K- Immigration

I first looked into the idea of getting a work permit in December. Now it’s July and i’ve just given up. The first shock was that as a ‘volunteer’ I had to pay £750 a year to the Immigration Board so I had to find a way to do that. Then I had to be endorsed  by my organisation – in my case since XP is not yet registered SV**CO – which entailed filling out about ten forms. The most important thing for me though was an endorsement letter from the NGO board saying that I should be granted an entry permit this required thirteen pieces of paperwork, including a copy of my ‘contract’ as a volunteer. The NGO board only assesses these applications once a month so it was April before the letter came out with a positive endorsement.

In April I submitted my application for a work permit at the Immigration Department, in Nyayo House. This intimidating building has legendary status as the venue for the torture of Raila Odinga during the Moi regime, and the echoing stairwells make it easy to imagine the screams coming from the basement. I don’t think it has been swept since Moi was president either and apparently it did once have water running in the toilets during those days. The officials stamped my passport giving me three more months to process the payment and wait for the final approval from the board. Three months is designed to be excessive but of course on July 7^th I had to have it extended for another month because of delays.

On the day I submitted my application I was the last customer in the building (very eerie) and aisle 9 closed without giving me a reference number. This would be a source of consternation for me as each time I returned to check on the progress of my application (twice) I was told that I must have a reference number, and if I didn’t I was a liar, and Kenya doesn’t like liars.

The day I picked up my approval (without a reference number(, I was told that all I needed to do was pay my 100,000 KES (£750) along with a bank bond from my bank for the same amount (first time I’d heard about that – what is a bank bond anyway?)

In the bank I was told that a bank bond will take two weeks to process and I also needed a form 19 from Immigration. It was already 4pm so I thought  I would return the next day to get form 19.

Guess what the next day was the day they decided to implement the new constitution which constituted that the new fee was not £750 but £1500. ‘But I was here yesterday, no-one told me the charges were about to double’ – ‘Oh sorry about that, but don’t worry your permit was approved before the changes so you probably won’t have to pay’ – ‘Are you sure?’ – ‘Um you go to room 24/15/18/27 and check with them’. In room 27 they told me they would be sure by next Monday.

So next Tuesday (today) I went back and this time went to rooms 18/28/24 and a room without a number (definitely the torture chamber) but still I was refused an answer. In the end it was the cashier in aisle 9 who told me that I would ABSOLUTELY have to pay the new price and that if I couldn’t afford it it’s OK I just have to give up and go back to UK.

Luckily I’m going home anyway but I have a feeling that my relationship with Nyayo house is only just beginning.

Francie's Water Blog

This is a guest blog written by my sister Francie:

It’s hard to write about something which is such a common occurrence for a vast majority of the world, but for me the experience was something totally foreign. One knows they have found themselves in a third world country when the task of finding water is impossible. I have never really had to worry about the source of my water, and when the supply may turn on or off, what quality it is and what to do when I am stuck without it, as I have been so fortunate. This mind set was questioned last Wednesday when Ed and I marched up the dusty street with our jerry cans at 7.30pm to find the local water tap. The use of jerry cans had already been a new trend in my world since arriving in Nairobi late April but on asking where the water was the reply “there is no water in Kibera tonight” took the use of jerry cans to a new level. Not only would the concept of flushing the loo, showering, washing up with collected water  be a new experience but the fact that this was now impossible made me stop and realise that it wasn’t the manual collection of water that was the issue, there was no water to be collected.

It seems silly to be writing about such a day to day issue but it is something which has stuck in my mind, and it pulled me right off my fanatically clean pedestal, to a level which I now appreciate. Only a month before I was finding my obsession with a hot bath every evening and a shower every morning something of the norm,  I know I will mould straight back into that routine on return but for now it seems ludicrously outlandish!

