Kibera: Africa's largest slum

On Friday we took a trip into Nairobi to visit Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, home to over 1 million people. Another volunteer had given us the contact of Raphael, a Kenyan who lives in Kibera with his family, and he agreed to show us around the slum.

First, some facts for you about Kibera:

* Kibera accounts for less than 1% of Nairobi's total area (encompassing 2.5 sq km / 1.5 sq miles), yet it holds more than a quarter of its population.

* The average size of each shack is 12ft x 12ft built with mud walls, screened with concrete, a corrugated tin roof, dirt or concrete floor. The cost is about Ksh 700 per Month (£6/$10). These shacks often house up to 8 or more, many sleeping on the floor.

* Only about 20% of Kibera has electricity

* There is an unemployment rate of 50%

* Until recently Kibera had no water and it had to be collected from the Nairobi dam. The dam water is not clean and causes typhoid and cholera. Now there are two mains water pipes into Kibera, one from the municipal council and one from the World Bank. Residents collect water at Ksh 3 per 20 litres.

* There are very few toilet facilities. One latrine (hole in the ground) is shared by up to 50 shacks. Once full, young boys are employed to empty – they take the sludge to the river. UNICEF recently built some more facilities.

* There are no government medical clinics or hospitals.

* At any one time about 50% of 16 to 25 yr old girls in Kibera are pregnant. Most of these pregnancies are unwanted, resulting in many cases of abortion – illegally performed in dirty and unsterile environments.

Our visit to Kibera was certainly eye opening. The first stop on our tour was in a church nearby to Raphael’s home. Raphael, who was living in the slum during the 2007 post-election violence, took note of the many children abandoned and orphaned, and sought shelter and educational opportunities for them. He used the church as a temporary shelter, and has now also begun a pre-primary school for 50 of the neediest children whose families cannot afford the schooling. From there, we walked around two of the nineteen ‘villages’ that make up Kibera. The roads were, well, unbelieveable. They were covered in trash, dirt, grime, feces, and urine. We often had to watch our step as we walked through the alleyways they call roads. The houses were tightly packed together, with huge families squashed tightly into the small one-room shacks. No one but the very ‘wealthiest’ residents have their own latrines, therefore, we witnessed urination and defection in the streets. The smell was unbearable at times, not only from the streets, but also the residents themselves. Bathing is a luxury in a place like this. The little water that each family is able to buy must be used for drinking, cooking, cleaning dishes, cleaning clothes, and bathing – and we are talking about the average family with over 8 children.

When Raphael told us we were heading towards to ‘river’ that runs through Kibera, it piqued our curiosity, but it certainly didn’t impress us, and looked like no river we had ever seen. This trickle of water that flowed under a somewhat sturdy bridge, acts as the dumping ground for all garbage/rubbish that people bother taking beyond their front door.

There’s really not much more to say. Walking around the streets of Kibera, seeing the mountains of trash strewn everywhere, we had the impression we were at a landfill site, only this was home to over 1 million people.