Kenya
How much is too much rain? Ask Kenyan farmer Anne a question
In partnership with One Acre Fund, we are following Anne, a smallholder farmer from Kenya, for a whole growing season. From planting to harvest, we will check in every month to see what life is really like for a farmer in rural Kenya. Catch up with Part 1. Written by Hailey Tucker.
Anne at home in Kisiwa, Kenya. Photo: Hailey Tucker
In Western Kenya, successful planting for the year is typically seen as a matter of materials, skill and knowledge. However, most farmers acknowledge that ultimately—regardless of expertise—plant germination can be won or lost by the rains.
For farmers who plant too early, there will not be enough consistent rain to help their crops grow. For farmers who wait long enough but get unlucky, their newly sown seeds will be washed away by heavy rains before the seedlings have a chance to take root.
Trying to pinpoint the prefect timing makes planting one of the most risk-laden choices a farmer can make.
Anne (left) and Rasoa Wasike, both members of the Kabuchai Women’s Group, planting millet. Photo: Hailey Tucker
It had been a few nights in a row when Anne had been too hot to sleep and too hot to even cover herself with any sort of blanket, when she knew it was time. Anne would lay awake on a sweat-moistened mattress and hear a strong wind rustling the trees outside.
“When the temperature stays high at night and the winds are blowing hard from West to East, I believe the rains are very near,” Anne says. “Then in the day, I observe the clouds. If there are dark clouds and they hang closer to the earth than the white clouds, then I know the rains are coming.”
After seeing the signs Anne has come to associate with pending rain, she decided to plant part of her millet for the season on March 22, and then finished the rest of the plot on March 25 after taking a few days off for her mother-in-law’s funeral.
The morning of planting, Anne and her husband Isaac gathered with their relatives to pray over their seeds and fertiliser. “I am a believer,” Anne says. “I am spiritual so before planting my family will pray.” Isaac, who is a pastor at the local church, leads the prayer.
After planting, Anne commented, “Preparing the finger millet land required a lot of commitment and labour because we had to break down the soil very fine and remove all the debris. All of the preparation was worthwhile though because then the planting became easy—even easier than maize.”
On March 23, the rains were heavy and with Anne’s field being situated on a slight slope, her first round of seeds took more water than was ideal. Looking at the field two weeks later, the furrows that once divided her lines of seed are barely visible, but patches of millet are still beginning to appear.
“The rains are a little different this year because they usually come in April,” Anne says. “They came in March this year instead and are also much heavier.”
The first green shoots of millet germinating. Photo: Hailey Tucker
The second half of her field received light rain most of the days immediately following planting, which is the best Anne could have asked for.
“I believe that these are good,” Anne says pointing to the second set of seedlings. “They are much better, I think they will germinate well.”
Have you got a question or message for Anne? Leave a comment and we’ll get them directly to her in Kenya, and try and answer them in the next instalment.
One Acre Fund serves 125,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi, helping them to increase their harvests and incomes. It provides farmers with a service bundle that includes seed and fertiliser, credit, training, and market facilitation, and enables farmers to double their income per planted acre. To learn more about their work, you can read Roger Thurow’s The Last Hunger Season.
Why residents of Kibera slum are rejecting new housing plans
This guest post is by journalist Abby Higgins, in partnership with The Seattle Globalist. It’s the fourth in a five-part series which reveals the economically complex and culturally rich life of urban slums, and challenges our perceptions of what life is like for the one billion people around the world that live in them. Read Part One, Part Two, or Part Three.
Unofficial housing being built by residents within Kibera. Photo: Abby Higgins
Mildred Lunani knew that if she stayed in her village in Western Kenya she could pretty much count on a life of poverty. So, like the 200,000 people around the world who move to cities from rural areas every day, she came to the capital in search of opportunity. She found that opportunity in Kibera, the slum that her and her family now call home.
She opened up The District Commissioner’s Restaurant, a small place named after the police station next door. Equipped with a window for take away food and a few rickety wooden tables, she offers donuts, samosas and sodas to the flood of people passing by on their way in and out of Kibera each day. Lunani was also trained as a community health worker by an NGO in Kibera and spends several days a week working to spread awareness about HIV and AIDS.
