Kibera and Life in the Slums

Twelve year old FirstBorn has lived in Kenya for two and a half years, but we're kind of aware that she hasn't really been exposed to the life led by the majority of Kenyans her age. Yes, lots of her friends are Kenyan. And Rwandan, Senegalese, Burundian, Ghananian and the like. But in her British curriculum school she's mixing with a tiny minority of the more prosperous - of all nationalities - in this country.

And yes, her Dad and I tell stories of the less privileged friends and clients we work with. My student, one of 27 children of a polygamous father. My student who at Firstborn's age had been orphaned and was setting up home on his own, or rather, as on your own as you can be when you're responsible for three younger siblings in a land without social security. The children at the remand home who've been abandonned by desperate parents.  But 'Yadadayada' its not the same hearing these things at second hand from a parent.  So FirstBorn and I bunked off school today for some mother daughter bonding cum exposure to another side of Kenya in Kibera, possibly Africa's largest slum.

We started off with a websearch about HIV. FirstBorn knows all about the Black Death, scourge of medieval Britain. She knows about the Spanish flu pandemic in 1919. But no one - not her Dad and I - not the school had explained about HIV, which 1.5 million Kenyans are living with today. Many without access to retrovirals.  1.2 million Kenyan children have been orphaned by HIV we read. I hadn't known that. In fact, kept mis-quoting the statistic through the day - 120,000 children - No Mum, 1.2 million children. That's a city the size of Birmingham of orphaned children, in this country, less populous than the UK. 6% of the population living with HIV. And this shouldn't be a far distant issue. The school's handbook is clear: Children will be welcomed to school irrespective of their HIV status. Quite right. So at 6% of the population, a number of her peers at the school will be HIV positive. Some of our staff have disclosed their status to me. She knows about diabetes and asthma. And yet none of us had taken time to tell FirstBorn about HIV.

Kibera is home to anywhere between 200,000 (census figures) and 800,000 of the poorest Kenyans. It's hilly so has no sewage pipes. Open drains, which overflow in the rainy season, carrying rubbish and worse through many homes. Houses are made of tin or mud. They don't have running water - you go to the nearest standpipe and carry your bucket, uphill, home.  NGOs have built some toilets and showers, but they are few and far between. Not as close as a UK corner shop. One block of five toilets was shared between around a thousand families. And you pay for their use - around 5KSh a visit for the cheapest ones or 30 KSh for a family per day. But some of the poorest families live on 75 KSh - around a dollar - for the whole family for a day. So you can't afford to spend too much on that child with the dodgy tummy.

Infact the toilet block we visited was shut for renovations. The smell and the discarded plastic bags all around showed even the slowest learner what people used when the toilets were shut, or when they couldn't afford them. Flying toilets - do your business in a plastic bag - also safer at night when its too dangerous to venture outside to a toilet - and then discard your business on the road next day. Smelly, unhygenic, unpalatable, as small children with no shoes crowded round us, noses running, hands mucky with what they'd been touching.

We visited a preschool - 30 children under 6, 7 of them HIV positive, one inspirational teacher in one room around 10 foot by 10 foot, no running water and filled potties around in the yard, waiting for someone to take them to the latrine opposite.  A small business networking group for HIV positive mothers. They had also run poultry keeping from their business premises (again 10x10 room) but had recently decided that the loose chickens underfoot was too much to cope with.  A youth employment project making sophisticated jewellry from raw bones. But the smell and the bonedust filling the air, the naked blades from the machinery, not for the fainthearted.  Toi market.  And a final soda in our tourguide's Mum's house. Again a single room, 10x10.
'And how many of you lived here when you were growing up?'
'Nine of us. Four siblings. Mum. Dad. Uncle. And two cousins who came to live with us.'
Nine in a single room.