The morning  after we had been denied water, I trotted into town bearing 3 jerry cans swinging about my waist, to find the same water supply totally empty, nearly giving up on water altogether I was lead by Solomon, a young mechanic who was so keen to help to another water station.  This water station sponsored by Coca Cola was not only leaking with water, but with thousands of people, mainly young mothers with babies strapped tightly to their backs,  young boys kicking about in the water, preferring their time in the water to a lesson at school. I’m not saying that water is always this rare to find, I know usually the water is flowing but for this one time the commotion at the water station portrayed an image of serious gratitude from all that were involved. I blatantly looked totally lost, as everyone stared at me, wondering why I, a Mazongu would be collecting water. A young mother across from me with a baby on her back, made a little cap (looked like a cake) made from a role of material and placed it on her head, she swung her heavy jerry can up onto her head, but her cap fell to the floor into the wet mud. I automatically picked it up, rolled it back up and placed it back on her head, and she happily walked on, showering me with thankyous. Everyone had been watching this episode and from then on I was accepted into the big crowd all pushing to fill up their barrels. A big mumma named Tikki grabbed my barrels from me and pushed them in front of the queue, giving me a cheaky wink. I felt bad that I was being treated in a different way from everyone else,  as they were all there for the very same reason as me, and I was quite happy queuing watching the world go by, but they were insistent that I was ‘watered’ first. Once the barrels were filled, Tikki jumped one barrel onto my head, with so much ease, walking with 20 litres on your head seems a breeze compared to dragging it through the mud.  Tikki then whistled and two men helped me with the others and we walked back home. I felt like I had achieved something which is embarrassing because for them it was the total norm, and a day to day achievement, not even an achievement but an essential.

To appreciate water is difficult in the western world, everyone says they do and will, but to see the crowd at the water tap they are the real people that appreciate it, every litre has its use, to think that I leave the tap running whilst I brush my teeth back in the UK is now maddening, leaving it to run away down the well used drain without having made a positive impact on my life in some form, cannot be right, the same with so many developed countries antics.  For now I have been left with henched arms from lugging jerry cans around Kibera, a great thirst for Coca Cola rather than water, the skills of washing with jugs, and the longing for a flushing loo...

Congolese Urban Refugees - Where Have They Come From?

Over two months into this blog and I have not written anything about the Congolese or refugees. I think that's because all my musings about Kibera life are clearly the thoughts of an amateur Kiberan - I'm not claiming to be an expert. But since it is now my job to know about urban refugees and where they have come from I am more cautious about publicizing my theories. This post does not necessarily represent the views of the Xavier Project etc...

The Congolese in Nairobi and Kampala, as a whole, a exquisitely well dressed. They generally speak French far more fluently than an average East African speaks English. They have a refined taste in food (inherited from the Belgians?) and music. When asked about Congolese politics they can give a running commentary (that could be running late by about a week) accompanied with a balanced analysis (usually tinged in grey overtones).

Typical Congolese outfit

Congolese urban refugees will sacrifice everything to maintain their image and uphold their culture. They will even go hungry if it means they can still look smart. They are also very proud when it comes to taking up menial or manual labour, and they may prefer to talk outside their house than invite you in to see how small it is. But why are they so proud?

The vast majority of urban refugees in Kampala and Nairobi were town dwellers themselves in DRC, most probably from Goma or Bukavu. As urbanites when they realised they had to flee Congo they were more likely to want to seek out another urban setting - the refugee camps in East Africa suit those used to subsistence farming and urban Congolese may have lost the skills necessary to survive in this environment. Many of them may have had contacts in East African capitals and some of them would even have done business there in the past before their fortunes changed. Particularly in Nairobi it is very unlikely that a Congolese refugee would have made the long journey there from Eastern DRC unless someone who was already there had persuaded them that they would be well looked after when they arrived.This is supported by research by Refuge Point that shows that refugees are often best off when they first arrive because of such a strong support network and resources that they have brought with them from home.

This point leads me on to my observations from Congo over New Year. There is a group of Congolese elites who  congregate in the cities and they are rich. In Goma fuel guzzling 4x4's weave in and out of six bedroom mansions, and everyone seems to have at least one beer at lunch, costing them $4 a pop.  In Congo, possibly more than anywhere else, your wealth does not depend on your merits, but on who you know and who you are on side with. If you know the right people you can get very rich in totally unfair ways, without recrimination, or seemly even any scruples from your society. I met guys in Congo who told me they had gone from being penniless to earning over $10,000  in a week because they jumped onto a gold smuggling racket as temporary contractors (in their case transportation). There is plenty of money in Congo, and a lot of our urban refugees know that all too well because in many cases it used to be in their hands.

Rugari has the most exquisite setting - but the inhabitants have only militia groups to share the beauty with.