“Kibera is a good place. The community, the people, my neighbours, they mean a lot to me, I love that part of Kibera. But the housing, some of the housing isn’t fit for humans. The toilets, the water?” She shook her head in disgust.
In 2009, Mildred learned of an opportunity to move her family out of Kibera’s substandard housing: The Kenya Slum Upgrading Project (KENSUP) launched by the Kenyan Ministry of Housing with the support of UN-Habitat and several other donor organisations.
The Kenya Slum Upgrading Project (KENSUP) rises on the edge of Kibera. Photo: Abby Higgins
The flagship of KENSUP rises up behind Kibera, a goliath multi-storied concrete building called The Promised Land by local residents. The apartments inside are heavily subsidised and provide the formalised services that slums lack like water, sanitation and electricity.
Mildred and her family now call the building home, at least in the short term. The building is a temporary residence until more permanent housing is completed in Soweto East, a neighborhood in Kibera.
“The plan is good,” says Mildred, “If the government continues, then the rest of the slum can be upgraded. This could change the whole lifestyle of Kibera.”
But from the launch of the project in 2003, there has been a nagging problem. Residents who were relocated to The Promised Land began leaving their new homes and moving back into Kibera. Nairobi’s middle class swooped in, searching for affordable housing in a city with skyrocketing rents. Many secured apartments in the new buildings through the informal systems of bribery that dictates a great deal of life in Kenya.
And many Kibera residents who were given apartments through the programme saw a business opportunity and rented their flats to middle class tenants at four and five times the subsidised rate. Then they moved back to the slum with extra money in their pocket.
Other residents said they were frustrated by the unreliable services in the new apartments and flat out left. Mildred hasn’t had water in her house for three weeks. Ironically, some are moving back into the slum for better water and sanitation.
Family Halima, Richie and Leslie outside their home in Kibera. Despite lack of access to government services, many residents in Kibera stay because of the strong community and support neighbours. Photo: by Abby Higgins
There is a great deal of mistrust of the government and development organizations in Kibera. A history of failed aid projects and forced evictions have left many residents feeling exploited by outsiders.
Mildred says she’s just waiting to hear if and when they will be moving into their permanent housing. Each day she leaves her new home early in the morning and walks back into Kibera. She opens her restaurant and then makes her rounds as a community health worker.
At the end of each day, she picks up her groceries in the slum, where they are much cheaper than in The Promised Land, and makes the long walk back to the new development. She even spends her weekends in her old neighbourhood, visiting her friends and neighbours who still live there.
While she doesn’t miss the housing, she does miss that part of life in Kibera. She’s lived in her new housing for three years and doesn’t know any of her neighbours. High crime rates, the lack of sanitation and the poor housing are a constant struggle for Kibera residents. But Lunani’s experience points to the intangible value of the community in the slum. The social networks, the business, the employment opportunities and the low cost of living attracts new residents, despite the harsh circumstances.
At the pace KENSUP is going, it’s hard to believe that the planned upgrade of the entire slum will ever be complete. But it’s harder still to imagine that Kibera residents like Mildred will ever feel at home in the monochrome, concrete stacks of The Promised Land.
Residents are under pressure from local authorities not to discuss any failures of the housing projects in Kibera. Mildred was happy to speak to The Seattle Globalist but was not photographed to protect her identity.
Check back next week for the fifth and final part of our series.
“People in Kibera are resourceful, they know how to use what they have to get by.”
This guest post is by journalist Abby Higgins, in partnership with The Seattle Globalist. It’s the third in a four part series which reveals the economically complex and culturally rich life of urban slums, and challenges our perceptions of what life is like for the one billion people around the world that live in them. Read Part One or Part Two.
Bella Achieng with her daughter outside their home in Kibera. Photo: Abby Higgins
Deep inside Kibera, a dum light bulb is illuminating the home of Bella Achieng as she wakes her baby daughter from a nap.
Achieng is an entrepreneur. She works on a small scale, using what the rest of the city throws away as a business opportunity. She buys leftover bits of charcoal from businesses at a cheap price. Then she grinds them up with mud, packing them into neat blocks of cooking fuel that she can sell, turning a small profit.
