Zulu FC Community This group of 28 men started off as a group of friends on a football team (a very good one apparently as they play in one of the lower professional leagues). There we’re a close group, and when some of the team started to get into trouble with drugs and crime, the group came together as a community to stop the slow downward slide. They cleared off an abandoned lot that had accumulated the trash of the adjacent market for years, dug two shallow wells, and opened up a car wash. Guys one the team chipped in 100 shillings for each day that they work at the car wash to pay for supplies and then take home all the money they make from washing cars that day. In the pictures on the right you see two of the guys washing down a coaster bus.
After the car wash became well established, they spread into another trash lot and turned it into a recycling centre (picture below with the goat). They charge people a nominal fee for trash bags and help clean up the neighbourhood. They then separate out the compostable waste and recyclables. They cash in on the fertiliser and bulk recyclables, but I think the most interesting bit is what they do with paper. In the picture above you see from left to right Frederick, Ndiso, and Rashid with their charcoal briquette maker. Mixing the paper with woodchips and charcoal powder they make little cooking bricks, which they sell.
The whole group of guys was exceptionally upbeat and made me believe that they were going to do whatever it took to make their community a better place. Also, they were notably diverse, a couple were descended from the original Nubian inhabitants of Kibera, while others came from a variety of Kenyan tribes. I hope if I ever am back in Nairobi that I have a chance to pay them another visit as they we’re certainly the highlight of this trip.
Monsimoni Community Centre
The other spot I visited was a community centre with a computer lab. Houses in Kibera can be as small as 10 feet by 10 feet, so a large open community centre is a valuable resource, especially for youth who might otherwise be getting themselves into trouble. The most remarkable bit was the computer lab – fitted out with 5 machines in a fairly unsecured building. The computers are plenty safe though as the centre is protected by the entire community, and particularly 22 young people who helped build the place and are now receiving valuable computer training for their efforts.
For 800 hours of service building the centre or working on other community projects, they young students receive a complete training course in basic computer usage including MS Office. The picture below is a couple of guys learning how to use Word. For every block of 800 hours they receive another training block, from advanced office to hardware repair. It’s a great win-win that uses minimal donor resources to mobilise the community and build a better future for those who are willing and able to do the most for building the area.
I was inspired by both projects. It was a level of community building and empowerment that I don’t see in my comfortable neighbourhood in London. To me it was a lesson that people may be materially impoverished, but true poverty is lacking hope – and the first step to fighting back against that is coming together and making something happen. It makes me want to get to know my own neighbours, something I’ve started doing since I came home.
I had a quick ten day visit to Kenya, and didn’t leave Nairobi that whole time. While that leaves me itching to go back, I am very lucky to have been able to explore the city, from the nicest neighbourhoods and poshest restaurants, to the heart of a couple of the slums. The first slum I went into was Mukuru kwa Njenga, and I just spent a short while in a closed construction area at the edge of the slum. The next day started with a short trip to the Majengo slum, which seemed as rough a place I had ever seen. That is until I spend the remainder of the day in Kibera, the giant slum of legend.
It’s impossible to convey the sense of the place through screen you see this on because the poverty surrounds and suffocates you so completely. Here is a major city within a city – a community built on the dream of escaping rural poverty, and walled in by type of wealth that will always be out of reach for most. The paths through the town are winding and uneven, paved in plastic bags and other waste, often with a stagnant little creek of waste running right through the middle. The building materials vary a little, but looked to mainly be raw wood, corrugated iron, and mud. And yet, if you look on the map below you’ll see the golf course and nice houses that form the border of Kibera, ringed in high-security fences to keep out their neighbours.
It may be naive of me, but I couldn’t overcome the feeling that this sort of urban poverty wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the neighbouring opulence. For several generations, people have poured into the slums and scramble for work. Their kids receive a better education and proceed to compete with hundreds of thousands of others for jobs. Kenya’s economy may grow at a staggering 6% per anum, but with population growing at close to 3% per year and an estimated urbanisation rate of 3.7% it seems like a losing battle – there will be ever more people competing in a jobs market that just can’t grow fast enough.
But that’s just the surface. As I met and chatted with some of the folks in the community the dark exterior gave way to some reasons for hope. More on that in part two…
Unlike Weldon, these holidays have been pretty low key for me as far as adventure goes. I haven’t spent much time with family over the past couple years, so I needed to devote some time bouncing around Illinois and Iowa catching up. Christmas was spent up in the Iowa side of the Quad Cities, then Christmas weekend in central Iowa, a few days back in my hometown in Illinois, and then up to Chicago for New Years.
All of this is in strict contrast to the holidays I had last year. At this time last year, I was busy lying low on the Kenyan coast, trying to avoid any confrontations with loose machetes. I was spending my holidays bouncing around the various Kenyan beaches on the Indian Ocean and had just met up with a friend in the region’s main port city, Mombasa, when the rigged presidential election on December 27 sent the country tailspinning into near-civil-war.
The tension built up over a couple days after the election as the national election commission stalled announcing the tainted tallies. The election was always too close to call; we’ll never know who really won. But what did become apparent was that the incumbent president decided it wasn’t worth the risk to find out. When the illegitimate election results were announced, tribal-based violence sprang up all over the nation.
