The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire

Part 4 – January 30, 2015.   Poverty is the elephant in the room.

We arrived in Kakamega in western Kenya yesterday (Thursday) afternoon at the end of a nice long bus ride from Nairobi.  We were without intent access for the day and night and for the night before that – not too unusual.  But we’re back!

Wednesday was a great day with two major activities, a visit with the orphaned elephants at the Sheldrick in the morning and a visit to the Nairobi slum of Kibera in the afternoon.  The first we had done before and will do again and the second was a once in a lifetime experience that we hope to experience at least one more time.

Baby orphaned elephants, 29 of them, awaited us at the Sheldrick on Wednesday.  This time we made sure we got there on time, leaving Kasarani at 7:30 rather than 8:45.  Of the 29 orphaned elephants now cared for at the nursery at the Sheldrick on the western edge of Nairobi National Park, 28 came out to play from 11:00 to 12:00 with us and many other people in attendance and in awe.  Mbegu (translated as “little seed”), one of the elephants that Sandy and I sponsor was the star of the show, of course.  We are so proud of her.  The Sheldrick is a hidden treasure that is a must see for anybody visiting Nairobi with an hour to spare.

Mbegu's rival for cutest 

Mbegu takes a bath 

The afternoon from 1 to 4 PM was spent visiting Kibera, the infamous slum in Nairobi.  Our host was Elizabeth, a n experienced social worker, from CFK (Carolina for Kibera), a charity with an annual budget just under a million dollars founded in 2001 by a fellow by the name of Rye who was studying and doing research out of the University of North Carolina.

First, Elizabeth told us the basics of Kibera and what CFK is doing there.  Kibera’s population is probably somewhere between 350 and 500 thousand, not the million bantered about by many.  Each and every person has one characteristic in common, poverty.  It is visible and palpable everywhere.

After a short while we were joined by Catherine, a psychologist who has been working with CFK for five years, first as a volunteer and now as a paid employee.  She started us on a tour if the innards if Kibera.  We visited the Tabitha clinic, now a three story block building in the heart of the slum that began about ten years ago as a single table and chair in Tabitha’s house.   She had been given the equivalent of $28 by CFK to start a grocery business.  It expanded quickly and Tabitha soon had the wherewithal along with her passion to help those in need.  She bought a bigger house in the slum, divided it in half, and turned one-half into a “clinic”.  The clinic continued to expand.  In 2009 the new building was dedicated, and today, three years after Tabitha’s death the clinic continues to be essential to the villages that surround it.  Besides providing basic health care (free to most), the clinic works with the (US) CDC to gather epidemiologic data on diseases and their relationship to poverty. 

Some women make things from recycled materials

Mary, second from left, is physically disabled and knits sweaters by machine

Kibera is an “informal” community, that is, it was not sanctioned by the city of Nairobi as an official neighborhood or district.  The inhabitants are what we might call squatters, but most pay rent to the individuals or families who first squatted and now ”own” a small patch of land and the “buildings” on it.  A typical house for a family of 4 or 5 is about 10 feet by 10 feet square. 

Cramped quarters

The women make things from recycled materials

Mary showing Sandy how it works

Sanitation is a major issue.  All manner of sewage and runoff from human waste courses uncovered through every street (actually mostly pedestrian pathways).  The pedestrian pathways are steep, narrow, and winding.  Walking was a challenge for us and we can only imagine what it must be like when it rains.

There is no running water.  The water that is available from large tanks and associated water stations can be purchased and carried home in plastic jerry cans or can be pilfered by illegally tapping the plastic water lines that run along the footpaths in the slum.  It is not potable no matter where it’s obtained.

There are public washrooms with toilets but they are not free and the toilets often back up.  Thus there is the all too common practice of using a flying toilet.  A flying toilet is a plastic bag into which human excrement is deposited (directly from the source) and then the bag is tied off and flung onto the roof.  As you can imagine this leads to rampant disease, particularly among infants and toddlers.

Flying toilets litter the roof tops

Although the water from the tanks is not potable without sterilization with chemicals or by boiling, it still plays a major role in disease prevention in the slum.  Volunteer Community Health Workers (CHWs), under the auspices of the government and CFK, run and monitor a program in hand washing.    It is targeted at reducing the incidence of diarrhea in infants and toddlers under the age of 5.  The CHWs reinforce the training, monitor compliance, and gather data on disease in families after the families are given instruction in proper hand washing techniques and timing, e.g., washing hands with running water from a spigot on a jerry can after using the toilet, before meals, and when coming into the house.  Apparently it works!

CHW (right) explains proper hand washing while expectant mother demonstrates 

I am sitting against the back wall.  You see nearly half the house

The CHWs also monitor health and nutrition in infants and children.  Those that they identify as severely malnourished are given the opportunity to partake in a daytime, all day feeding and nutrition program for 8 weeks in a facility provided by CFK – for free.  This too works

.

The nutrition center can handle up to 30 children at a time

Electricity can be obtained legally at the cost of about 10 US dollars per month or it can be obtained illegally by splicing into the overhead wires.  The latter is very common.  Unfortunately, the splicing and wiring have no codes to meet and we were told that you dare not touch the low hanging metal roofs when it is raining – guess why.

Pilfered electricity

And the train (this one from Uganda) runs right through the middle of the house.

Waiting for the mid-town train to pass

Life along the track

Hazardous materials brought to your doorstep

And among all this there is a vibrant, diverse community.  Small shops and businesses dot the land, mostly surrounding the residences.  The individual “villages” (some 50 or so as I recall) have distinct traits and customs, often reflecting tribal differences.  Friction can occur anywhere but may be most common where a village primarily of one tribe rubs shoulders with one of a different tribe.  There are, however, some villages that are a mixture of people from many tribes.

Something quite interesting happened a few years ago in Kibera.  The government decided that people could or should not live under these conditions.  They built a number of apartment buildings on the side of the hill within sight of Kibera, demolished some of the slum dwellings, and provided living space for the former slum residents.  Each apartment had enough bedrooms for three families, a flush toilet, running water, and a communal living room for the three families.  What the government did not do was ask the slum residents what they wanted or carefully consider what they knew or did not know.  You can see the apartment buildings clearly today from anywhere in Kibera, but most of the apartment residents are not from Kibrera.  

The ill-conceived apartment buildings are on the hillside in the background

Within a short while after people were moved out of Kibera, most moved back.  The apartments were not what the residents wanted.  The toilets plugged and overflowed constantly.  Electricity cost too much, 3000 vs the former 800 shillings per month, and the shops where people bought their food and other goods were far away.  Now many of those who were moved to the apartments have returned and they rent their allotted space in the apartment to people who never lived in Kibera and were not the target of the government’s well-intentioned scheme.

Kibera makes our work in rural western Kenya seem almost like child’s play.  The world has a long way to go.

Terry and Sandy