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Tuesday 6 April 2010
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BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Living amidst the rubbish of Kenya's slum
BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Living amidst the rubbish of Kenya's slum
As the United Nations gathers to discuss anti-poverty measures, the BBC News website assesses how Africa could meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 10 years' time. Here, Gray Phombeah looks at life in a Kenyan slum.
Living amidst the rubbish of Kenya's slum
Kibera residents say nothing has been done to improve conditions
"This one room is my bedroom, my kitchen, my sitting room," says 67-year-old Jared Odhiambo.
"My eight children, my wife and I sleep here."
This is the story of Kibera - the biggest, poorest slum in Africa - just outside the heart of Kenya's capital city, Nairobi.
The first thing that hits you here is this rich stench of almost 1 million people living in this ditch - in mud huts, with no sewage pipes, no roads, no water, no toilet, in fact, with no services of any kind.
I have been walking through stinking rubbish, glutinous mud and poisonous odours to see the abject poverty in the Kibera slum, the poverty which world leaders are supposed to address as part of the MDGs.
Hell on earth
"Our houses are collapsing," says Aloo John, Jared Odhiambo's neighbour in Kibera.
"We don't have toilets, so what we do is, we use paper bags and throw them out at night. If you are out at night and unlucky, you will feel something landing on your head, and that's somebody's human waste."
Irene Mula, a primary school drop-out, shares a room with seven members of her family, including her mother and father. 
We want to do more than just converting their cardboard boxes into concrete boxes 
Amos Kimunya
Kenya's lands minister
"Life is tough here," she says. "It's full of challenges, poverty and stress, that's what is all about here."
The Kibera misery is indeed awesome and painful to see - a vision of hell on earth.
Urban black hole
It dates back to 1920 when the British colonial government let a group of Nubian soldiers settle on a wooded hillside of Nairobi, with no title deeds.
From a few thousands residents, more and more people from different communities moved into Kibera over the years, seeking new life and shelter, but ending up in shacks, their dreams shattered.
More than 80 years later, and after three Kenyan administrations since independence in 1963, nothing has been done for these people. 
Kibera residents live next to raw sewage
It is here, in this urban black hole like many others around the world, where the success of the UN's goal to improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020 will be measured.
One man believes it can be done.
He is Amos Kimunya, Kenya's lands minister. Away from the stench and the despair of Kibera, he spoke of the Kenya government's commitment to providing better housing for Kibera residents.
"We have committed 500m shillings ($6.6m) in our current budget to sort out the lives of people living in Kibera."
"We want to do more than just converting their cardboard boxes into concrete boxes - what we want to do is a comprehensive programme of upgrading the slum beyond just putting up new houses.
"It's about improving the lives of the people, job opportunities, HIV/Aids prevention and protection, education facilities, playing grounds - and so it's a comprehensive upgrading of the slum."
Easy part
Mr Kimunya's optimism is echoed by Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of the United Nations city agency UN-Habitat.
Her organisation is charged with the responsibility of making life better for slum dwellers around the world.
"For the past four years, we have been working with residents of Kibera," she says at the UN-Habitat headquarters located in, Gigiri, a posh leafy suburb of Nairobi. No one cares about us Jared Odhiambo
Kibera resident
"If you really want to benefit the poor, you have to spend time on what we call social organisation, otherwise you might upgrade the slum and people who have better incomes will come and take over.
"Indeed, it takes a long time and very little seems to be happening, but a lot has been happening in terms of preparations.
"Physical construction is actually the easiest part of it."
No hope
Back in Kibera - 600 acres of mud and filth, with a brown stream dribbling through the middle - Ms Tibaijuka's and Mr Kimunya's assurance that help is on the way sounds rather hollow.
"No one cares about us," says Jared Odhiambo.
"The government of President Mwai Kibaki does not care about poor people."
Aloo John agrees: "Right now, we don't have any hope. They had promised us a lot of things before but nothing happened."
One of the MDGs is to halve the number of people who suffer from extreme poverty. Another is to improve the lot of slum dwellers.
If anyone is going to address those development goals, Kibera seems to be the first place to start.