If you take the road out of Goma towards Rutshuru (an area in the news these days because of a frustrated coup led by Bosco Ntaganda) it doesn't take long for the road to disintegrate into rubble and scree. Here there is a village called Rugari inhabited by 2000 rural folk -  subsistence farmers and their families. They are doomed to a cycle of illiteracy due to the total absence of education and of course they never manage to get in with 'the right people' who can give them the key to the pot of gold. Recently they have spent their lives hiding in IDP camps for years at a time before cautiously making their way back to their ancestral homes, only to be chased off by another incoherent rebel group. Rugarians who fled to Uganda will certainly have headed to the refugee camps run by the UN where everything is provided for them and they are given a plot of land from which to make a living. These are not the people we are working with in Kampala and Nairobi. Instead, we have the urban educated class who have been proud of their culture and their 'family connections' for generations. At some point however, they have joined the wrong side and have had to flee for fear of their lives. They have not fled as economic refugees but they are looking for security and often they are not used to having to work hard to make a living. Of course they are going to import their learned ways, their clothes, their food, their music and above all their Congolese pride.

One of our Congolese students, smartly turned out,
appreciating some Congolese music

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Unauthorised Observations of a Slum Tourist Part 2

Sundays in Kibera have an indescribably different ambience. Only then do the inhabitants live up to their cultural stereotype as strollers. On every other day Olympic high street is a danger zone filled with water-cart-pullers hissing for you to get out of the way and people literally running to work. On Sundays they are making their way casually to or from Church in outfits that make them unrecognizable from their everyday personas.

Eucharistic services in Kibera are moveable feasts. They can start early and end late and you can never really predict what stage you will come in at. I would put out there that most of the church goers who stay for the whole day are there for social reasons. In between the socialising though they can work themselves up into bursts of spiritual frenzy which can be heard from all directions as you stroll along the street.

Another demographic start their day in the chaang’a joints (Kenyan homebrew triple distilled) down by the river in Katwakera and migrate to the keg beer bars in Olympic when they open at 5 (a new rule). By 7 Garage Pub in Fort Jesus kicks off and the ding ding ding of the Luo songs can be heard by all around until Monday has arrived. As a result the peaceful meandering of Sunday morning evolves into madness by mid afternoon, a level of drunkenness which hands down beats anything that Friday or Saturday can offer.

Picking up desks from Namanga in a bust vehicle

Two out of five posts about journeys represents the proportion of time I spend on the road. I’m on the road now in the same spot I have been for half an hour, waiting for our driver to fetch oil, which should stop out engine from burning out. It’s the third time today we have broken down (puncture and failed ignition being the other problems) and the sixth involuntary stop. The other three were police checks which have left us about 500 shillings poorer on account of the fact that Fred has altered his driving licence, the tyres are all bald, and we have a passenger in the back of the pick-up keeping guard over badly tied down furniture.

As if the car and the police weren’t enough Fred and our passenger have tried to claim that I understated the distance and that I should therefore add more to the 8000 shillings they asked for to cover this return trip to Namanga (bribes included by the way). I nodded vaguely but as soon as we get back to Kibera I will explain that if they actually had a car that worked and a proper driving licence the 300 km round trip really could have taken six hours instead of ten and that they would have had a good deal. If they complain I might pull out the ‘repeat business’ card (‘I’m planning another trip to Namanga next week so if we can agree on 8000 now then I’m more likely to give you a call’). It would be a lie though, this pick-up has seen its last Maasai village.

K-NHS

On three separate occasions in January and February this year I had a spell of weakness interspersed with fever each lasting about a week. It was not a new experience and each time I started to wilt I was reminded of the Giardia Intestinitus that I lived with in India for several months before it was diagnosed. This parasite need not give you any more aggressive symptoms than what they call ‘port malaise’ (laziness?) but eventually it can really get you down. After experiences in UK trying to get obscure illnesses diagnosed I was more depressed about the idea of starting the testing process than the idea of feeling periodically weak but regardless I decided to stop off at David’s pharmacy on Olympic high street.

David taught me all about Typhoid, Malaria, Amoebiasis, Metronidizol, Tinidizol, and Doxicycline in much more detail than I needed (he is generous with his time but apparently unable to detect when a customer is no longer listening). Despite our lengthy discussion about my insides he was unable to make a diagnosis based on my symptoms alone so he suggested I should go straight to St Pery’s clinic to be put under a microscope.

Ten minutes later I was in a roadside clinic having a blood drained out of me by a lady called Jacintha who was wearing a white coat. This gave me confidence that she might once have qualified as a nurse as did the fact that she took the needle out of a sealed packet and washed her hands thoroughly before scouring for a healthy vein. While she examined the blood she sent me off to do the other tests (details spared) and by the time I returned she was able to tell me that at least I didn’t have malaria or typhoid. While this was good news it didn’t fill me with elation because being diagnosed with a treatable disease is at least one step better than been told your results are clear when you feel rubbish.