Reusing cast-off materials is common practice in slums around the world. Human waste is converted into bio-gas in slums in Lagos; the Zabbaleen community in Cairo make a living by operating informal rubbish collection for the rest of the city; litter pickers in Mumbai sort plastics and sell them to recycling companies.
Achieng held one of the cooking-fuel blocks up to me. “You think people in the rest of the city would buy this? No way!” she said, laughing and shaking her head. “But people in Kibera are resourceful, they know how to use what they have to get by.”
The lack of resources in informal settlements may offer a unique impetus to innovate, but that doesn’t change the harsh realities of poverty. Achieng’s hard work and ingenuity means that she and her two daughters may continue surviving, but they still can’t rely on regular meals.
And yet, Kibera residents constantly defy outside expectations. They watched the coverage of Kenya’s recent presidential election on televisions in their living rooms. Many of them own laptops and operate small movie theatres, electronics repair shops and packed restaurants. They send the money they earn back to their relatives in rural Kenya using groundbreaking mobile-banking technology. They used open-source technology to map the streets of Kibera, which had previously been a blank space on official maps.
Cynthia Smith, an expert on socially responsible design who has travelled to 15 countries to study slum innovation tells me that the assumption that the West will bring innovation to poor parts of the world is shifting.
“Often we transfer our ideas to other parts of the world. But in fact that’s changing,” she said. “There are innovation and design ideas that can be applicable to our part of the world.”
Slum residents are using creative approaches to global problems such as urban density, technology access and waste disposal. Necessity breeds invention. And that necessity might just be what makes slum dwellers well equipped to take on a crowded, resource-strapped future.
Check back next week for Part Four
Meet the innovators and entrepreneurs of Kenya’s Kibera slum
This guest post is by journalist Abby Higgins, in partnership with The Seattle Globalist. It’s the second in a four part series which reveals the economically complex and culturally rich life of urban slums, and challenges our perceptions of what life is like for the 1 billion people around the world that live in them. Read Abby’s first post.
The shop is dark and humid. I duck inside, and the warm glow of three television screens coats a room filled with a dozen neighborhood boys. Three of them hammer away at PlayStation controllers, sending a tiny soccer ball leaping across the screen.
“They pay 10 shilling to play for 10 minutes,” explains Vitalis Odhiambo, the shop owner. “I probably get around 20 customers in a day, more when school is out of session.”
Neighbourhood youth pay about ten cents for ten minutes of play on PlayStation consoles in Diddy’s arcade. (Photo by Abby Higgins)
Odhiambo, who goes by the nickname Diddy, was born in Kibera and has lived there his entire life. In addition to his PlayStation business, he runs a shop outside of Kibera that sells women’s shoes and clothing. He even operates a tour company, capitalising on outsiders’ curiosity about his increasingly famous home.
Like most slums, Kibera has no formal government services. Residents can’t access clean water, sanitation, electricity or health care the way the rest of Nairobi does.
It’s easy to think of slums as places of listless poverty filled with victims of circumstances waiting for outside intervention. But Odhiambo’s shop shows another side. Slum dwellers are entrepreneurs and innovators, constantly manipulating their surroundings to creatively address the problems they and their communities face.
“They’re probably the most inventive people in the world because they often have limited access to resources,” said Cynthia Smith, who is the curator of socially responsible design at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Smith traveled to 15 countries to learn about slum innovations, from vertical water and sewer services climbing a mountainside settlement in Caracas, Venezuela, to a community oven in Kibera that uses rubbish as fuel. She has compiled her work into an ongoing exhibition called “Design with the Other 90%: CITIES.”
According to U.N. Habitat, 85% of new employment opportunities around the world are in the informal economy, like the untaxed, unregulated businesses in Kibera.
If he gets a little more start-up capital, Diddy says, he’ll expand his business to build a larger gaming centre, with computers and additional PlayStation consoles. But isn’t it difficult to operate a video arcade with no formal electrical system?
Odhiambo says it’s rarely a problem. His shop is powered by Kibera’s primary electricity suppliers, a complex — and entirely illegal — system that has been maintained by generations of Kibera residents.
Not connected to the formal utilities of Nairobi, Kibera residents build everything themselves from power lines to water cisterns. (Photo by Alex Stonehill)
Phillip, who asked that his last name not be used because of the illegal nature of his work, is one of dozens of agents who keep the slum powered. Residents pay him about $4 per month to get hooked up.