SHOFCO Organization
SHOFCO Organization
Issues and problems in the Kibera Slum
Kibera is located on government land. It is known as ”illegal settlement” and not included in the city plans and budgets for the public services. The settlement is 7 km from the Central business district and is composed of 12 Villages, each varying in population and size, topography, culture, ethnicity and religious make up.
This densely populated settlement is plagued by the same social health, economic and environmental problems as the slums. Structures in Kibera are built randomly with little space available. Few trees and plants can be seen in Kibera. People do not have physical addresses and very few have post box number.
The housing units comprise one small room, mud-walled, with an iron roof. Most of these houses have earth floor and un-plastered walls. Roads are a big problem to the residents especially when there is a sick person that should be taken hospital because roads are too narrow for cars to pass through. When the fire breaks out in the slum, it is always difficult for the fire fighters to find their way to the scene. Open canals and trenches characterise Kibera's drainage system. Garbage and used water follow the same channel and once the garbage accumulates, the canals get blocked. Since Kibera is a squalid residential area, this kind of system is usually only a few yards away from the houses. This stagnant, smelly water and sludge that surrounds most houses breeds to mosquitoes, which lead to many diseases. In addition to lacking a drainage system, Kibera's residents still suffer from poor access to clean water, sanitation, education, health care and electricity. Above all, the residents suffer psychologically from the fact that the structures are temporary.
Finally, people infected by HIV are a growing problem. According to MSF, at least 15% of the Kibera inhabitants are infected but the rate could be much higher because some parts of the population, such as children up to 1 year, are not tested. Most infected people are youths, parents, and obviously young children.
Families suffer from it a lot because the children often contribute to the slow, long deterioration of their parents, without been able to do anything. They can also been infected themselves, and like their parents they don’t receive any treatment.
Due to these problems and challenges, youths have come together to start SHOFCO.
SHOFCO is a community-based youth initiative that operates in the Kibera slums in Nairobi. SHOFCO was established in February 2006 to serve as an instrument of change for the youths of Kibera by developing their potential abilities to the maximum. Since its formation, SHOFCO members have tirelessly displayed their thorough working knowledge beyond the look book level. |
Structure:The Organization draws most of its members from the Kibera Community and has a structure that ensures independence, collective responsibility and the accountability of the Executive Committee, Head of Departments and General Assembly. Since May 2007, an Advisory Board including 5 members has been established.
In order to put its activities into practice SHOFCO is also structured in four Departments:
SHOFCO believes that it is information that brings about transformation and therefore creating an informed society should be the first step to a mankind development. It is due to this reason that the members decided to establish a communication department that deals with information relevant to the youths and the society at large. Our motto is “inspire and empower the community to shine”.
SHOFCO is registered in Kenya under the ministry of gender, sport, culture and social services.
Advisory Board Members:
SHOFCO has an advisory board which is responsible to oversee the running of the organization in terms of transparency and accountabilities as well as giving an advice to the SHOFCO management. This board comprise of members both from outside Kibera who have series of meetings to put Shofco in order. They are professionals in different capacities. Shofco Advisory Board Members are:
Computer Literacy Program for Kibera Youth:
The SHOFCO youth and other youth within Kibera who are not computer literate are being empowered by training them to at least have basic computer skills. The program started on May 2007 up to date and more than 25 youths have benefited from the program. This programme was motivated by the American friends of Kenya (AFK)through their generous donation of a computers as well as the SHOFCO monthly office rent. This have made it possible for us to run smoothly even though we still need other computers.
The youths are being taught by volunteers both from SHOFCO who are computer literate and outsiders who volunteer. Brian Ball (formerly of Microsoft) who came to Kenya on 18th September 2007, offered general skills on computer technology.
SHOFCO is also blessed to have Jean Jordan from South Africa who has been helping SHOFCO on technical Computer maintenance since June 2007. He is now going to work together with Benoit Conrad, to improve and update the website.
SHOFCO Women Empowerment Project (SWEP):
SHOFCO motto is to “Inspire and Empower the Community to Shine”. This is the spirit that motivated the SHOFCO youths to work close to women in Kibera. This project started when SHOFCO members were doing distribution of stuff like food, clothes, mosquito-net, blankets, bed sheets, school uniforms, books, pens and shoes to the Women victimised by HIV/AIDS pandemic. The donation was done through the efforts of Dr Paolo Paron and his Italian friends. Dr Paron is one of our Adversary Board Member.
