A slum tour in Kibera

I said I should obviously struggle to make my life here a bit more interesting. Last weekend I made an effort I'm proud of. Instead of getting hammered in Friday's party, I just had one glass of wine, and it was really well used: while sipping it I got to know Gaucho, a self-educated engineer who had family in Kibera, seemed trustworthy, and promised to take me on a tour.

So the following day I finally ventured into Africa's biggest slum with my local guide, who showed me some of the worst parts and some of the better-off parts. It was about time; it's a disgrace that many of the people working for slum upgrading programs at the UN, like me, have never been to a slum themselves.

All of Kibera is really not that bad. Actually most of it can well be described as beautiful and idyllic. Kids playing football, small colourful houses in a row, people selling food and all kinds of stuff, chickens running around on the streets and people doing their housework in front of their houses.

Kids playing football (The apartment building is not typical of Kibera, it's the only one I saw.)



However, what you can see everywhere is loads and loads of plastic waste on the streets. Looking at it it's easy to understand why Rwanda banned plastic bags completely. The roads are also muddy, bumpy and dirty and ditches run through them.

Trash



Another visible problem is the lack of building material. Many houses are built of a mix of everything that is available, with pieces of wood and metal, soil, pipes, cloth, trash piles and lots of creativity. Everything is inclined, small, shabby, and in a way absolutely charming, but the shanties are easy to break into and offer no security against crime.

In the better-off parts of Kibera houses have concrete walls and they actually seem quite comfortable, though small. Gaucho took me to his grandmother's house, though we didn't go further inside than the patio, and offered me very nice Kenyan food called pilau. All in all it was a lovely visit to grandma's sunny garden in the middle of what is supposed to be one of the most miserable places around here.

Gaucho



Kibera had some hygienic toilets built by aid agencies, and people and their clothes seemed generally clean. I also saw some power lines. Still many basic services are quite nonexistent and hygiene is a problem. Kibera is one of the areas in Nairobi where you can catch malaria (hardly at day time when I was there though).

The visit was interesting, as now I imagine to understand much better the scope and nature of the problems in Kibera. However this was just a scratch on slum reality because there are much worse slums than Kibera, it just happens to be one of the most notorious ones because of its huge size.

Too bad Gaucho told me not to take pictures in all the best spots - I guess he thought someone might get annoyed or snatch my camera, so my few pictures are from dull backyards where there were almost no people around. After the visit Kibera's esthetics kept puzzling me a lot. Why does scarcity produce quarters that are so pleasing to the eye? Those small, inclined constructions full of details and colours together with the absence of cars, big even surfaces, and rectangular street plans made the place pretty and pictoresque, much nicer than most wealthy quarters in Westlands, Finland or whereever. Architects and designers are such useless people, everyone should just draw and build their own houses!

Another interesting thing I did this weekend was going to the church on Sunday morning. Religion is really important for Kenyans, who are mostly Christians. There are thousands of different versions of Christianism in this country. We went to see a baptist mass, which was a great show. Kenyans seem to be able to turn anything from a matatu ride to a mass into a good party, something Finns have never been good at. So all of them sang, danced and clapped their hands, and the music was not rhythmless and apathetic like in Finnish churches.

I've also had time to go to the cinema, read novels, go to a lovely gym I discovered recently that is cheaper and better than the previous one, and do very cheap shopping at a huge flee market - there's so much time when you don't get plastered every Friday and Saturday! I'm now planning to keep up the good ways of life for a couple of weeks. Of course only to enjoy more the next time I let it go.