He grew up in Kibera and is using his job as an informal electricity broker to pay his college tuition while he is studying broadcast journalism.
“We run three lines from different parts of the city. That way if one isn’t working, there are two additional lines that can be used as backup,” Philip told me. “It’s very infrequent that people lose their power.”
On the whole, Nairobi is a highly developed, modern city. Just ten minutes from Kibera are luxury apartments and malls with boutique stores and sushi restaurants. But even wealthy neighbourhoods like Lavington and Karen — home to former Prime Minister Raila Odinga — have basic infrastructure problems that are unfamiliar in the global north. Last year, I spent an entire night with my electronics piled around me at a dingy restaurant because I had a deadline to meet and it was the only place in my neighbourhood with electricity.
I asked Phillip if it was possible that Kibera’s residents enjoyed more reliable power than I did. “I’d say that is probably true,” he answered with a smile.
Check back next week for Part Three
Follow Kenyan farmer Anne from planting to harvest
In partnership with One Acre Fund, we’ll be following Anne, a smallholder farmer from Kenya, for a whole growing season. From planting to harvest, we will check in every month to see what life is really like for a farmer in rural Kenya. Written by Hailey Tucker.
Anne at home in Kisiwa, Kenya. Photo: Hailey Tucker
Anne Wafula wrings her dirt-caked hands as she sits in her living room. She has been tilling soil in a half-acre plot of land to prepare to plant millet, groundnuts, sweet potatoes and cassava; and she is admittedly a little worried about the season ahead.
“As a mother, I am worried about what will happen when harvest time comes,” Anne says. “It is my hope that I should not lack food at this home.”
Anne is a smallholder farmer in Kisiwa, a village in western Kenya. Like most of the world’s poorest people, her main livelihood is farming. For the last few years, she has enjoyed strong harvests.
Anne is a member of One Acre Fund, which provides farmers with fertilizer and seed on credit, teaches the farmers how to more effectively plant their crops, and then allows them to pay back their loans at times of the year when money is easier to come by.
Anne with her husband Isaac and youngest son Steve outside their home in Kisiwa, Kenya. Photo: Hailey Tucker
Since joining One Acre Fund in 2010, Anne has been harvesting 10 bags of maize a year, more than double her previous harvests of four bags.
Anne, whose stoic demeanor softens after a while, is the mother of seven children, two of which she and her husband Isaac adopted. Like many farmers, Anne faces the competing challenges of providing enough food for her family, keeping everyone healthy, and making sure all her children are receiving an education.
Her increased harvests since joining One Acre Fund have helped her grow enough to feed her family and make real life improvements, but as she increases her income, she also has increased her expectations of what she should be able to provide for her children.
Briston Nangesa is their eldest and is studying engineering a local technical college. This is possible because Anne’s improved harvest pays the fees. Many farmers in her village are unable to send their children to secondary school, let alone a technical college. Anne is proud of Briston but she wants to give all her children the same opportunity, and the thought of all those future school fees is daunting.
Anne with some of the crops on her farm. Photo: Hailey Tucker
This season Anne is trying something different. A maize disease appeared in Kenya last year and infected fields had a heavy loss of crops. As a result, One Acre Fund is encouraging its farmers to diversify their crops and reduce the risk of losing everything.
Anne has decided to plant only a small amount of maize and focus most of her energy on growing alternatives: sweet potatoes and cassava for food security, sorghum and millet for income, and beans for nutrition. If the harvest goes well this season, she also hopes to have enough money to start a business selling clothes.
Anne with 3-year old son Steve at home in Kisiwa, Kenya. Photo: Hailey Tucker
As a mother, my biggest concern is that I would like my children to learn, so if they are not able to go to school, that is not good for me. My hopes are that we will harvest well and get the highest yield”.
We’ll be back in a month with the latest news from Anne and her family.
ONE has just launched a new report that looks at investment in African agriculture. Find out which countries are getting it right, and where both donors and African governments need to improve.
One Acre Fund serves 125,000 smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi, helping them to increase their harvests and incomes. It provides farmers with a service bundle that includes seed and fertiliser, credit, training, and market facilitation, and enables farmers to double their income per planted acre. To learn more about their work, you can read Roger Thurow’s The Last Hunger Season.