For the rest of the examinations I had to go to another clinic a two minute walk away where they had better microscopes. I was invited into the lab during the process and after less than five minutes I was on my way back to David’s pharmacy with a receipt for my tests (700 shillings - £5) and a hand written chit asking him to give me the relevant drugs for amoebiasis. I felt great. In a few hours the unwelcome guests in my gut would be dead.

David said I should compliment the Tinidazole with Doxicycline and while I was at it I should probably ‘de-worm’, as all people living in Olympic are advised to do every three months. This meant I would be on a concoction of 5 pills a day for 4 days. All the drugs cost 650 shillings and I took my first pills less than an hour after I had first dropped in at David’s pharmacy.

In UK when I started feeling ill I would have booked an appointment with my GP in our local village which I might have got the next day or maybe three days later. I would have had to drive to this appointment and the doctor would have suggested I have a blood test in our nearby town. He would give me the relevant paper-work and I would be able to drive there the following morning. For the other tests I would have had to take them home and drop them back at the surgery on another occasion. The results would come back several days later prompting another consultation which would have concluded with a prescription for the relevant medication perhaps a week after making the first phone call (this was my experience the first time I had Giadia in 2005). The consultations and tests would have been free in the UK and the drugs may or may not have been free but I would have wasted money on transport and I may have had to take time off work to go through this process. In Kenya I paid 1350 shillings (£10) and the whole thing took less than an hour.

Disclaimer: Always wash your hands before eating in Kibera. It is advised to filter and boil tap water for at least one minute before drinking it. Check if needles have been sterilised before you are punctured. David is not a doctor he has just spent a lot of time on wikipedia. If symptoms persist consult a qualified doctor.

Unauthorised Observations of a Slum Tourist Part 1

Anyone who has watched Comic Relief will be familiar with Kibera. Every year fat comedians come here and cry their eyes out after witnessing the stench, the filth, and the desperate poverty of the ‘biggest slum in Africa’, and their tears urge us to pick up our phones and donate ‘just ten pounds to feed a little African child for a month’.

Technically I live in Kibera. That is only because my estate falls within the perimeters of the huge area which was once forest known as Kibera. In fact, I have a two bedroom house within a walled compound with a day and night security guard, and in theory I have running water and a legal supply of electricity. However, on a good day if I limbered up I would be able to throw a stone from my porch and it would bounce off the tin roofs of the slum proper.

It is not possible for a mzungu (or odiero as my neighbours would call us) to talk with authority about Kibera. It’s existence, functionality and intricacies are too tightly woven into ancient African heritage for a foreigner to be able to come to any conclusions about why? how? or who? I say ‘who’ because no one even knows how many people live here. Some say 2 million, others 1 million, others 170,000. I’m going with 1 million – why not? After all I told you I’m not speaking with authority; it’s just a gut feeling. Why? – there are over 2,000 Non-Governmental Organisations’s operating in Kibera, and nearly all of them are trying to say why Kibera is as it is, and what should be done to change it, but if you ask many Kiberans what has changed in the last ten years they will answer ‘not a lot’. And ‘how’?: how so many Kiberans manage to get by day to day is not a question that anyone who chooses to visit can answer, because by being a voluntary Kiberan you exclude yourself from the risks, anxieties and cycles of false hope that are faced by those who have no choice but to be there.

But that leads me to my first unauthorised observation. Not all Kiberans have to be there. I know many people who live deep in the slum who could probably afford the rent of other estates such as Olympic, Jamuhuri, Fort Jesus, even Langata. It is also interesting that many inhabitants of Kibera have not lived there all their lives. Or if they have it was their parents who migrated here twenty years ago. As a result, they usually still have relatives living in the rural areas, and in many cases they may even have land to their name. If things were so bad in Kibera could they not try going back there? In a recent government effort to reclaim slum land, sky-rise apartments in Langata were offered to Kiberans at the same rent as they had been paying in Kibera. It took a year to persuade enough slum dwellers to shift, and as they moved their huts were instantly filled by relatives or friends who had been queuing up to occupy this prized spot on the edge of Nairobi.

