An Unlikely Faith

Of all the motivations in people’s lives, compassion and greed are usually thought to inhabit opposite ends of a spectrum. Thomas à Kempis identifies vanity to be the contrast to compassion, because compassion brings out the full extent of humility and generosity while vanity is all that is self-obsessed, including the pursuit of wealth, glory and power for the sake of power.

When we see all the suffering in the world it is easy for anyone to feel compassion for our fellow humans but using that compassion as the motivation for our lives is much harder. I do not believe that people turn to greed and other vanities because they cannot feel compassion and shock at wrong doings, but because they believe there is nothing they can really do about it, and therefore they might as well deny it. Living in East Africa has unfortunately made it much easier to see why people would think that way, and very often I feel the same.  What is scary is that right here right now, people have far more opportunities to make a positive change motivated by their compassion than they do in other parts of the world such as North Korea, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Eastern Congo – or at other times for that matter such as under Idi Amin in Uganda and Arap Moi in Kenya.

After the new constitution was signed in Kenya in 2010 there was a tangible sense of hope- a belief that this country is on the up. Apparently this has been reminiscent of Moi’s ousting in 2002 and even independence in 1963. There was a determination that the 2013 elections would be peaceful and when they duly were there was a sense of national self-congratulation and pride in a country that was really ‘developing’ in the right direction. This feeling still exists in Kenya, despite the government’s best efforts to derail it (more on that another time), and it is the feeling of positivity and change for the better above all else that makes me happy to live in Kenya.

But even in this relatively positive environment I can’t help feeling that greed is winning and those who try to fight it are fighting in vain.  Globally we are proud of improving human rights in the last sixty years, but are we really moving in the right direction? The gap between the rich and poor is always growing and the poorest billion people on the planet are being left behind, largely because of a greedy nationalistic stance taken by ‘developed’ countries, and mostly by the rich in those countries. Now in Europe those from the rest of the world who have been left behind are being treated with increasing animosity when they try to seek asylum or opportunities in a richer place. In Kenya, the same trend is being reciprocated on a national scale: the rich are getting richer and the physical divide between the rich and poor areas is becoming ever more pronounced.  Freedom of movement is being restricted, not just for refugees (as would unfortunately be expected) but also for the rural poor who are being offered far less social mobility than they deserve. On a community level, a lack of faith in a system that condemns the poor to subservience leads to entrepreneurs preferring to cater to an informal market which does not promote an inclusive community but instead promotes divisions and further inequality. The lack of trust in daily lives has fuelled a lack of trust in families and personal relationships – over 50% of children growing up in Nairobi slums are from dysfunctional families, and there has been a marked rise in domestic violence in Kenya in the last 20 years (see http://odieromondi.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-are-women-in-kenya-getting-their.html)

In this pyramid, power and greed plays its role at every level. Men in Kibera have the power to beat their wives into doing all the housework and the youth of the slum can harass the more vulnerable into filling their pockets, yet they are oppressed by the government who do not recognise many of their rights (police have recently been given the freedom to ‘shoot to kill’ these gangsters at will). Even the Kenyan politicians must be subservient to a global system that is interested in keeping Kenya poor. Many of them might not be allowed to travel to Europe even if they wanted to because Europeans are unwilling to share or lose any more of what they have.

If you have compassion for your neighbours and their oppression and try to do something about it, it does not mean that you will not be oppressed anyway, so it makes more sense to join in the system. However you might try to help, at some point it will be undone by corruption and greed at a higher level.

Somehow, many people refuse to live under this spell. Yesterday on the way to the Easter service I saw a young man in his mid-twenties running with his five year old daughter to get to church in time to get a seat. She was dressed in a shiny purple dress and he was wearing a smart shirt with a rosary round his neck. Their shoes were covered in mud as it had rained hard during the night and they had just navigated the muddy tracks of Kibera. For this scene to have taken place a number of unlikely things must have happened. A young man who became a father in his late teens has decided to commit to his family; he had decided to spend what must be a huge proportion of his salary on his daughters dress; he had got up on possibly his only day off in weeks at 7.30 am in order to get to church on time – and then run with his daughter so that she got a good view of the service.  The church was full of such people. It was not occupied by people who have been bred all their lives to go to church on Easter Sunday and continue to do so under pressure of ‘Catholic guilt’, but people of all ages who have a faith that a system of greed and oppression is not the only way. At the end of the service a spontaneous cheer went round the building – not the climactic wailing I dread in some services – but the kind of applause you get at the end of a football game when your team has won the league, the tension is freed, and the celebrations can begin.

These people are sure that in fact they are right to invest in hope, but where they get this idea is a mystery. The logic says that following greed and vanities is far more lucrative and beneficial, especially if you are living in a challenging environment like Kibera. Instead they are allowing compassion for their neighbours to motivate their lives and it seems to me that they are happy about it. Can this be dismissed as delusion?