I went to a presentation by a US NGO recently, where they spoke on the results of a survey of young girls they'd conducted in Kibera. Almost 50% of 16 year old girls in their study had swapped sex for food. The youngest child whom they'd supported to access justice had been six, and had been being raped by a neighbour, with impunity until the NGO's advocates had stepped in.  Another NGO survey says that 60% of Kibera's residents are HIV positive. I don't know. I don't have the means to assess or to judge. But in the daytime, accompanied by enthusiastic residents, visiting thriving social projects, well this felt a lively, purposeful community. I didn't feel unsafe. I didn't feel ill at ease.  But I don't live there.
But I'd spent time in Kibera before. What did Firstborn think? 
'Gosh it was crowded and hot in that preschool. But the children were really sweet.'
'I realised how lucky we are. We have three toilets in our house. And there were five for thousands of people in Kibera.  And its really not nice when there aren't enough toilets.  I have my own room and it has windows. It was so hot in that house, and there were only five of us in it. Imagine at night with nine in that one room.'

But most tellingly,
'Do you know Mum, that's the first time I've walked around on the street in Nairobi. In two and a half years.'
And its true. Outside Nairobi, in Naivasha, Nanyuki, Mombasa, we wander around. But in Nairobi when we go on errands together we go in the car, park in a mall. On my own, dropping off cheques, paying national insurance, yes I wander round on foot. But with the kids in tow, no.  So that's a resolution for me for the future. Breaking out of the malls with the kids. Loafing. Looking at things in markets. Waiting in long endless queues. Spotting a bargain at the mitumba. All as much of the Kenyan experience as Kibera.

We visited Kibera with Kibera Tours. I recommend them.  http://www.kiberatours.com/

Shamefaced

It's the Christmas holidays. FirstBorn, SecondBorn and I had been to see a film - Johnny English Reborn - at our local mall, and to have a sly pizza afterwards.  And in typical Kenyan fashion, we'd taken a doggy bag of our left over pizza and cooling chips for sometime later.

Leaving the luxury mall at rushhour, we drove at snail's pace past the small children - aged around three, five and eight, - begging for money from the drivers.  SecondBorn gets it, that that's where they live, on the street. But was loth to part with his bit of the pizza, which is a rare and relished treat for us here.

But I passed over our doggy bag, and we all turned to look at the eight year old boy's face. And his little brother, bright shining cheeks, aged around four, racing as fast as his four year old legs could carry him, through the traffic towards the cooling chips. How it made me ashamed.  Children, younger than ours, who don't have enough to eat, in our bit of our town.

Food is domestic when you have it, yet political when its scarce.  Living in a land where there's hunger makes me far more conscious of this.  When we have leftovers from our evening meal we plate them up and pass them on to our guards. But if things get into the fridge, well they can linger there and be discovered a week later, wizened with traces of mould, a blight on our conscience when others around us would have welcomed them, but were too polite to ask. 

It's not simple.  My friends who grew up here handle it better. But we were at a dinner party recently, and I was chatting to an Ethiopian woman in her late twenties.
'I was in the butchers recently and saw the sign for 'staff meat'.  How awful.' she exclaimed. 'We'd never do that in my country.'
Staff meat is the really ropy old meat, which is sold to the middle classes who don't choose to feed their staff the same as they eat.  We give a food allowance so our staff can choose what they buy themselves. But intentionally buying for others worse than you'd buy for yourselves. Well that, to my mind, - and to that of my Ethiopian friend - is dire.
'In Ethiopia' she said, 'we lived rich and poor next to each other. We played together on the street. And the poorer family next door would come and eat with us each evening.  Eat the same food.'

But its what I close my mind to much of the time here. That most children here are less well fed than mine. That by prioritising how and when I give to others, I am part of the posse who buy good stuff for my nearest and dearest, and tolerate a regime of chance scraps from my table - staff meat - for the rest.


Other posts like this one:
http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/09/poverty-prison-visiting.html

http://onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/06/please-look-after-this-bear-thank-you.html

Poverty & Prison-visiting

If you open your eyes Kenya's poverty is evident all around, even in our prosperous Nairobi suburb.  The barefoot, tattered men with large sacks who come and sort through our rubbish before the binmen arrive.  The orphan asking passers-by to donate towards his school uniform so he too may go to school. The carrots stolen from our guineapigs to feed the children of our guards. But for me its in the throw-away comments in conversation that yawning chasms of circumstance are disclosed.