Leading up to the election, I, like most Kenyans and outside observers, had confidence that election would go relatively smooth and fair. I was not expecting to have to scramble back to my cheap hotel room in Mombasa town (actually an island just off the mainland). My friend and I spent the next few days suffering under the equatorial sun and coastal humidity in the non-air-conditioned hotel, never wandering more than a twenty yards outside the hotel for safety reasons. Luckily, there was a small local restaurant in that radius—however, after a few days, cabbage was the only ingredient left on the menu. The country was on lock down.
For New Years, a group of four of us decided we had earned a little change of scenery. Venturing out for the first time in a few days, we ended up on the empty rooftop of some downtown building. I was bringing in the New Year with a packet of miraa (or khat), the mild stimulant plant popular in East Africa that one chews slowly over the period of a few hours. The four of us just sitting and talking quietly, appreciating our cling on life–it was an eerie beginning to 2008.
Despite the eerie beginning, 2008 ended up all right after all, and we all got out of that mess safe and sound. This 2009 is starting much differently; it will be interesting to see what adventures are in store for this year. Happy New Year all!
During my Thanksgiving traveling here in the U.S., I was reminded one of the many reasons I as an American carry around with me a nostalgia for traveling elsewhere–because elsewhere is often way more colorful. Color just makes life more fun and interesting. Why does life have to be so dreary and proper all the time? (OK, that was a weak stab at you British readers…and admins living in England.)
My first experience with this realization (about color, not Britain) was a short trip into mainland Jamaica–not the beach, but the hilly interior. Colors, colors, everywhere. Bright, unashamed colors. Home never looked as dull as it did returning from that trip. In India, my Festival of Colors experience had a similarly dulling affect on life back in the States.
To return to the opening sentence of this post, though, this Thanksgiving weekend reminded me again of this basic lack of colorfulness. I used a transportation shuttle for the two-hour trip from Atlanta airport to Chattanooga, TN, where I went to visit some family friends who I hadn’t seen in a few years. The shuttle was a well-operating, tidy, 13-passenger van with a plain white exterior. The ride was fine. It got me quickly and efficiently where I needed to go. It was very typically American.
The problem was that it was just…colorless. And not just because the van literally lacked color. But because the ride was uneventful, quiet, with zero interaction between passengers–colorless.
The fault of the van was that it reminded me too much–and too little–of the street matatus in Nairobi, Kenya. Everything I just mentioned about this American transportation shuttle, the Nairobi matatu is the exact opposite of. Loud (usually with blaring hip-hop), colorful (literally), unpredictable, risky (many ex-pats will refuse to ride them out of safety concerns), matatus were how I got daily from place to place. When every day begins by hopping in one of these, life does seem to have a bit more daily color to it.
This is my own little YouTube video I made on matatus while I was there. Unfortunately, the part of town I was shooting in was not home to the best and brightest of the lot. A quick scan through Google Images will give a pretty good look at some of the variety though.
Disclaimer: Today is an especially overcast and lifeless day in DC. I will let the reader judge the effect this might have had on this post.
I ran into this piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the tiny Swahili island off the Kenyan coast, Lamu. Now, I had the opportunity to visit Lamu twice during my stay in Kenya, and it is hands down one of my favorite places I have ever had the privilege of visiting. Lamu is easily the most unique place I have ever been to. While the Swahili island Zanzibar gets the name recognition and the tourists, Lamu and its culture has luckily been more preserved. No vehicles are allowed on the island, fishing is still the dominant way of life, and the locals are incredibly friendly.
Taking such pseudonyms as “California,” “Captain Smiles,” and even “Satan,” the locals immediately offer to let you into their world. Late night bonfires on the beach, sketchily bought illegal palm wine, drumming five gallon buckets late into the Indian Ocean night–Lamu was one of a kind.
Photo: Me in one of the Lamu dhows
And this is why I suppose that reading the piece in the Philly Inquirer brought mixed emotions. For me, it always feels strange to read about another’s travel experience that is similar to one of my own. Rarely do I think the narrator’s account is spot-on; rather, I tend to view it in an over-critical eye. These feelings were just magnified when the account was about Lamu: “Oh, he is probably just stayed in an expensive hotel,” or “I’m sure that he was just another one of those wazungu tourists who didn’t even realize he was getting ripped off in the market every day.”
I’m not sure exactly what causes this backwards negativity upon reading others’ stories similar to my own–jealousy of the uniqueness of my own memories, unjustified pride in the quality of my own travelling experiences, nostalgia turned against itself–but it really isn’t fair.
So here’s to Mr. Steve Goldstein’s fun times in Lamu. And may everyone else get the chance to enjoy that beautiful little island as well. I highly recommend it.
This group of 28 men started off as a group of friends on a football team (a very good one apparently as they play in one of the lower professional leagues). There we’re a close group, and when some of the team started to get into trouble with drugs and crime, the group came together as a community to stop the slow downward slide. They cleared off an abandoned lot that had accumulated the trash of the adjacent market for years, dug two shallow wells, and opened up a car wash. Guys one the team chipped in 100 shillings for each day that they work at the car wash to pay for supplies and then take home all the money they make from washing cars that day. In the pictures on the right you see two of the guys washing down a coaster bus.
