through the slum.
‘Kibera is the biggest proper slum in Africa,’ he explained, ‘with over one million people crammed into about one square mile. It was Nairobi’s original slum, beginning around forty years ago. Soweto in Johannesburg was bigger, but it has large tracts of middle class communities nowadays.’
As Kyalo was busy introducing me to some of his childhood friends in Kibera, a black man wearing a 1992 Donegal football jersey from our only All-Ireland winning year ambled by, singing loudly. Africa is full of surprises!
All his friends were eager to meet me, and joking away with Kyalo in Kikamba. What really struck me was how welcoming the people of Kibera were. I felt safer there than I had done in parts of some American cities. Despite the dreadful poverty and dire living conditions all around, I found aspiration, ambition, and energy in these friendly people. Nevertheless, I was always mindful of the opportunists lurking around the place.
I was invited into several homes in Kibera. They had been neighbours of Kyalo, and were clearly elated to see him once again. One hut was only the size of a modest Western bathroom; it was dark, contained no furniture at all, and was home to nine people who slept on the uneven surface that was the floor. Another home to which Kyalo brought me seemed fairly well off by the standards of the slum—it was the same size as the others, but had a couch and a tiny television set run off a car battery.
‘This is not entirely uncommon,’ Kyalo explained. ‘People sometimes choose to continue living in the slums even after they can afford to move out. There is a community here. They might even buy up other rooms in Kibera and become landlords.’
It was a pity that I was not fluent enough in Swahili (and that most of the people in Kibera could not speak English), because I was very keen to talk with them.
‘You should become a professional tour guide,’
I praised Kyalo.
He was a class act.
‘Ah Brendan, you could never bring a tour group into Kibera. Well, you could—but you wouldn’t get back out, bwana,’ he countered, smiling, and continued to enlighten me. ‘The huts consist of walls made from mud and sometimes cow dung over a framework of sticks, with rusty corrugated iron roofs over that. Some homes here are over forty years old. It has really become a permanent slum with a permanent community.’
The foul lingering smells were sometimes overpowering as we strolled together. Children were playing in heaps of rubbish and beside open sewers full of a horrible grey toxic soup. There was delight in their faces all the same. After a good while hopping over sewers and meandering through the one-foot wide alleys in this vast impenetrable warren, we reached the only small piece of open land in the whole of the slum.
‘Moscow has Red Square, New York has Times Square, and Kibera has this,’ laughed Kyalo, waving his arm over the scene. ‘This is the cockpit, the epicentre, the place where everything happens for a million people—football games, political rallies, religious services, celebrations, everything. If anyone attempted to build on that dusty land, they would be burned alive.’
I sensed he was not entirely joking.
Kyalo was anxious to show me another part of the slum. As we walked along, he kept pointing out the various sectors with their invisible but sacrosanct boundaries.
‘Each section of Kibera is dominated by a particular tribe— for example, the Nubian tribe from Sudan, who were left over in Kenya from when the British used them as soldiers before Independence in 1963. A lot of them didn’t, or were unable, to make their way back.’
After a bit, we arrived at a colourfully painted building made of concrete blocks.
‘I do my volunteer work here, Brendan. It is very worthwhile. Children come here who have lost both parents and are fed by us, and we educate teenagers on the dangers of AIDS.’
I liked that about Kyalo, and the people of
‘Kibera is the biggest proper slum in Africa,’ he explained, ‘with over one million people crammed into about one square mile. It was Nairobi’s original slum, beginning around forty years ago. Soweto in Johannesburg was bigger, but it has large tracts of middle class communities nowadays.’
As Kyalo was busy introducing me to some of his childhood friends in Kibera, a black man wearing a 1992 Donegal football jersey from our only All-Ireland winning year ambled by, singing loudly. Africa is full of surprises!
All his friends were eager to meet me, and joking away with Kyalo in Kikamba. What really struck me was how welcoming the people of Kibera were. I felt safer there than I had done in parts of some American cities. Despite the dreadful poverty and dire living conditions all around, I found aspiration, ambition, and energy in these friendly people. Nevertheless, I was always mindful of the opportunists lurking around the place.
I was invited into several homes in Kibera. They had been neighbours of Kyalo, and were clearly elated to see him once again. One hut was only the size of a modest Western bathroom; it was dark, contained no furniture at all, and was home to nine people who slept on the uneven surface that was the floor. Another home to which Kyalo brought me seemed fairly well off by the standards of the slum—it was the same size as the others, but had a couch and a tiny television set run off a car battery.
‘This is not entirely uncommon,’ Kyalo explained. ‘People sometimes choose to continue living in the slums even after they can afford to move out. There is a community here. They might even buy up other rooms in Kibera and become landlords.’
It was a pity that I was not fluent enough in Swahili (and that most of the people in Kibera could not speak English), because I was very keen to talk with them.
‘You should become a professional tour guide,’
I praised Kyalo.
He was a class act.
‘Ah Brendan, you could never bring a tour group into Kibera. Well, you could—but you wouldn’t get back out, bwana,’ he countered, smiling, and continued to enlighten me. ‘The huts consist of walls made from mud and sometimes cow dung over a framework of sticks, with rusty corrugated iron roofs over that. Some homes here are over forty years old. It has really become a permanent slum with a permanent community.’
The foul lingering smells were sometimes overpowering as we strolled together. Children were playing in heaps of rubbish and beside open sewers full of a horrible grey toxic soup. There was delight in their faces all the same. After a good while hopping over sewers and meandering through the one-foot wide alleys in this vast impenetrable warren, we reached the only small piece of open land in the whole of the slum.
‘Moscow has Red Square, New York has Times Square, and Kibera has this,’ laughed Kyalo, waving his arm over the scene. ‘This is the cockpit, the epicentre, the place where everything happens for a million people—football games, political rallies, religious services, celebrations, everything. If anyone attempted to build on that dusty land, they would be burned alive.’
I sensed he was not entirely joking.
Kyalo was anxious to show me another part of the slum. As we walked along, he kept pointing out the various sectors with their invisible but sacrosanct boundaries.
‘Each section of Kibera is dominated by a particular tribe— for example, the Nubian tribe from Sudan, who were left over in Kenya from when the British used them as soldiers before Independence in 1963. A lot of them didn’t, or were unable, to make their way back.’
After a bit, we arrived at a colourfully painted building made of concrete blocks.
‘I do my volunteer work here, Brendan. It is very worthwhile. Children come here who have lost both parents and are fed by us, and we educate teenagers on the dangers of AIDS.’
I liked that about Kyalo, and the people of
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