Things weren't working out with Bright-eyed, the part-time cook.  So on the eighth day of her trial, after several warnings, I sat her down and let her go. She was downcast but not all that surprised, and cheered to be paid to the end of the month and given matatu fare home.  So I was surprised to hear from her again three days later. 
'I left my other pair of underwear behind. Can I come and get it?'
Bright-eyed lives in Ngong, 15 miles away.  She doesn't have a post-box or means to receive post. So she's coming 15 miles, - walking? - back to a house from which she was sacked, to pick up her other pair of knickers which had been drying behind the door of her room.  Embarrassing. Time consuming. And a sign of how much it matters to have a change of underwear she otherwise wouldn't have.

Interviewing for Bright-eye's Replacement, feisty women let out details of their circumstances.
'And what about you, do you have children too?' I ask to try and equalise the conversation, rather than just talking about our lives. Of the six women interviewed, one had two children who had died, another's daughter in law had died, leaving her, the grandmother to adopt a further two younger children.  Simple icebreakers become tearful minefields.

The grandmother-cum-new mum had been unemployed for 15 months, since her last expat family departed.  'But I've been busy,' she noted. 'I've been visiting people in prison through my church.'
I brightened. Prison visiting is a big thing for Quakers too, since the historical inititatives by Elizabeth Fry and the like which led to UK prison reform.  I had fascinating conversations over the summer with a UK prison chaplain who spoke of her efforts to support bereaved, depressed prisoners on lockdown 23 hours of 24 through art and peer counselling, of how isolated and undersupported UK prisoners can be.
'So you and your church go and listen to the prisoners?'
'Oh no, we don't listen. We go and preach to them, tell them to repent, to mend their ways or else.'
Oh.

To have two pairs of knickers or a sole pair of shoes is a luxury in this world. To have children, healthy, for children to have parents, alive, is to know great good fortune.

Please look after this bear. Thank you.

'But whatever did you do for food?' asked Mrs Brown. 'You must be starving.'

Bending down, the bear unlocked the suitcase with a small key, which it also had around its neck, and brought out an almost empty glass jar. 'I ate marmelade,' he said, rather proudly. 'Bears like marmelade.'
'But what are you going to do now?' said Mr Brown. 'You can't just sit on Paddington station waiting for something to happen.'

'Oh I shall be all right.... I expect.' The bear bent down to do up its case again. As he did so Mrs Brown caught a glimpse of the writing on the label. It said, simply, PLEASE LOOK AFTER THIS BEAR. THANK YOU.

She turned appealingly to her husband. 'Oh Henry, what shall we do? We can't just leave him here. There's no knowing what might happen to him. London's such a big place when you've nowhere to go. Can't he come and stay with us for a few days?'


Last Sunday was SecondBorn's ninth birthday party.  We and the small boy guests had been to the cinema. We were ferrying them home for a play and some party food. 

It takes a while to make and assemble party food in Kenya. Rice krispie cakes, icing biscuits and logistics had been preoccupying me for much of the weekend.

'Aunty, aunty' a small voice called as we walked to the car.  We'd spent this Christmas with our toddler niece and nephew, the first to call me aunty since my South Wales childhood when it was heard all around.  'Aunty, aunty.' 

A small boy, aged maybe ten, barefoot was following us. He was an orphan he said. Showed a sponsorship form letter saying he was collecting for school uniform, so he could join his class, go to school.  One minute you're supervising privileged children in a film, the next you're brought up short by the daily realities for children the age of your son. 

I did give, generously, though I don't always.  Wished him well. Told him that I was proud of him for wanting to continue with school despite the difficulties.  But days later he's still in my head. Because giving money when children, half a mile from my home, are living without supervision on the street, is to give very little.

