Visiting Kibera

It's been a while without a substantial post, and I will give you all the down-low on why! I (Bekah) have finally begun working with the foundation I was hoping to get to partner with and it has been super-duper busy. I have hardly gotten a moment to breathe! More on that later though....

The day before I jumped in to my current position I went on a visit to the Kibera slum with my friend Lesley who helps plant urban gardens. Lesley has a passion for nutrition and is working to educate women with HIV especially on the benefits that good nutrition can have for their quality of life. She is a lovely gal and we have been blessed to come in contact with her and her husband Michael and hope we get to spend some more time with them in the future!


I had been hoping to take a trip into Kibera with Lesley for a while and was excited to get the chance to see what she was up to and meet some of her friends and co-laborers in the gardening effort.
We began our journey into Kibera in Lesley's car bumping along some of the dirt paths down to the school where one of the gardens is located. We were supposed to meet Stella who is one of the most faithful volunteers for the gardens. In return for her efforts she gets the benefit of the produce.
Stella was still on her way to meet us so we journeyed ahead to the daycare where Stella's son stays while she is working. Stella is a young single mother living in the Kibera slum
and is the only one caring for her tiny son.

The daycare was mostly a room with dirt walls a cement floor and a tin roof filled with tiny children. The nice lady running the daycare welcomed us and gave us all hugs. She told us that many of the women whose children come to the daycare have a hard time paying the fee for a day's stay for their babies which is 20 shilings... equivalent to just under 25 cents USD. These women spend most days looking for work to make ends meet for their families.
The little ones were enamored with our cameras and had plenty of smiles and giggles at getting to see themselves on the screen. Many of these children are undernourished which will greatly effect their development, especially in these early years. Still, they are full of smiles once they get over the fact that there are scary white people (maybe the first some of them have seen) visiting them.
As we left we passed by one of the main water sources fr the area; a polluted creek. Clean water is one of the things most needed in area like this. Children and adults alike die from water-born illness and dysentery.

We then made our way to a little school near-by and had time to play with the kids and talk with the staff. Many of the staff had grown up in the same slum and had dreams of teaching.

They make due with what they have and many have worked hard to get books and desks for the school. Still, life is difficult in Kibera and many of the children will end up dropping out of school for lack of school fees or various other reasons. Due to the large amounts of rain we'd been having here a couple of the walls in the school had washed out, and the one in their 'kitchen' was completely gone.

The amount of positivity here is still overwhelming. Even though it was a short visit to Africa's largest slum, I was grateful to get a glimpse into the lives of many of the people I meet here. They are often struggling to make ends meet in often grim circumstances, but there are glimmers of hope.
Educators who know that and education will give the next generation a boost up in the world.

Women like Stella who are volunteering in urban gardens.

People like Lesley who have befriended people in Kibera and are working to improve their lives in sustainable ways. And of course, the enthusiasm of children who still play games, tell jokes, and laugh in the face of great adversity.
God Bless Kenya.
B