Day 6 - Nairobi's Slums

Little did I know that this day, our first full day in Kenya, would turn out to be the most disturbing, overwhelming, yet rewarding part of this trip. Today we visited the slums of Nairobi. Coming from the metro Detroit area, I thought I knew what a slum was. I was wrong. In fact, the dirtiest, most run-down, burnt out, crime-ridden section of Detroit would be a middle class enclave compared to the slums we saw in Nairobi. Nothing could have prepared me for this experience.
Nairobi is a city of great contrasts. On one hand, it is a bustling, cosmopolitan city - home to many international companies and organizations including a huge tourism industry. On the other hand, it is an overcrowded, dirty, smelly, disease-ridden, crime plagued dump. And none of that is an exaggeration! The two slums we visited, Mathare & Kibera are located at the bottom of former rock quarries that had been used for years as garbage dumps and then had these 'settlements' built on top of the heaps of garbage. Nairobi has a population of about 3 million people- 60% of whom live in the slums. Mathare covers an area of about 1 sq. mile and is home to more than half a million people. Kibera, the largest slum in Africa, is about 2 sq. miles in size with more that a million and a half people.
Walking into the slum, it's the smell that hits you first. The unmistakable smell of raw sewage, rotting garbage and burning charcoal. The 'houses' are tiny (maybe 6x6?) and are constructed from a variety of materials - sticks, mud/dung, cardboard, plastic sheets, rusted tin. There are no foundations and the houses lean against one another. The roofs are flat, held down by rocks. Most houses don't have any windows and the doorway has no door. There is no electricity, water or sanitation.
The alleys are narrow and crowded filled with goats, chickens and dogs. And children. Oh the children.... they're everywhere you look. Dresses in rags, they stand or squat next to their huts waiting and watching silently. Some are lucky enough to be in school, but most are not because their families can't afford the fees to send them. Our first stop in Mathare is at one of these schools that has @120 children ages 3 - 10 - most are orphans. We arrived in time to serve their morning 'porridge' which is basically a warmed up flour and water mixture. It looks like wallpaper paste but the kids look forward to it and most drink several cups. It is probably the first thing they've had to eat since lunch yesterday.