grey dresses, high white socks, and dusty shoes. Their routine blew me away; their rhythm, coordination, precision, cohesiveness, and their energy throughout a very long performance in the heat were so astounding. I've been a dancer since I was in the second grade, and it made my heart swell to see these 13 incredible young students. They were part of an after-school program that aims to engage young people in Mathare in positive activities rather than have them get involved in drugs or alcohol.
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| Mathare school dance group |
Our guides had attended the school and appeared very proud of it. They eagerly introduced us to the students in each class and showed us which classrooms they had spent their earlier years in. The building was not fancy and the children were crammed into every bit of available space, but the opportunity for these children to learn was a real possibility and very heartening.
After our visit to the school, I spent the rest of the afternoon with Jackie. A member of Roots, a graduate of the CME Trust program, and a resident of Mathare, she was above all a friendly, welcoming guide, happy to show me around and explain small things about the slum that helped me to get a clearer idea of her life and the realities of living in a slum. She was dressed very well, in a clean skirt and top and dusty sandals. Her long dark hair was done in many small braids, which at first I didn't think had any significance other than fashion. When I asked how long it took for her to have her hair braided, she replied that it had taken a whole day and been painful. But, for girls and women in Mathare, she explained, there weren't many options. Hair was easily dirtied and tangled and not easily washed, so girls either kept their hair very short (she didn't like this because then you ended up looking like a boy) or you got your hair braided to at least keep it tidy.
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| Our group in Mathare. Jackie is standing behind me. Too bad I'm blinking :) |
For a short while, Jackie and I got separated from the rest of the group, and I belive this gave me the chance to see more of Mathare and actually meet people one on one. Jackie introduced me to her "mama," not her birth mother but a women she lives near and is very close to. We shook hands and chatted briefly. She smiled and made me feel welcome, not like the massive intruder I felt like in Kibera. We walked through the old "streets" of the slum, essentially very narrow dirt back alleys between the houses with barely enough space for two people to pass next to one another. As we walked along, dozens of young children ran towards me with the arms outstretched. I shook each of their hands, and they giggled and scurried away. Jackie told me afterwards that they were not actually trying to greet me, but rather just wanted to touch my strange white hand. They had then run off to boast to their friends that they had met a mzungu, or white person. Again, I was the spectacle!
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| School children hanging around after class. |
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We make an effort to reverse the tradition of thinking of Africa as one homogeneous place and Africans as all the same, yet as I talked with Jackie she always referred to me as a European, and a man I passed in Mathare even called out to me saying, "Hey, White Man!" (when I turned around, he corrected himself and called me a "white lady" instead). I was taken aback slightly, but should I have been offended? Is it fair to want them to see me as an individual, too? Do I excuse them because they don't know any better? And is that not yet another value judgment on my part, that they have more to learn and should become more like us? Who decides?
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| View of Mathare |