Kenyan society through the eyes of artist Michael Soi
“A cat has a lot in common with a politician. When it’s hungry it’ll come and rub up against you, and then the rest of the day it just sits there”. – Michael Soi
Michael Soi is a Nairobi based artist whose pieces provide a personal reflection and satirical commentary on contemporary social, economic and political trends in Kenya. ONE’s Hannah Elansary got the chance to talk to Michael about his art.
Michael in his studio. Photo credit: hiphopkambi.wordpress.com
When did you start painting ?
I began creating art from my childhood because my dad is also an artist. I took it seriously after high school when I went to art school and graduated in 1996 and officially began my career as an artist.
What is the biggest inspiration for you work?
My biggest inspiration is the city of Nairobi
Painting revealing Nairobi night life. Photo credit: edcrossfineart.com
Who is your audience?
My audience is mostly the people of Kenya and anyone who has lived in Kenya long enough to understand the dynamics of the society. I want them to look at the man in the mirror.
Why is it personally important for you to paint about corruption and other struggles?
I do work that revolves around corruption because it is a big problem in Kenya, which seems to have interfered with the development of this country. Impunity is how government deals with this issue making it very difficult- I dwell on issues that a lot of artists will choose not to address.
Photo credit: edcrossfineart.com
Why do you think people refer to your work as controversial?
Because I touch on issues that they do and don’t want put out there. I talk about corruption and commercial sex work. Kenyan society is one that loves to bury its head in the sand.
Do you listen to any music while you work?
Yes! I listen to Manu Chao. I love his music and what it represents. I listen to a lot of weird music!
What is the goal of your artwork?
To create a visual diary where in the next 15 to 20 years, young people will look at my work and see where Kenyan society has come from.
Michael is currently working on a new series of paintings called I Love Nairobi. His work has been selected for group and solo exhibitions in Africa, Europe, the UK and the US, so look for his art at a gallery near you. Or find out more on Michael’s Facebook page.
World Water Day: How sand dams are changing women’s lives in Kenya
To celebrate World Water Day we have a guest post from Jonny McKay of Excellent Development. Excellent Development support communities in Kenya to build Sand Dams which provide clean water for life and the opportunity to grow more food to eat, store and sell.
“If a child was born on the way to or from drawing water he was named Mwanzia, which means ‘born on the way’”. Jane Kingongo, Ithime self-help group, Kenya.
Jane Kingongo, a member of the Ithime self-help group in Kenya
For women in the world’s rural drylands, life is defined by the burden of collecting water. For the old and the young, the sick and the healthy, it is a chore with no relief. Even when pregnant, women must trek over long distances in order to provide their families with water.
The strain of this arduous task has terrible health consequences for women. Often alone, some give birth on the journey to or from water points. In the drylands of Ukambani, Kenya, the children of these women are called Mwanzia, which means ‘born on the way.’
We recently spoke to Jane Kinongo, a member of the Ithime Self Help Group in Kenya, who told us something of the impacts water insecurity has for women in her community.
Jane said: “As women it was our duty to fetch water using our back. We would even go to fetch water while pregnant. Sometimes we would be forced to fetch water even when having labour pains. Sometimes someone would miscarry or have a still birth at home due to the long distance.”
Women from the Kyusyani Unyeeyo self-help group in Kenya carrying water
About 66% of Africa is arid or semi-arid drylands like the area where Jane lives. More than 38% of people living in these drylands suffer with water insecurity – meaning that they have less than 1,000 m3 per capita and do not have a reliable source of clean water close to home.
For Jane, this used to mean walking up to 6km carrying 20kg of water on her back each day. It is estimated that more than 152 million hours of women and girls’ time is consumed every day in the same way — collecting water to meet their families’ basic needs. Because of this, millions of women are inhibited from accomplishing little more than survival.
With the same access to resources as men, women could grow 30% more food and reduce global hunger by 150 million people. Yet, wherever they work, they face constraints that reduce their productivity and limit their contributions to the well-being of their families, communities and countries, agricultural production, and economic growth.
