{"id":2444,"date":"2010-07-18T08:19:55","date_gmt":"2010-07-18T15:19:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/?p=2444"},"modified":"2013-04-19T03:19:48","modified_gmt":"2013-04-19T03:19:48","slug":"nairobi-kenya-kibera-slum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/nairobi-kenya-kibera-slum\/","title":{"rendered":"Kibera Slum, Nairobi, Kenya"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m here in\u00a0Nairobi with a free day before heading out to Juba Sudan, the back here to Garissa Kenya, to shoot an assignment for Education Development Center<\/a> (EDC), so \"\"<\/a>today I spent the day photographing Kabira slum. Kibera is a slum (sorry there is no euphemism for it)\u00a0in Nairobi, Kenya. Kibira\u00a0is roughtly \u00a0the same size as New York City’s Central Park, about 1.5 square miles. At over 1 million people, the population density is in Kibira 30 times that of New York City, and Kibera does not have multi-level housing. Most people living in Kibera have little or no access to basic necessities, such as electricity, clean water, toilet facility and sewage disposal. The combination of poor nutrition and lack of sanitation accounts for many illnesses and deaths.\u00a0 According to authorities, there are over 50,000 AIDS orphans surviving in Kibera, often cared for by grandparents, over crowded orphanages, or completely unattended. For these and all children in Kibera, schooling is rare and dependent on the ebb and flow of family finances, trapping them in a cycle of poverty.\u00a0\"\"<\/a> The slum originated in 1920 as a soldiers’ settlement. The British colonial government of the time allowed them to squat on a hillside outside Nairobi. After Kenyan independence in 1963, however, various forms of housing were made illegal by the government, rendering Kibera unauthorized on the basis of land tenure.\u00a0 Diseases such as malaria, cholera, and typhoid afflict large proportions of Kibera residents. These diseases are caused by a lack of sanitation facilities in the slum, and often\u00a0 in the case of communicable disease, sickness is spread across large portions of the populace.\u00a0 Sanitation in Kibera is non existent, open sewers carrying fetid water are everywhere. Cholera and Typhoid cases in Kibera are a direct result of the lack of proper sewage control and disposal. Both Cholera and Typhoid are very debhilitating, and can last for weeks at a time, and without treatment\u00a0 can cause death. \"\"<\/a>As residents of Kibera live in structures without any plumbing facilities, clean water must be accessed from pre-filled water tanks (AKA water points), which are often controlled by landlords, and expensive for residents to use.\u00a0 Since clean water is difficult to obtain, residents are often unable to wash their hands before preparing food or doing other things that can cause diseases to enter their bodies.\u00a0 Malaria is a severe problem in Kibera, and is particularly damaging to the community because it often causes a person to be so sick that they are unable to work, which may precipitate the loss of a job or business revenue that is vital to their family\u2019s survival.\u00a0 Malaria is also especially deadly in children and the elderly. The Malaria parasite is transmitted from person to person through the bite of female mosquitos, which requires blood to nurture her eggs.\u00a0 There are at least 300 million acute cases of malaria each year globally, resulting in more than a million deaths. Around 90% of these deaths occur in Africa, mostly in young children.\u00a0\"\"<\/a> Malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds. Many children who survive an episode of severe malaria may suffer from learning impairments or brain damage. Pregnant women and their unborn children are also particularly vulnerable to malaria, which is a major cause of prenatal mortality, low birth weight and maternal anemia
\nOne of the primary factors in Malaria spread in Kibera is ineffective wastewater drainages that run thru the slum.\u00a0 In many parts of Kibera, drainages are simply channels dug in the dirt, and they quickly become muddy and clogged with waste.\u00a0 Residents use thedrainages to remove waste water and solids from their household area.\u00a0 As the drainages are simply made of dirt they do not flow very effectively; pools of water and waste form in these channels once they are clogged, and this is where mosquitoes lay their eggs. As drainages collect waste, they also become breeding grounds for cholera and typhoid, as well as other diseases, and since these drainages are unprotected from human contact, transmission can occur very easily, especially in children who play nearby. (above text courtesy of Kibera Slum Foundation)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>During my time in Kibera, I met a elderly woman who was living alone. Her name is Helen but\u00a0\u00a0everyone just calls her “grammy”.\u00a0 She’s not sur of her age but thinks she’s about 80.\u00a0Helen told me\u00a0that a boy in the local community brings her food and firewood.\u00a0 Her face was in total darkness, but her hands were so expressive that I photographed them instead of asking here to move forward\u00a0\u00a0into the light, so that I could see her face.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Another woman, I met, named Wanza\u00a0lost both hands in a burn accident.\u00a0 Now she\u00a0produces bead jewelry and sells it. Here you can see her manipulating the small beads with her damaged hands. An NGO has been helping her, and now she even trains other disabled people in here community in the art of bead making. It’s not much, but sales of the beads help her, and those that she trains, to earn a bit of money. After photographing her, she insisted on giving me a small neclace as a gift. Kibera and its residents lack many things, but generosity, is apparently\u00a0not one of them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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James, the taxi driver took me to an overlook point sot that I could photograph Kabira’s expansive footprint on the hills below. This picture represents only a portion of the slum, which actually stretches quite a distance from right to left. Be sure to follow along as I blog about EDC’s SRS (Sudan Radio Service)<\/a> program in Juba, then about EDC’s G-youth Program<\/a> in Garissa, Kenya.<\/p>\n

Here’s some raw, unedited video footage shot with my D3s showing Kibera
\n<\/object>
\nKibera Slum Nairobi Kenya<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kibera is a slum area outside Nairobi, Kenya and is the same size as New York City’s Central Park, about 1.5 square miles, but with a population density 30 times that of New York City…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[149],"tags":[86,88,16,36,87,15,14,84,85],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2444"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2455,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2444\/revisions\/2455"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karlgrobl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}