The Fifth One.

My enthusiasm for research was sparked after reading Conor’s blog Slums and Suburbs, enticing me to further investigate the slums outside Nairobi, Kenya where I will be living this summer. While searching for online journals, I stumbled across a great report created by Amnesty International titled Kenya: The unseen Majority; Nairobi’s Two Million Slum Dwellers. Here are some shocking facts that I discovered reading this…

•          2 million people (half the capital’s population) are crammed into only 5% of the city’s residential area
•         This problem dates back to the Colonial period when most Africans were barred from the city’s residential area as they were reserved for Europeans and Asians
•           In 2002 only 24% of slum residents had access to piped water (92% in the rest of Nairobi)
•          For those without access to piped water, private water vendors are the only other option – the average resident can barely afford to purchase 20 litres a day (2 Ksh or $0.025 US)
•           In the slum of Kibera, an estimated 130,000 have access to only one reliable private health facility
•          The Kenyan government launched a free primary education program in 2003 –- however most children in slums do not have access to this
•         The cost to send a child to school for a year outside Nairobi is Ksh 800-1,200 or US$10-15) per child – a price which most cannot afford
•         Many families in the slums see prostitution as the only way to afford their housing and put food on the table
•          1.5 Million in Kenya are living with HIV

For those who didn’t notice, the majority of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals are inadvertently addressed within these brief points. Goals 1 –Ending Poverty and Hunger, 2- Universal Education, 4- Child Health, 5- Maternal Health and 6- Combat HIV/AIDs, which are each mentioned, I have found to be the most problematic and stagnant while learning about the devastation in Kenyan slums. Author Carl Sandburg compared human life to an onion. We have to peel it one layer at a time, and cry in between for the problems are so immense.  

The description of the slums we will be living in reminded me of the vivid images we gained while reading Alan Paton’s Cry, The Beloved Country. Much like South Africa during the apartheid era, Kenya is now experiencing similar conditions as the country is currently housing “ten millionaires and ten million beggers” as a Kenyan news reported stated. In South Africa, however annual slum growth has fallen markedly according to the UN-Habitat Report. In addition a recent South African water law stipulates that every household should be provided with 200 litres of free

water daily.

Although numerous suggestions have been brought forward and presented regarding the upgrading of slums and international standards on evictions, I am hesitant to side with which approach would work best. I think that because of this course I’ve learned how important it is to create change using a bottom-up or grass roots approach, so I feel that any recommendations would be best provided after actually speaking with the people living in these make-shift communities. That being said, some recommendations that I feel must be followed or implemented regardless of the proposal are: 

·      Support and commitment from Government backed by written and publicized bold policy reforms

·      Protection for squatters and surveillance over forced evictions as they are as violation of human rights that governments are obligated to prohibit and prevent

·      The creation of affordable housing land to prevent the increased growth of new slums

Although my opinions may change once I’ve landed in my host country and become truly aware of the complications involved with this problem, these are my current suggestions. Even after reading about the slums of Nairobi for hours each day, I don’t think anything will prepare me for the initial shock of actually seeing one, let alone living in it. I know many of my friends think I’m crazy for saying this, but this is something I am certainly looking forward to experiencing. 

Amnesty International. (2009). Kenya: the unseen majority; nairobi's two million slum dwellers.         Amnesty International Publications.