A woman from the Kwa Mukonza self-help group in Kenya using a water pump linked to their Sand Dam
Jane’s self-help group is a cooperative of eight women and one man, supported by Excellent Development. They came together in 2009 to overcome their water insecurity by constructing Sand Dams, planting trees and digging terraces. With her self-help group, she has helped build seven Sand Dams, bringing water within 30 minutes for families in her community.
Jane said: “Since the construction of the [Sand] Dams, life has changed dramatically because we now draw water closer to our homes. The health problems [women] faced then have ceased to exist…now the women can rest for three months after giving birth…the problems faced [before] are never.”
More than one in six people worldwide – 894 million – don’t have access to improved water sources.
But, for those children born on the way, women like Jane are building water security and a new way of life in rural Kenya. A life in which women no longer give birth alone, far from home, on a journey to find water.
Find out more about the potential that Sand Dams have to transform millions of lives
Slum Rising: Meet a family who are proud to call Kibera home
This guest post is by journalist Abby Higgins, in partnership with The Seattle Globalist. It’s the first in a three part series which reveals the economically complex and culturally rich life of urban slums, and challenges our perceptions of what life is like for the 1 billion people around the world that live in them.
Benta, 11, at her home in Kibera. Photo: Abby Higgins
I first met Jacktone Otieno when I was doing research on women’s rights in Kenya. A group of graduate students I was working with had hired him to drive us to a rural project site.
We became close quickly. I was the only person who spoke Swahili and our conversations broke up long drives through the dusty Rift Valley. When my Swahili stalled on serious topics, his perfect English swooped in and filled the gaps.
“You have to come to my house for lunch so you can meet my family when we get back to Nairobi,” he told me as we stopped at a small roadside town. I nodded eagerly. “It’s not far from your apartment,” he told me, “we live in Kibera.”
When he said that, everything about my perception of him shifted. His perfect English, his neatly pressed clothing, his easy sense of humour – none of it resonated with what I knew about Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya.
Slum statistics
The Kibera I’d heard about, but had never visited, was a sprawling, ramshackle settlement built from materials cast off by the rest of the city. Cramped alleyways and mishmash structures lean into and grow out of each other.
Population estimates range wildly from 200,000 to over a million people. It was like different city – lawless, crime ridden and full of diseases I was pretty sure I hadn’t been immunised for.
Around the world, one billion people – one in every six of us – live in slums like Kibera.
This number grows constantly as 200,000 people move from the country to cities every day, most of them settling in slums. No formal systems of clean water, sanitation, healthcare or schooling exist because, as far as governments are concerned, residents are squatters.
A Masai man cleans his shoe in a puddle in Kibera. Masai, known to be fierce fighters, are often employed as personal bodyguards inside the slum to walk residents home late at night. Photo: Alex Stonehill
The real Kibera
A couple of weeks after our first encounter, Otieno and I met in downtown Nairobi and he took me by minibus to the edge of Kibera. I was genuinely excited to meet his family. But another side of me was morbidly curious to see the poverty I’d heard so much about.
Otieno led me down a cramped alley that made up one of the many entrances to the slum. We turned a corner, and he extended his arm outward like he was presenting a painting. “Here it is, we’re home,” he said.
Kibera stretched out in front of us, massive. It was a sweeping valley of rusting corrugated iron, unlike anything I had ever seen. From above it looked peaceful, quiet, and uninhabited. We crossed a dribbling brown stream to enter the slum and everything came to life.
Kids careened down the rocky, dirt streets at full speed, giggling and weaving between food stalls, chickens and mangy dogs. Music soared out of a set of speakers at a record store.
I was surprised by all the businesses. It hadn’t occurred to me that Kibera would be a thriving economic hub. There wasn’t a square of street front property unoccupied by activity: pharmacies, butchers, restaurants, grocery stores, and cell phone shops lined the streets.
A vegetable stall at Kibera’s Toi Market. Photo: Abby Higgins
We entered a narrow compound of ten or eleven overlapping houses. “Dad’s home!” Two toddler twin boys shrieked, colliding into Otieno’s legs as we approached the house. We ducked into a doorway formed from mud packed walls.