This activity inspired these women in Kibera and motivated them to come together and be part of the SHOFCO family.
We shared the women’s' sentiment with the AFK. Lucky enough, the month of June saw the birth of SWEP when Deb Naybor of Both your Hands paid a visit to SHOFCO. She donated a start-up cash this was the genesis of the SWEP Project. At the moment we have 35 women engaged in making crafts and jewelleries as a way of income generating activities. The working spirit that the women have is a challenge to the Youth.
Girls Welfare Empowerment Program:
With consideration of the fact that women make the fifty percent (50%) of the Kenyan population, yet their contribution in development is not being felt on the ground. This is perhaps due to limited or lack of opportunities in participatory development that involve all members of the society.
A group of ladies in Shofco thought about the best way to uplift well the being of girls in Kibera. Currently the ladies are targeting young school girls who are facing different problems that may affect their education. The Shofco ladies did research both in and outside the school to find the most urgent issue that can be paid attention to.Finally they came out with an issue of most girls missing school during their monthly period. This issue is too common in Primary Schools than Secondary Schools. Some primary school girls are using some materials that might promote Cervical Cancer or some sexually transmitted diseases.
It is commonly known that sex related diseases are always taken as private diseases and so young girls may not be free to let people know what they are going through.
Another scenario is whereby they may not know what is happening to them and ignore as they will only suffer in silence due to a problem that can be solved earlier. Most men are always less concerned about issues that affect women directly. This worsen the situation of our young sisters in slums, bearing in mind that most of bread winners are men. They provide the need of their family members-- however small their privation is. This lead to an understanding that even some women are sharing some problems with their daughters.The issue of the sanitary towels is serious matter. This is according to the finding of the Shofco ladies. Some primary school girls are missing classes or get very uneasy in class due to unhealthy materials they are using to cop with the situation. This is a sign of silent suffering of our younger sisters in slum areas. This kind of silent suffering have affected the academic standards of the girls residing in slum areas.
Due to this, we posed the question of whether the girls will have good academic background or they will live out of fear even if they are suppose to tackle the women issues nationally. This is just one of issues Shofco ladies are aiming to solve. Therefore, currently they are soul searching to solitude for sanitary towels for primary and some secondary schools in Kibera.
The ladies are targeting seven hundred girls in Kibera monthly. The sanitary towels will be distributed to the girls monthly to the schools. At the same time, the girls will be taught how to use the pads and their disposals to avoid misuse and careless disposal. We are concerned about how to dispose the used pads. The programme also looks into the Welfare of the women. They do identify the problems that needs urgent attention and coordinate with the Shofco Management to seek urgent action.
In general this programme act as a bridge between the Shofco and the women in general, this is because the ladies are best placed in understanding and mingle freely with both women and young girls.
Capacity Building for Sustainability:
In the month of July, Shofco received a volunteer called Cara Gibney from Northern Ireland to train youths about proper organizational management and team work and capacity building.
During this period 22 youths benefited from this training. The training have to made the SHOFCO management improved and more operational. The Youths are now more responsible than ever before the training steer up the spirit of job creation amongst the youths. Currently the youths who attended the training are working on a business program for the sustainability.
Media Workshop and Training:
The Shofco information and communication received two volunteers from Canada Five Minutes to Midnight FMM. Wojciech Grycand Hannah Renglich trained the Shofco youths about the media. They taught writing skills, Newsletter Production, Photography, Computer Maintenance, English Grammar, Ethical Issues in practice of journalism. The volunteers were in Kenya for a period of two months to assist Shofco develop the communication skills.
SHOFCO is aiming at setting up an information and communication centre within Kibera.The centre will act as source of the collective information to the people of Kibera. It is a way of localizing media so that the information can be heard from the people who experience a certain life style. This is because many people have negative opinion about informal settlements like Kibera. This programme is going to benefit 22 youths. It is also going to improve the quality of the news letter production of SHOFCO.
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