Cheetah Man: Slum Life Dawg

Slum visits

So during my orientation in Nairobi, we were taken to two different slum neighborhoods. I haven’t traveled to many places around the world, but I can confidently say that trying to survive in the slums of Nairobi has got to be as tough as gets. There is no clean water, therefore simple diseases that we spoiled scoff at can actually be fatal. There are no bathrooms. The people use trash bags, and when they are done, they throw the trash down by the river. The stench of the slums can be best described as a mixture between raw sewage and rotting flesh. The “houses” are just big pieces of tin held together by nails. Disease, murder, rape, starvation, child neglect/abuse, drug addiction: they are all prevalent.

       These people are basically the poorest of the poor. Most have come to the big city with dreams of honest work, decent pay, and a better life for them and their families. Unfortunately, they come to find no resources whatsoever, and no place to stay, so they resort to slum life. I mentioned in my first email that people can just buy some tin and build a house in the slums to live, but this is not the case. Actually, slum residents pay almost just as much as people living in “middle class” sections. How is this possible? Because many of the landlords are very powerful people who own and rent out multiple slum houses, making huge profits off the poor. The landlords will pay off government officials not to pass laws to either lower rent prices or help the conditions in the slums, giving people no choice but to pay high rent to live in filth. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Seeing how people in the slums live makes it hard to ignore the fact that corruption is the root of MUCH IF NOT ALL of the suffering that Kenyan people endure.

       For both tours, we went to visit primary schools that are located inside the slums. I compare each school to an oasis for the kids to get away from their surroundings for a few hours of the day. Our first trip was to the Kibera slum. Kibera is arguably the biggest slum in all of Africa. There is another slum in Johannesburg, South Africa, that might be a little bit bigger, but there’s just no way to tell how many people actually reside in slums slums. There are approximately 900,000 – 1,000,000 residents in Kibera.

       If any of you have ever seen the movie “The Constant Gardener”, Kibera is where Tessa (the main female character) spends her time trying to help some of the locals. There is a big set of freight train tracks shown in the movie that run through the middle of the slum, and I’ve walked on those tracks. And whenever the young kids see a Muzungu, they scream “how are you?” because English is Kenya’s second language, and is taught in primary school. Next time you watch the movie and the scene is taking place in the slums, you can randomly hear “hey Muzungu” and “how are you?”

This guy

Cat and some friends

Kids go crazy fro muzungus, and they go especially crazy for Muzungus with cameras

The school actually has a really nice outside basketball court, which absolutely perfect for the kids to play SOCCER on (I have noticed that soccer is the most popular sport among Kenyans, with WWE wrestling coming in a close second). There are about 4 different soccer matches going on during this shot. Notice the kids don’t play with an actual soccer ball, just a bunch of plastic bags rolled up and duct taped.

These pics were taken from the 2nd floor library of the primary school we were visiting in the slums.

This is a shot of people walking along the train tracks that are featured in the move “The Constant Gardener”

What you see in these pics is only a tiny section of the slum. From this spot, Kibera stretches farther than the eye can see in every direction

Later in the week, we visited a smaller slum called Mukuru. Mukuru is located about two blocks where I stayed for my orientation, in a section of Nairobi called South B.