Kibera

I spent three hours at Kibera slum with a local as a tour guide. I suppose the main difference from the equivalent in China is the size. Somewhere close to a million people live in Kibera, many have been there for two or three generations. With a place this big (and it's big because everyone is only in single storey painted mud huts) there are countless high streets and markets, hundreds of churches, and a lot of rubbish!

Most people there get by it seems, some with jobs outside the slum cleaning or in construction. Most just do business within the slum, a massive economy in itself. In this way money comes in and circulates around enough for people to get by. The government and aid agencies fund several years of free primary school and try to improve infrastructure like toilet blocks. There's only a couple of high schools, but plenty of childcare and kindergarten options, all of which charge (kindergarten is about 15 USD a month).

Life is certainly lively there with cinemas, pubs and hotels as well the usual restaurants and all sorts of shops. Though of course all of the above are in mud huts with corrugated metal roofs with few widows so quite a different atmosphere. There's workshops making handicrafts too. It lacks for little. In practice of course incomes are unpredictable, living conditions are very cramp and poor, opportunities and hope are both limited.

It was striking how bustling life there is. How happy most people seem, especially the kids. Always the kids. It's all they known, all they do know and all they could hope for. It's tough for those who get sick, which is likely with poor hygiene, have to find the money for rent and children, or who may have personal tragedies, like deaths, affecting them. We met one old lady with AIDS who runs a small sewing cooperative to create income and self esteem for her and 15 other even with AIDS.

My tour guide (the tour company was set up by a foreign volunteer to create jobs and income for people like my guide) has 9 sisters and brothers with only 2 having regular work. This earns him some money every now and again but he's also busy helping other charitable projects and volunteering in the community. It's a very worthwhile few hours.

China's slums are actually similar, just much smaller and generally made of very simple brick buildings due to the harsher weather, and probably related to the abundance of building materials on one hand, and the Kenyan traditional mud buildings from the countryside where the residents come from on the other hand.

After Kibera I wasted time at a crocodile farm, enjoyed the giraffe center a lot thanks to the informative "educator", and visited Bombas of Kenya. A 2 hour show of different traditional Kenyan dances and outside the theater, replicas of all the different tribes' traditional houses. A good day overall.