As part of my recent trip to Kenya with Indy Escapes, I had the opportunity to visit an NGO that was nestled in the heart of the Kibera Slum. The day we spent with the Edmund Rice Centre impacted me like no other experience ever has. I have visited many shanty towns throughout my travels, but I have never been immersed in them as I was in Kibera. We were here to learn about the work that the Edmund Rice Centre does so that we could help them raise funds. I never expected it to touch me quite so profoundly as it did. I’ve been to refugee camps and visited some of the poorest countries in the world, but following Shosho into her home in the heart of Kibera Slum was like nothing I’ve experienced before.
What's in this post:
Words straight from my heart
Below are the unedited words I wrote to my family the day after:
Dear All
Yesterday was a heavy day. So heavy in fact that I didn’t even know how to start talking about it, either on Instagram or for this email update. How can I possibly put into words the reality of what I witnessed? I’ve been to shanty towns before. I’ve seen people living with the bare minimum, but yesterday completely overwhelmed me.
We were visiting an NGO within Kibera slum, the largest slum in Africa and the third largest in the world. It’s hard to find an estimate of how many people live in Kibera as reports vary wildly. However, the one number they seem to more or less agree on is the density of the population: 300,000 people per square kilometre. For context, in London, it is 5,500 people per square km. And in New York, 11,300. It is believed that 1.5 million people live within the Kibera slum under these cramped conditions.
Most Kibera slum residents live in extreme poverty, earning less than $2 a day. Unemployment rates are high, and crime is rampant. Muggings, robbery and gender base violence happen daily, and the slum cartel controls electricity and water.
Poverty Taxes
12% of the residents live with HIV, and diseases caused by poor hygiene and damp conditions are prevalent. There are toilets (a non-portable version of a portaloo) that the residents must pay to use. The cost? 10 cents per use, and these are padlocked shut. When wages are $1-2 a day, paying to go to the loo seems like a frivolous expense, especially when most families are made up of 5 or more people. Instead, they urinate on the streets and poo in a bag, which then they fling, passers-by beware!!
There are taps with “clean” water for cleaning and cooking, but they have to buy drinking water. They often don’t have enough money to buy bigger barrels, so instead, they spend more money on smaller containers. They do have electricity, which is illegally wired. The poor infrastructure often causes fires, which then spread rapidly throughout the neighbourhood. Putting it out is down to the residents, as firefighters rarely attempt to enter the narrow, muddy streets.
The Edmund Rice Centre
Life in a slum is hard, there is no doubt about it, but visiting the Edmund Rice Centre gives a whole new meaning to how challenging it is for the most vulnerable children in the community: those with disabilities.
The Edmund Rice Centre is a community-based organisation that provides educational, vocational, and livelihood services to children and young adults with autism, Down syndrome, multiple sclerosis, and other forms of physical and cognitive disabilities.
The beneficiaries are taught basic learning skills based on their abilities, which include reading, writing, creative activities and daily living activities such as getting dressed, personal hygiene, and cooking. Their guardians are also empowered through various trainings on handling and offering support.
The aim is to empower the beneficiaries and their families to live without financial support by creating and running small businesses and learning to manage all daily tasks. In addition, they have an advocacy program to promote inclusion and opportunity for people who would otherwise be massively discriminated against and marginalised.
Going deep into Kibera Slum
Their motto, which I love, is “Don’t give us sympathy, give us opportunity”. Yet, as I write this email, my eyes are teared up. After meeting the kids and learning about the various projects they run, I got the chance to walk to one of the kid’s homes deep in the Kibera slum.
Forget disability for a moment. That commute would be challenging for anybody. Down steep, muddy slopes, up knee-high steps, through narrow alleyways with sharp corrugated iron waiting to snag you at any opportunity. Stinky sewages that need to be jumped over, wooden planks that need to be navigated. We walked for 20 minutes until we reached Shosho’s home.
We had sweat running down our backs, and all we were carrying was ourselves. Now imagine doing that twice a day while carrying a 15-year-old boy with multiple sclerosis on your shoulders. But her son is one of the lucky 77 the project can support. 2.2% of Kenyans live with a disability. If that same percentage applies to Kibera (I can’t find any stats), there could easily be 33,000 individuals!
But Shosho isn’t the only one that faces challenges. Many of the kids have to navigate a similar journey on their own. Kids with Down syndrome walk themselves home after school every day despite their vulnerability to physical and sexual assault.
My heart breaks at the thought of it.
Welcome to my home
Shosho invited us into her home. A 3×3 metre mud hut with a sheet dividing it in half. On one side of the sheet was a bed and storage area. On the other side was a multipurpose wooden plank that served as a bed for three children, a sofa, and a table. The remaining floor space was the kitchen and a shower (by that, I mean an area to light a fire and the same space in which to throw water over themselves). The light flickered, and I tried to imagine what kind of existence that was.
Outside her home, a communal washing line prompted me to ask how they dry their clothes in the rainy season. “They hang them inside their homes” – someone explained. “But as they can only afford one school uniform, kids will put their clothes on wet with an extra layer on top to stop them getting cold”. I’ve had to do that a couple of times in my life when camping. It is not nice. I can’t imagine doing it day in and day out for weeks on end.
Luxury within the slums
We then went to a second home, which felt positively luxurious. It was on the outskirts of the slum and was much bigger. Behind their curtain, they had two small double beds, one for the parents and one for the kids. This meant they had space for a sitting room with two chairs, a small sofa, a coffee table and a TV. They had a stove in the corner and a tiny compartment at the back to shower in. They didn’t have a toilet, but they could afford to use the local one. Their entire house was still smaller than my kitchen (ignoring the dining area of it), and yet here I am thinking of it as “luxurious”.
However, the proximity to the road comes with other challenges. During recent political demonstrations, the police tear-gassed the neighbourhood adjacent to the road, which seeped into their home. Their neighbour’s kid died as a result of the tear gas.
It was a challenging day. I kept remembering their motto: “Give us opportunity, not sympathy”.
How can you help?
If any of what I’ve written has moved you, and you want to support the work that the Edmund Rice Centre is doing, then please donate on our GoFundMe page. Giving up one Starbucks coffee this week and gifting the cost of it could make a huge difference to some of the most vulnerable and marginalised kids in this world.
Was the tour ethical?
One of my biggest concerns when travelling and connecting with NGOs is whether the experience is ethical. Sadly, I have visited some projects where the kids are paraded for the benefit of tourists. Good doers pose for selfies and leave feeling good about themselves because they have played with vulnerable children for half an hour and donated some money for the privilege of doing so. In my opinion, that is not ethical tourism, no matter how good the intentions are.
I felt that the Edmund Rice Centre was different. We spent more time learning about the project than with the kids, as they didn’t want us to interrupt their schooling. We also didn’t go into the slums to ogle at how people live, but instead to give us perspective as to the challenges their beneficiaries face daily.
If you are in Nairobi, I recommend you visit the Edmund Rice Centre store to buy some of the goods the kids and their parents have made. It is an excellent way of supporting the charity ethically, and you will get a chance to understand just how big a difference the team at the Edmund Rice Centre makes.
If you are a young professional looking for similar culturally immersive experiences, I recommend you check out Indy Escapes, as they do a brilliant job of merging culture, charity and wildlife as part of their tours. I will forever be grateful for the opportunity they gave me to experience life in the Kibera Slums.
