Kibera Slums of Nairobi
From rags to riches. Never has that been more true to us than from our Saturday experience at the lush tea farm where we feasted on rich foods to our Sunday experience, where we picked our way through sticky, slimy, smelly trash where over one million live in one acre. Our guides were Reagan and Bossman each about 18 years old and both had grown up in this slum. They now attend the same church as Yeen-lan and she had set up this most heart wrenching experience for us.
How can one describe this slum? Bits and pieces of sticks, cement, metal, mud and plastic piled together to make so many tiny huts--each home to several adults and many children or a store front selling whatever they could scrounge up. A long ditch dug along the sides of the alleys filled with crud. Small charcoal fires in the middle where pots boiled and food--what little we saw--was
being cooked. Lines of people standing in line with plastic cooking oil containers--waiting to pay for some water. On top of a large mound of plastic bags and other trash sat two small buildings--the bathrooms for those who got a key when they paid their rent. Since it was too dangerous to go out at night, if you needed to relieve yourself, you went in a plastic bag and added it to the mound in the morning. That explained the mound of plastic bags. Yes, I said rent. Each hut paid between $12 to $30 a month to live there. That did include electricity for some and for those who pirated electricity, they could expect to have their homes torched. Reagan took us into his mother's home. She was ill with malaria so only peeked around a curtain from her bed to say "Karibu"--welcome. Three small couches lined the walls each covered with very clean, white sheets that his mother had embroidered flowers on. The only bedroom & this livingroom was about 12' x 6'. The walls were made of sticks covered with mud but curtains covered most of it. 
No windows only a door that you needed to crouch down in order to enter. In one corner sat a small TV and a single light bulb hung from a wire. I asked if most homes had a TV and Bossman said yes. It made me sad to think that the TV showed them a world so different than theirs. And every where there were children--laughing, playing, running to touch us and say "How are you?" "How are you?" How ironic that they wanted to know how we were? Mud piles, empty bottles, broken glass, pieces of string, plastic bags and sticks were their toys. So many children. I saw the faces of some of the orphans here at Rafiki in some of their faces and knew that this is where they'd lived if not for Rafiki Orphange. Reagan told us that most families here could not afford the $700 a year that it cost to send a child to school. And so the cycle will continue. It amazed me to see how clean most the adults looked. They also smiled many greeting our guides. I asked Bossman how many children most women had and he smiled and said, "If they are working, two or three. If they are not they have more time for love making and have very many." He also told me birth control pills we available free but most feel having babies made them more of desirable woman. Both boys talked about their family tribe in what they called the 'upcountry'. I asked why they and other didn't move back there. They said, no jobs and there you would get old very fast. When they got old, about 40 or so, they would go to the up country to live. They explained that most people who live in Kibera would not want to move away. They were close to shops, Nairobi and family and many friends. It was home to them. Reagan joked with Rog asking if he would like to trade homes with him--then he could go to school at U of M. He and Bossman were lucky ones. They had found sponsors to help them pay for schooling--though right now they'd run out of money so were trying to find more sponsors. Bossman said either the youth go to school or became thieves. Those who turn bad bullied others into joining them so their gang was stronger. We did hear church hymns being sung, the salvation army marched through and also they were holding an outside service and Reagan proudly showed us the medical center that was run by his church, the Baptist Church of Nairobi. We thanked our guides and then went to the Baptist Church meeting up with Yeen-lan.I'm sure you know what we prayed for.
