12/12/20 was our final day in Africa and we decided to do something slightly controversial. I’ve been working with the homeless in Seattle, and I wanted to better understand how things worked in Kenya. As it happens, Nairobi contains the 3rd largest “slum” in the world, which is called Kibera.

As it turns out, there are a number of Kibera residents that offer tours. After a little research, we found Moses who seemed the most legitimate and ethical. He was born in Kibera and still lives in the house that he was raised in (now with his wife and three kids). His tours are not focused on poverty, but how residents are empowering themselves to better their situations.

We scheduled the tour before our vacation, and we were to meet Moses at “the giant Coke bottle” at Prestige Mall at 9:30am. The interesting thing about Kibera is that it is only a few miles from the city center, and mere blocks away from really nice neighborhoods. For example, the Prestige Mall is a small but very high end mall (even by US standards). We arrived early, ate a good breakfast at the Java House, and bought some basic food supplies (rice, corn flour, and some candy for the kids) to donate. We then went looking for the “giant Coke bottle”, and it wasn’t difficult to find.

Moses met us and then we walked to his house.

The Prestige Mall is near the Double Tree Hotel at the top of this map. The pin is where Moses lives. Just above the pin is a little tip that looks like a park. Indeed, it is one of the few open spaces where kids can play.

Entering Kibera, you walk down several streets lined by various vendors selling everything from food to tennis shoes. From there, you start entering smaller alleyways that quickly start feeling like a maze.

Moses’s house is a little room that is part of a bigger mud structure. The doorway is tiny, and the room is 12′ x 12′ square. They drape sheets to cover the mud walls and the ceiling. It has no kitchen, bathroom, or running water. It does have electricity, but it was out while we were visiting. His walls are covered with motivational sayings. He has a single twin bed that his wife and kids sleep on, and a couch that he sleeps on. They do all cooking on the floor in the space close to the door.

It was here that we sat down for an hour (or more) while he talked to us about Kibera.

• There are 13 villages within Kibera, and some are much richer while others are more poor. For example, if a person had steady work, they might live in a rich village, while a seasonal worker might live in more poor neighborhood.
• There are about 300 NGOs (non-government organizations) working within Kibera, but they make very little difference. Some have lofty goals that rarely pan out. Others collect millions, but only a small potion of that goes towards helping people. There are a few that actually do help people.
• While health care is technically regulated in Kenya, a lot of shady stuff happens in Kibera. You have pharmacists that don’t know what an antihistamine is, and you have clinics with no qualified doctors. I’m told this happens throughout Kenya, but that it is worse in Kibera.
• The government considers Kibera residents as squatters, but 90% of them still have to pay monthly rent to live in their dwellings. Even though Moses has lived in his home his entire life, he still must pay rent.
• Nobody really knows how many people live in Kibera – the space isn’t that big (around 2.5 kilometers squared). Some estimates are at 1.5 or 2 million, while other estimates are around 200,000. Moses says that the population fluctuates greatly based on the economy, but that usually there are between 500,000 and 800,000 residents.
• Water is hard to get in Kibera – you usually have to walk several kilometers to get clean water (and of course to pay for it). This has created a sex-for-water trade, which results in a lot of young girls getting pregnant. The HIV rate is also very high.
• Flying toilets are a problem (especially during the pandemic when they were restricted indoors). You poop in a bag and then throw it onto somebodies roof. You can imagine that this not only smells, but that when it rains it all washes down into the alleyways.

Moses talked about two projects that he helped spearhead, both of which benefit about 100 families:

He was able to help fund a water tank that cost about $1,200, using donations from people he met through tours. The hard part was getting the water tank in – they had a space to put it, but no walkways were big enough to transport it, so they had to carry it over the roof tops. The pictures he showed were great.

He was also able to help fund the construction of two toilets and two showers, which cost around $1,300. They have a single port-a-potty shared by 100 families, but infections became a problem (with everybody sharing a single toilet seat that they couldn’t easily clean). Instead, they built two squat toilets (which are very common in Kenya) and two showers. The toilets and the showers took about a week to build and it was all done by the 100 families that use it (they dug out the septic system by hand). Even the children helped by painting the finished product.

From there we walked around Kibera. This is one of the richer villages within Kibera:

This is a short distance away, but is not as nice a village:

The trash in this picture smells just as bad as you would expect, but here’s the thing: there is literally no trash service at all in Kibera. There are no garbage cans or transfer stations. The trench running through this make-shift dump is a train track. Kibera has a passenger train stop, but it is rarely used by the residents (as there are much cheaper ways of getting around). Moses points out that a train could easily collect trash from this location if a semi-official dumping site were established with the proper receptacles.

A little ways down the train tracks we came to a bluff overlooking part of Kibera.

But wait – there are some nice building in the second picture – what are those? Of course they are churches, where the people in Kibera donate money so that a church can build a nice building that doesn’t really help anybody. Moses is not a fan of nice church buildings.

Moses then took us to a business called the “Power Women Group”, meant to provide an income for women with HIV. They make unique looking beads by rolling up old magazines. We sat down, they explained the process, and then of course we bought some stuff.

We went to a few other businesses, such as one that makes artful items out of trash (the things they can do with the brass from an old lock is impressive), and then to a bakery.

I have some observations on Kibera:

• I wasn’t sure what a “slum” would look like – I was expecting poverty (which they have in spades), but for some reason I was also expecting an air of desperation (which I didn’t really see). What I saw were people trying to work hard and to live their lives with what little they had.
• While Amie and I were clearly rich tourists (we didn’t exactly blend):
  • Not a single person was rude or agressive towards us.
  • Not a single person asked us for anything – no handouts or begging.

As the tour wound down, we needed to get back to the Prestige Mall to meet our driver at 1pm, but now we were on the far side of Kibera. There aren’t many taxis or tuk tuks in Kibera (nobody can afford them), so we did what everybody else does – hop on the back of a motorcycle. Moses knew the drivers, so it wasn’t as dangerous as it sounds, but of course we had no helmets, the traffic was crazy, and there were speed bumps every few hundred feet. Amie was sure that we were going to die as we rode back through Kibera, but I chocked it up as all part of the experience.

Our driver met us and laughed when we pulled up (it was the same driver that drove us round our first day in Nairobi).

We went back to the hotel to hang out, and then the same driver drove us to the airport that night for our flight.

The airport security in Nairobi is kind of weird – when entering the airport they want all car passengers to exit the cars, go through a metal detector (without any of their stuff), and then get back into the car and drive to the terminal. The guard was adamant that Amie and I had to get out (which we were Ok with), but then our driver said that he wanted to shake the guard’s hand and in the handshake he slipped him some bills as a bribe (the guard just waved us through). It was really crazy to witness – partly because it was so unnecessary.

We caught a late night flight to Amsterdam, and then a flight back to Seattle. We arrived in Seattle around 1pm on 12/21/2024. We were tired and happy to be home, but extremely grateful for having had such a fulfilling vacation!