Inkdrops from Kibera



I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn’t write anything without hope in it.
Oscar Hammerstein II

Misery is Kibera, as far as my mind can tell. It is the land of dark hearts dimmed by the lacks that flood their lives.  Lives that kill others without care. It is a place of flying toilets and goons that snatch your handbag –sometimes; they even ask nicely for it. Kibera is death. It is population and pollution. It is open sewers right in front of makeshift houses. It is a room that accommodates father, mother and children. Kibera is hunger, rape. Dirty children running across the small squeeze-in alleys that separate the houses, playing pinch-no-pinch-. Hunger, open sewers, dirty, goons, makeshift houses- this is the expanse of my mind’s imagination as the Matatu slowly makes its way through the traffic jam from Prestige to Kibera. I have never been there. I read about it in books, I see stories on CNN and Aljazeera. Even sometimes, Treysongz tweets about it.

“ Ghetto Heaven Carwash”, “Sita Kimya—Zungumza, Zuia Ubakaji”… beautiful graffiti on a wall as the matatu slowly comes to a stop.

I am with @visionafrica, @wamathai @mumbi_ and @soul_fool on our way to visit kids in a residents-run organisation , Mpira Mtaani- football meets education. At the matatu stage is a group of tens of men dressed in white robes, jumping up and down to the beat of drums and the scorch of the sun. Every jump brings down a drop of sweat from their tired looking faces. I assume they are members of Dini ya Msambwa. But on their flag are the words African Israel – something (I cannot make out the words clearly, the flag bearer is chanting and dancing too vigorously to allow my eyes to catch it)

Leading to Kibera is a very neatly carpeted road that disintegrates as you approach Olympic Primary School. As we approach the ‘real kibera’ I suddenly start feeling unsafe. The kind of feeling you get when you are walking on River Road at 9pm. I clutch at my handbag tightly under my armpits. I notice a number of people looking at me, judging me, their eyes laughing at me.

“Wanted! Peace. Alive”…still graffiti on the wall.  I read a lot into words. So I start wondering about these words. Is there peace that is dead? Peace is always alive. No? Then it hits me. We often say that we are fighting for peace when we kill brothers from other tribes. We fight for peace. Dead peace.

We walk on. Way past London Hotel. A good population walking around here is in NGO Tshirts. It bothers me. I do not know why. In an open space on the side of the infamous railway line, their Kamukunji ground I believe, is a man standing on the dais, pumping Sunday words out of his mouth in his mother tongue, to a crowd that seems to be following his every word. He however seems more miserable than the people listening to him. The kind of the tired expression people give to the world one last time before they put noose on neck is what is painted on his face.

Children start running to @visionafrica. They are nice, they are smiling. They say hello to her in English. Good English. Then they say hello to us. I wait for them to ask for ‘shillingi’. None does. They run off instead and join others in play.

It is mating season for the sun and the dust with their respective spouses! I can barely breathe. @soul_fool and @mumbi_ indulge in a conversation about their ear piercings as we walk- How old is yours? I don’t use stoppers on mine. Do you? . I wonder if they will throw in one on when they started weaning the piercings. But I digress. And so do they.

We are slowly getting into the heart of Kibera. Shacks are becoming ‘shantier’. More children running around barefoot. Smiles on their faces and wander and pity on mine. How and why they are smiling baffles me. I feel like in a minute or so, someone is going to throw a flying one on my face. But shame on me for that. Shame on me. at a corner , just close to an open sewer is a mother sitting on a stool holding a newly born child, selling Colgate-filled tubes on the street. They are not packaged like the supermarket ones. People are buying them anyway. Next to her is another. Our eyes meet as she slaps the child in her arms, forcing her abnormally extended nipples out of her youngster’s mouth. Her eyes judge the ‘woiye’ expression that is spewed across my face. She looks away instantly and starts swatting flies from the omena she is selling.

We are here. Mpira Mtaani. The boys are running out to play football. They smile at us and say hello in very good English. They are happy. I wonder why. Why they are not out killing people or snatching phones from unsuspecting people. I wonder why I am not happy. Why I do not see such radiancy on my face every time I look in the mirror.

Class in session at Mpira Mtaani

 

Mpira mtaani is an organisation that gives kids in school a space for recreation, but most importantly, a place to do their after school study, receive extra tuition, etc. The administrator tells us that these kids do not get much time at home to finish their homework. The facility helps them a lot. Here, they find books to read, interact with kids from other schools and get extra teaching from volunteer teachers.

In the Library is a girl that arrests my attention. She is reading with passion…subvocalising her words. Her arm is lovingly wrapped around her small brother’s  who intensely watches her sister as she reads, probably wondering who she is talking to in the book. I want to go over and tell her that subvocalising and moving lips is bad for her reading. But that can wait till next weekend.

We visit another part of Mpira Mtaani- a classroom where these kids receive extra coaching from 4.00 pm and over the weekends.  There, I fall in love with a kid. 3 years old. She has pain written all over her face. No one is talking to her. I lift her up and she rests her head on my bosom. All the other kids around are smiling. She is not. She has a serious scar on her face, from a burn, the other kids tell me. I want to ran off with her, adopt her even. I want a baby!

We are done visiting and surveying the grounds to implement a writing teaching initiative for the kids in the coming weekends. Walking out of Kibera, I feel stupid and ashamed of myself for the images I have had in my mind. Kibera is poor, yes. Kibera is flooded with NGO’S yes. The living conditions there are unthinkable. But Kibera has beauty in it. It is in the hearts of the people who live there. They smile, regardless. They talk to you. They don’t rob you at gunpoint. The kids don’t ask for ‘shilling kumi nikanunue chakula’.

But, advice from @visionafrica, the kind of help that Kibera needs is not food which they will still be coming back for in the next few years. They need good education, good health care, business projects. They need to be taught to be financially independent, self reliant. Kibera people do not need pity-a ‘woishe how do you manage to live like this?’ never helps. They need assistance. Come survey with us, and see what they need that you can provide. Even guidance and counselling would be much appreciated.

 

“Zuia Ubakaji-zungumza na mtoto wako asishikwe shikwe ovyo ovyo barabarani”…more graffiti on the way out. “Bila cd? Hapana. Afadhali ikae”

We make our way to Chess Sunday at Capri 7. Just after Yaya Center, a woman sleeps on the side of the road. Clutching firmly at her coin cup. A few metres from there, a kid runs over to @wiselar , “nipe shilling uncle”… I felt safer in Kibera. People smiled at us in Kibera. Here, no one cares to know how your day has been, or throws a smile your way, except the kid holding on to @wiselar’s hand for shilling moja.

Some of the Mpira Mtaani Kids