If this blog interests you I would highly recommend reading a couple of blogs by my colleague Stephen on solidarity and suffering. http://muzungualihomba.wordpress.com/2014/02/27/solidarity/ and the follow up http://muzungualihomba.wordpress.com/2014/04/07/suffering-and-solidarity-some-more-thoughts/

Observations of a Slum Tourist 4: Olympic Opportunities

‘Human Traffic’ is the phrase often used to describe the thorough-fare that runs from Olympic bus stage past Olympic Primary School down into Kibera slum. The growing potholes that are making their stamp on this road are more the result of over ten thousand daily foot passengers than abuse from car tires. Any cars that venture this way must accept that going faster than walking pace is impossible and as a result few do. Another reason is that not many people have cars. This may sound obvious, but Kibera manages to fit a disputed 800,000 residents within 2.5 square miles, and there still seems to be space for all our cars.

 

When Olympic Estate was completed in 1975, each compound was designed with space for parking. The government scheme, which was designed to off-set the expansion of Kibera with organized housing, gave middle class Kenyans the opportunity to buy property that was linked up to the national amenities of water, sewerage and electricity. Cheap loans were made available for certain people to buy the houses at affordable prices and many of them immediately let them out, making a 100% return on investment within two years. Others divided up the compounds into smaller plots and in recent years landlords have demolished the original structures and built multi-story buildings consisting of several one-bedroom apartments. All this has had an impact on the amount of parking space available. However, the dividing up of plots has also meant that the relevant average income of Olympic residents has declined in the last two decades. A family living in a single bedroom apartment is less likely to be able to afford a car now, than the original tenants of the estate who were renting large compounds for themselves in the 1980’s.

 

The prevalence of human traffic over four-wheeled traffic has also had an impact on the pavements. Since the roads are used by amblers, the pavements now make ideal sites for makeshift shops for these amblers to peruse. Demand for such an obvious economic benefit has been matched by a dwindling of resistance; as the tarmac on the roads has slowly decayed, so has the determination of any party insistent on preventing these iron sheet shop fronts from popping up. They go up overnight and by morning they had always been there.  This trend has been escalating since the post-election violence in 2008, Kibera’s darkest hour in living memory, when it became clear that the inhabitants here run their own laws subject to no outside influences. The original landlords, who may have held more pride in their middle class estate and resisted these temporary structures, were largely chased out of town at this time for being from the wrong tribe and many have never returned.

All this would lead you to the conclusion that Kibera is swallowing Olympic, and on initial exposure that is often the reaction. However, that would be to deny the opportunities that present themselves in Olympic when you look a little closer. The main thing to remember is location. Kibera is prime real estate because if you have the resolve you can walk to work in the central business district and thereby saving yourself 2000 KSH (£15) per month. For those who do travel by bus, it should take less than half the time to get to town than it might if you live in other affordable areas of town. Ngong road is set to be widened within the next two years which will further cut down commuting times and on Ngong Road you get everything you need. If a linking road is made to the new by-pass south of Kibera it will give fantastic access to the west of Kenya. This means that Olympic is a very convenient place to live

The growing population should also be seen as an opportunity.  All basic day to day goods can be found in Olympic, but from the small temporary shops described above. Since these shops continue to grow in number it must mean that demand is there, and growing. However, multiple shops selling the same goods is not a formula for efficiency and actually limits the economic growth in the area. If larger, more permanent establishment could be commissioned and financed it could create even more jobs for the area in the long run. My reasoning is this: one-man-band shops do not rely on an economic ecosystem to survive- they just buy their products from travelling salesmen or buy them wholesale themselves, and then sell them direct to customers. A larger enterprise such as a supermarket would need other services such as store designers and engineers, security guards, and till managers. Such an ecosystem could create business for other industries such as local advertising agencies, carpenters and metal workers. The larger establishments could bring down the price of day to day consumables through economy of scale, which is of benefit to the whole community. If the temporary shops lose business, then at least many jobs would have already been created. However, their proprietors needn’t go out of work as long as they are innovative: a growing population brings a wide array of different business opportunities and demand for specialized goods. Therefore, Olympic provides countless opportunities for business minded people.

Let’s take as another example the ten tiny pubs lined up in the north side of the ring road need their own fridges, sound systems, bar staff and in some cases night security guards. If they could join forces and open a large club like Garage or Big Five in Fort Jesus resources could be pooled new attractions could be invested in that bring in more customers from outside, such as kitchens, pool tables, bigger TV screens and live bands. For this to happen though business men in Olympic need to be prepared to team up and trust each other.

Considering the exciting opportunities in Olympic it is surprising that housing prices are not escalating. Just a kilometre away in Jamuhuri, property is up to three times as expensive both to buy and to rent. But a few hundred metres away in the slum housing is almost ten times cheaper than in Olympic Estate. A year in to the new government’s tenure there are no obvious signs that the explode pressure of the slum is relenting, and it is not clear whether new policies will have the desired effects. Olympic is seen as a buffer zone between developed Nairobi and the unruly slum, ready to swing one way or another and until there is evidence of a clear swing in the right direction people are unwilling to invest in its property or infrastructure. As inhabitants it is up to us to make that decision, nobody is going to do it for us, and for that we need to be prepared to work together.