So why do so many people choose this existence? My first explanation, derived from my own experiences, is that in Kibera you are free. Working on a tourist visa means I am perpetually afraid of being stopped and extorted by the police, or even being taken to immigration and thrown onto a plane bound for Heathrow with a big ‘visa denied’ stamp on my passport. However, there are no patrolling police in Kibera and this means whenever I’m inside the slum I can relax. In a recent incident a lone policeman wandering the slum pathways was jumped by a gang of youths and had to walk back to the main road gunless and bootless. If there are no police, there certainly aren’t any Nairobi City Council officials who snoop around the rest of town like rats looking for ‘foul play’ which can yield them abundant bribes. I was once guilty of this ‘foul play’ because I painted my house without their permission.  They threatened to arrest me for ‘renovating a house without getting relevant consent from the Nairobi City Council.’ This could not have happened in the slum. After all, the whole sprawl was built without consent from the City Council so are they going to extort everyone? In fact, in Kibera you don’t need to pay a shilling in income tax, council tax or any other tax; the water is free and if you pay for electricity you don’t pay Kenya Power and Lighting Company but more likely the guy who rigged you up to the illegal connection (otherwise known as Kibera Power and Lighting Company). You won’t have to show anyone your ID and if you choose it, no one needs to know you exist.

The dearth of official law enforcement in Kibera means that something must take its place and I will revisit this issue in a later section, but the result is that the inhabitants of Kibera are more free than their real-world counterparts in the rest of the city. This freedom contributes to the second appeal of Kibera; the cheap cost of living. Avoiding taxes means retailers who operate within the slum can reduce their prices considerably. Combine that with the tiny overheads of running a shop in the slum, the tiny margins the shopkeepers are happy to live on, and the fact that most accessories sold within Kibera have been acquired by dubious means, and you find prices of goods in Kibera which cannot be matched anywhere else. Then the rent; I don’t know anyone in Kibera who pays more than $20 per month in rent. Some pay as little as $5. In my neighbourhood many of the landlords were chased away after the post-election violence in 2008 so the inhabitants don’t pay any rent at all. And these are not the kind of slum houses you picture in Bombay or the favellas of South America; many of these houses have concrete walls and all of them have tin roofs – you don’t find homes draped in tarpaulins and patched in cardboard in Kibera. If you are paid $20 dollars a month as a security guard or maid (slave labour? I will return to this also) as so many Kiberans are, then the cheap cost of living is no great consolation to you. But if you eventually manage to graduate up the pay scale, you may find that you can cover your basic expenses and TV’s, DVD players, flash mobiles and designer clothes soon follow.

Another nice thing about Kibera is the strength of community. When I first visited the slums guided by a girl called Lydia I was introduced to at least four of her mothers. I thought I could spot some family resemblance between her and the first mother, so I was a bit confused when I met the second lady and by the time I got to the fourth I had given up asking for an explanation. I now know that Lydia doesn’t have a real mother, but anyone in her neighbourhood who is old enough to be her mother is called Mum. In return they treat her as a daughter when she needs motherly attention - which is often. In Kibera, if you don’t trust yourself with your savings you give the money to your neighbour to put it under their mattress. If you need to go up-country to bury a relative you give your child to the house next door for over a week. If your friend is arriving late at night you organise a protective guard of four or more people to fetch him from the bus stage. If rains destroy your house you call on your friends to rebuild it so it’s up again within two days. If your father dies, the neighbourhood cries and a metallic pot is quickly filled with coins to cover his funeral expenses. If you know a mzungu then you will introduce him to everyone in the neighbourhood in case he can also pay their children’s school fees. These are all scenarios that I have witnessed, and I remind the Kiberans of these benefits whenever they ask if life would be better for them living as an immigrant in a London suburb.

Although people of Kibera do not appreciate this support network, they miss it when it is not there, and deep down they cherish the neighbourhood that protects them. If you are used to the slum, used to the smells, the overcrowding, the constant racket, the leaking roofs, and the repetitive treks to the water pump, then it is tempting to stick it out for some time to improve the financial security of your future. ‘Some time’ can be many years. Naturally, however, I think every Kiberan has an ambition or pipe-dream of one day moving out. That is because there are things that even those who are born in Kibera do not get used to: the cholera, the  HIV, the screams of domestic violence, the flooding sewage ditches, and the fatal clashes between gangs. So when the time is right they do go: it is unusual to see anyone over sixty walking around in the slums, and that’s not just because of low life expectancy. But until they have made the most of all the opportunities Nairobi has to offer them they also make the most of the positive aspects of Kibera. It would be extremely naive to suggest that life in Kibera is all rosy, but I wanted the first part of these observations to persuade you that things are not as desperate for the average Kiberan as the crying comedians would have you believe. Kenyans are proud people and they would like us to think they are in control of their lives. Let’s not sell their dignity just to beat Comic Relief’s fundraising record.