As my eyes adjusted, darkness gave way to a room filled with activity. Cynthia, the eldest daughter, was preparing beef stew for lunch. Her mother Joyce emerged from behind a curtain that made a partition behind which the family slept. Two children from next door hunched over a toy car in the corner of the house.
I paused at the doorway taking it all in. It was really pretty idyllic; the kind of family scene many of us aspire to. Plates clattered to the wooden table as Joyce set a steaming bowl of stew and ugali, cooked maize meal, in the center of the table.
Otieno with his children (from left to right) Benta (11), Blesssing (3), Gift (3) and Abigail (1) outside their home in Kibera. Photo: Abby Higgins
“Cynthia wants to be a journalist when she grows up,” Otieno told me about his eldest. Her younger sister Benta giggled. She’s at the top of her class in an elementary school in Kibera.
But the Otieno family isn’t immune to the difficulties of life in a slum. Otieno wishes he made enough money to move them into a safer part of Kibera. The family hadn’t planned for a fifth child, but recently had one when a local pharmacist sold them counterfeit birth control, stretching their tenuous budget even further.
“Kibera has its problems, but it’s a good place to live,” Otieno told me slicing into the thick pile of ugali. “At least [here] you can get a little bit to get by. Back at home it’s really hard to survive.”
Otieno struggled when they first moved to Nairobi from the rural village where he grew up. He didn’t have any skills and turned to petty crime to make a living. More than once, he stole a cell phone from the wrong person and had to limp two hours back to Kibera after being beaten almost to death.
A cousin helped him pay for driving school. Armed with a license, he was able to get jobs driving tourists on safaris through Kenya’s National Parks. Two years ago he opened his own safari business.
After lunch, the entire family climbed into Otieno’s oversized van so they could drive me home. We watched Kibera pass by outside the windows. It was early evening and the crowds streamed in from their jobs in the rest of the city. Men in business suits picked their way through the streets, grabbing up last-minute items before settling home for the night. It was peaceful, even beautiful.
Accepting slums are here to stay
As I watched, I thought about why slums make so many of us anxious. Why we’re so fascinated by documenting their tragedies and trying to solve their problems. I realised that the way we talk about slums—the squalor, the sewage, the gripping poverty—is a way to distance ourselves from a reality that hits too close to home.
Slums are the living, breathing results of an overstretched planet. They are the direct reality of the pollution, the overpopulation and the urbanisation we talk about a lot but rarely see first hand.
For the first time in history, more people in the world live in the city than in the country, and a third of those urban residents live in slums. Whether we like it or not, they may be the future of our planet. If we have any hope of surviving this new global reality, we have to stop looking away.
Check back next week for Part Two.
Kenya Decides: What Next for President – Elect, Uhuru Kenyatta?
The real winners of the Kenyan election to me are first and foremost, Kenyans. Kudos for maintaining peace and calm through out the electioneering and election period against all odds and predictions. Now more than ever, as the world continues to watch, Kenya needs to uphold the virtues espoused in their national anthem: Peace. Love. Unity.
Kenya’s election has received a nod from several institutions, the AU, European Union, Canada, South Africa, China amongst others, as having been free and fair.
Contrary to widespread predictions that the race would end in a runoff, President elect, Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta was able to receive over 50 percent of the votes cast in the first round as required by the constitution for a candidate to be declared president. His main challenger, Raila Odinga, has not conceded and will be going to the Supreme Court to challenge the outcome of the polls. In all this a key proud moment for Kenyans is that its new Constitution more than proved the value of the paper it is written on, Kenya’s political leaders and Kenyans as a whole honoured it.
Right now, the issue at the top of everyone’s mind is what the President elect’s International Criminal Court (ICC) case means for the governance of Kenya. One school of thought, as expressed by the Brookings Institution says, that Kenyans have seen the ICC intervention in Kenya as largely a political, rather than a judicial, process. They contend that a large fraction of Kenyans have come to regard the ICC intervention as an attempt to remove both Mr. Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, from political contention rather than seek justice for the victims of the violence.
On the other hand, there is a school of thought, which says, the ICC did not invite itself to Kenya. The ICC intervened in this case after Kenya’s parliament were unable to establish a local tribunal to try the crimes that followed the 2008 election.