Tonight I was rereading A Bear Called Paddington with Firstborn. We'd last read it three years ago in UK. At that time it felt like a warmhearted comedy with happy ending. The penniless stowaway bear is taken in by a goodhearted family, loose ends are tied up, all's well with the world.  But today I howled. Here we're in a different reality. It's so clear all isn't well with the world. Some boys get birthday parties, others, orphans, beg for the clothes to get a chance to go to school.  And adults stop, share a moment, give a little, and walk on by.

and the Wise Men came bearing Gifts

Selecting The Right Present is never easy. Boy have we gone off-piste at times, - sponsoring renovation of a choice book at the British Library for a bookworm father-in-law or saving a selection of choice rare organic seeds at Henry Doubleday's research gardens for a keen gardener without green fingers.  But in a new culture, and where the different communities have very different value systems, it all gets more complex.

In UK I would think buying a Jacqueline Wilson paperback or two a perfectly acceptable present for a nine year old girl's birthday.  Here I scan the back of the book again, recall the child's parents and their backgrounds, - might it include talk of boyfriends, swearing, alcohol, failure to believe in God, divorce, Harry Potter [=witchcraft]? Or indeed, if its Jacqueline Wilson, the full monty of them all?  Put that high-risk book back and opt for a board game. 'Boring!'

In UK a Tesco Finest bottle of wine brings a smile of good will to the harrassed class teacher at the end of term. In Kenya I decide wine is fine for the mzungu teacher, but no, SecondBorn's teacher is an evangelical Christian Kenyan, almost certainly teetotal, chocolates for her.

And what of our guards? Thinnish men, managing on the Kenyan minimum wage, already getting an additional food allowance from us. What would bring them and their families a happier Christmas?  We opted for a food hamper, but which one?  One of the families at school advertised their company's hamper to the parent body. Contains palm oil (for cooking), a slab of lard, a tub of blueband margarine and a bag of soap powder. 'They'll love it!' enthused MoreExperiencedFriend, but I couldn't bring myself to buy what, to my eyes, was TheWorstPresent ever.

Tom always laughs at my choice of Christmas books for him. Some very clearly are bought with solely him in mind, 'Wildlife Photography for Experts' for example. Others, however, he identifies as the Crossover Presents, on which he assesses I will be checking his progress at weekly intervals during the year to come. 'How did you get on with that detective novel? Can I read it now? Pur-lee-eesee.'  And, as the year wears on, 'Oh do get a move on. I didn't buy it just for you you know.'  So yes, part of my criteria in the family present-giving and beyond, is to select a present you hope will really give pleasure to the recipient, but wouldn't mind getting yourself. Tub of margarine, stricken from the list.

So back to the guards. I opted in the end for a high-class Kenyan food hamper. No chocolates nor pickles and wines in this. But a bag of dried beans, two bags of flour, a bag of sugar, a box of teabags, a tube of minty toothpaste, cooking oil, candles and so on, all put together in a practical (but vile-looking) 1970s plastic basket. Very basic rations to a Western mind. But costing, I realised, a third of a monthly wage for our guards.  I was anxious giving them, but did think, well at least they could sell them on if they don't hit the spot.  But everyone's delight seemed unforced, and today, a week on, E came and said 'The Christmas box, it so made our Christmas.' Which in itself is so chastening. Last year's homemade choice of goods - phonecard, cash, torch, biscuits, chocolates - were the first time his children had ever tasted chocolate.

This year I'd managed the expat Christmas food experience far better than last year. I'd got sourcing key bits in September (mince meat), had bought the troublesome red cabbage in early December, and had put in requests to friends visiting Nairobi for business (chocolate coins, more mince pies, Christmas cake). We and our guests had eaten well.  So I was downcast beyond to hear that, when we returned from our two day safari, two children had been found sorting through our rubbish bags outside the gate.  Sifting through the nappies of our toddler guests, the rotten food from two weeks ago, the wrapping paper and accoutrements of a Western Christmas, to find tins and plastic which they could sell on (which anyway our handyman had taken), and cast-off food which they and their family could eat. They'd gone by the time I heard. But Kenya is a land of poverty. Christmas inclusion can't just mean giving to those within our electric fence.