We started off going to the local organic farmers who work as a little co-operative selling organically grown food. There were many stalls selling lots of organic veg and fruit of all sorts and descriptions including an apple custard and a white sweet potato which was delicious fried.
Then we drove to the city centre via the Kibera slum. This was a bit of a shock we had heard about it but encountering the sheer size and smell of it was a real revelation. Today we were being taken on a tour of central Nairobi so after a brief cup of tea and a bun we set off for the centre of Nairobi , which Simon and Cecilia wished to show us. On the way we took a road through the middle of the biggest slum in Africa.
There are approximately 2.5 million slum dwellers in about 200 settlements in Nairobi representing 60% of the Nairobi population and occupying just 6% of the land. Kibera houses about 250,000 of these people. Kibera is the biggest slum in Africa and one of the biggest in the world.
The original settlers were the Nubian people from the Kenyan/Sudanese border – they now occupy about 15% of Kibera, are mostly Muslim and are also mostly shack owners. The other shack owners are mostly Kikuyu (the majority tribe in Nairobi) – although in most cases they do not live there but are absentee landlords. The majority of the tenants are Luo, Luhya and some Kamba – these people are from the west of Kenya. There are many tensions in Kibera, particularly tribal tensions between the Luo & Kikuyu, but also between landlord and tenant and those with and without jobs.
Francis told us that the government is trying to improve the conditions putting in public toilets Public baths and health clinics and police posts as well as improving electricity supply and putting in security lighting at night. Also some of the slum is being demolished and replaced by fairly rudimentary high rise apartments.
However their are still the open sewers which leak onto the streets and piles of rotting rubbish everywhere. The houses are just shacks are just mud built shored up by bits of rusting corrugated sheeting. The streets are lined with tiny shops making and selling everything you can think of, there is a massive fleet of little matatus the little minibuses which pick up and drop of passengers barely stopping, also bizarrely a camel trotting down one of the roads .
So we drove out of the slum and around the corner we went past the French ambassadors residence and massive expensive residences. We drove into Nairobi stopped at a viewpoint overlooking the park and the centre of Nairobi.
The centre was a busy bustle with large markets and skyscrapers.We saw the building where Dawn Stanley's father worked. We dropped into the cool and calm of the New Stanley Hotel for a drink which is an old style colonial hotel. One of the last places Princess Elizabeth visited before she was announced Queen at the Tree Tops safari park.
Then home to resurrect the water filter which Simon had just got back from Cecilia's mother which after a little clean and grease was working perfectly.
A picture of a child in the slum
View of Nairobi from the public park
So today was a day of real contrasts. We saw the very rich and the very poor. The poverty in the slum is something that all of us in the rich.world really need to be doing something about.
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