Since the just concluded election, there have been more developments on the ICC front. The ICC has dropped their case against Uhuru’s co-accused, former Civil service head, Francis Muthaura, on the grounds of lack of sufficient evidence. The prosecution has since admitted that it has dropped 5 witnesses in the Ruto-Arap Sang case, while it has dropped 7 witnesses in the Uhuru-Muthaura case.
As a result, a status conference in the ICC court against Kenya’s president-elect, Uhuru Kenyatta, is set for Monday, 18th of March.
In his victory acceptance speech, Kenya’s president–elect said he would continue to cooperate with the ICC, but at the same time asked the international community to respect Kenya’s sovereignty.
Whichever way it goes, Kenya’s just concluded election shows that Kenya has come of age, and the resolve of its people across the deep tribal divides to maintain peace and calm in Kenya is to be hailed. This is a new dawn for Kenya.
Combating HIV in Turkana County, Kenya – a personal view
The following is a guest blog from Dr. Allan Mayi who is a Senior Technical Advisor (ART) with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) and coordinates the EGPAF – Tunaweza Project based in Lodwar, Turkana County (Kenya).
I have been working with the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) for the last five years. Before that, I was with the Kenyan Ministry of Health for another five years. During these 10 years of working in the general health field and in HIV/AIDS programs in various capacities, I have witnessed a lot of growth and changes – from the days of monotherapy with Zidovudine, to days when there were no public HIV programs, to the advent of adult HIV programs and later pediatric HIV programs. As we mark World AIDS Day 2012, I feel that there is a lot to be proud of, but I also have the somber realization that a lot still needs to be done. Here in Kenya, there has been significant progress towards combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and a lot of credit is due to the Kenyan government and donor governments and funding agencies, along with the various implementing partners. But so much still needs to be done, especially in hard-to-reach areas, like where I work in Turkana County.
Turkana County is one of the largest counties in Kenya and covers an area of 77,000 square kms. It borders three countries—Uganda, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. It is an arid/semi-arid region whose main economic activity is nomadic pastoralism. This has accompanying challenges of insecurity, including conflicts with neighbouring nomadic pastoralist tribes over pastures and water. The migratory lifestyles and generalized poverty adversely affects the provision of health services in the county, and HIV/AIDS programs are not exempt. The distances to health facilities are long – about 50 km – and the public transport system is poorly developed, as only the big town centers have public transport systems. Therefore, rates of defaulting from treatment are high in Turkana. Nutrition is also a major challenge – patients commonly remark that they have the medicines but have to take them on an empty stomach, which can be very painful.
Photo: A healthcare worker supported by EGPAF provides HIV counseling and testing to a family outside their manyatta in Turkana. (A manyatta is a simple traditional house built of twigs and grass by nomadic pastoralists)
Turkana is a difficult place to work in, and more often than not, the staff is called upon to go beyond the normal call of duty.
Photo: Staff from EGPAF and the Ministry of Health sleep on the verandah of Kalemnyang dispensary after a support supervision visit. There was no accommodation in the nearby town, and Lodwar town was 180 km away on rough roads by night. The only option was to sleep at the facility and continue with work the next day. Local residents often sleep “outside,” but for the uninitiated like me, it was a unique experience.
Turkana area is also prone to flash floods, and in the normal course of duty, we have been marooned by flood waters on several occasions, forcing us to sit out for several hours waiting for the waters to subside.
Photo: This river bed was dry when we crossed on the way to visit our site, but on the return journey it was completely flooded, forcing us to sit out for about four hours before we could safely cross the bridge. Another agency’s vehicle was swept away attempting to cross the bridge.
In spite of these challenges posed by the burden of the HIV disease itself, generalized poverty, and the harsh environment in which we work, the EGPAF staff continue to do their best to combat HIV in Turkana County and hope that by World AIDS Day 2013, we will be able to say that there have been major improvements in people’s lives and health in our region.
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About the Blog
The International ONE Blog is a daily log of the anti-poverty movement. The site is operated by ONE staff, with guest contributions from ONE volunteers, members and allies.
The content of each post and each comment represents the views of that author and does not necessarily reflect the views of ONE. ONE does not support or oppose any candidate for elected office, and any post expressing support or opposition for a candidate is not endorsed by ONE.
TAGS: Agriculture, Kenya, ONE, One Acre Fund