Observations of a Slum Tourist Part 3

It is fair to say that since I first moved to Kibera almost two years ago very little has changed. There is a big road being built on the far side, known to most as ‘the bypass’. It is going to greatly ease the traffic around central Nairobi as lorries travelling from Mombasa to Kisumu will be able to use this route instead of going via the central business district. However, it will also bypass Kibera, because it does not look like any slip roads will allow traffic in to or out of the slum. The effect therefore will be to hem in Kibera, flanked on one side by the railway line and now walled concrete road on the other. Meanwhile, the Nairobi River continues to weave its way in between the two constrainers eventually spewing out all of Kibera’s unwanted things that could not get out any other way. 

The fact that this new road seems to ignore Kibera and its close to one million inhabitants is an ominous sign. In other parts of the world, such as Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, New Mexico, the favellas and slums are generally considered as economic hot-beds which with imaginative development will evolve into residential estates or suburbs. As a result they are fed with all the necessary ingredients needed for growth – roads, health and education facilities, business centres and security. For Kibera however, the recommended answer is to suffocate it and slowly close it down, giving the government back the land that it rightly owns. This is being done by the ‘slum up-grading project’, which is designed to enable slum dwellers to move up the valley into affordable sky rise buildings, so that the semi permanent buildings they leave in their wake can be demolished. When these people were moved in 2009, not one slum house was demolished, because when the bulldozers moved in they found unhappy inhabitants in the labelled houses claiming they had lived there all their lives. This was either because the people who had got the very affordable sky-rise accommodation were either friends of someone important in the project, or had given the keys to their slum houses to a relative who resembled them and could argue they had always been there. The bulldozers didn’t hang around; being faced with an angry mob of Kiberans was not their idea of an early morning welcome, especially knowing that not a single law enforcer would come to their support when summonsed. 

And this represents the biggest problem behind Kibera. It is not that the people don’t want to be there and wish they could move elsewhere. In fact, on the contrary, Kiberan land is one of the most sought after real estates in Nairobi. The housing is cheap (as dictated by the people themselves, not the landlords), and unlike other slums in Nairobi which are too far out, the inhabitants can walk into town in the mornings and evenings. On top of that there are over 2000 NGO’s who will do almost anything for you if you act like you need it. As a result it is almost impossible to find a house to rent in Kibera, so it is not surprising that as the slum upgrading was completed, there were people queuing to fill the gaps made by those departing. 

Economic studies have estimated that Kibera has over $1 million dollars coming in and out of its hold every day. This is often gawped at as a sign that people underestimate the economic capacity of Kibera – personally I think it is a deplorable figure given the fact that over 800,000 people live there. Nevertheless, it is possible for this figure to pass in and out of Kibera’s threshold because there are jobs in Nairobi, and if you want a job in Kenya, your best bet by far is to go to the big capital. Nairobi now has or three million inhabitants; ten times the size of Kisumu, Kenya’s third largest city. In fact, Kisumu, which has only 290,000 people, is only around half the size of Dadaab refugee camp on the border with Somalia. This is the same Kisumu which used to be the economic capital of Lake Victoria during the time of the East African Community. Today it is a city with an international airport, yet no real industry to speak of. If you come from Nyanza or Western Provinces, you would not try your luck living in Kisumu if you were looking for a job, because you would have a much better chance of finding one in Nairobi. Indeed Kisumu does not have much real estate that could be described as a ‘slum’ at all. Successive governments have neglected the west of Kenya, and Kisumu and the satellite towns around it are ghosts of their potential. Even the fish industry, which would so naturally be based in the west because of the fishing in Lake Victoria, barely benefits the region, and the main government fish processing plant is in Thika, 25 miles north of Nairobi. Thika is an area that has often been favoured since independence because of tribal persuasions, and the fish factory there had created hundreds of jobs for people in the area, and done little to help the people who live around the lake where the fish were caught.

To make up for it, those from Nyanza and Western Province come to Nairobi in droves, and if they can get a place to stay in Kibera they will not pass up the opportunity. How will this ever change unless investment is poured in the direction of Kisumu, and the surrounding population can see that they don’t need to leave their province as migrant workers, disturbing their family life, and further expanding the slums around the city? By upgrading Kibera, we are therefore treating a symptom and not a cause. As rural life in western Kenya becomes more congested and less lucrative, people will continue to come to Nairobi, and if they do not stay in Kibera they will create another slum on the fringe of the city, where infrastructure will be worse, and the commute to town far further. There is so much land around the airport and Thika road which would be easy victim to this kind of shanty expansionism.  

Meanwhile, small NGO’s do their best to play their part in the slum up-grade. Millions are invested ever year into micro projects which make the lives of the slum dwellers a bit easier, from cleaning up the water, to building mini-schools, to picking up litter, to starting saving schemes with the women. But in the long run, none of these problems of health, sanitation, education, or livelihoods are getting any better, because the demand for what Kibera is and stands for is much higher than the powers conspiring to bring it down – as I said in my first line, very little has noticeably changed since I have been here.  The 2000 NGO’s here need to do more to collectively address the government, whose responsibility it is to reduce the incentives to move to Nairobi in the first place. This would definitely include investing in the provinces, and investing in industries, such as coffee processing, silk garment production, coconut oil manufacturing and flower assembling that do not need an urban centre to flourish. 

Let us imagine that this happens – when the tide turns and demand for Kibera decreases, it is important that the government and NGO’s develop the small 2.5 sqaure kilometres in a way that turns it into the Nairobi suburb it deserves to be. This does not include stifling it and bulldozing it, which, even if it were desirable would be practically impossible. Originally this land was designated to host a complex transport network, with roads and railways leading to Limuru and beyond. Originally it was owned by the government, but one major hurdle in resolving the problem of Kibera is if the government concedes that it no longer owns the land. Indeed for the last twenty years, title deeds held by Kiberan residents have been recognised by the courts in Kenya, and while it may not be possible enforce because of fearful policemen, it is possible to get a court order of eviction for a Kiberan tenant who abuses their tenancy agreement – my own landlord has done it several times.

Once the government has accepted that it no longer owns the land, it needs to work out how it can reacquire it so that it has control over it again. In my opinion this should be done through the systems that are currently operational in Kibera. If you are a landlord and you want your property to be demolished, it is possible to get them out, but you have to use the Kiberan way. Of course, it is fair by social law and custom that a tenant not paying rent should not continue occupying a house (squatters rights issue aside). It should also be fair that if a notice of three or six months is given then the tenant should be expected to move out at the end of the time period. In Kibera, unlike much of the rest of the world, you need to rely on the community to help you achieve this aim, however much compensation you offer – bulldozers won’t do it and nor will policemen. The youth and gangs will, so will the elected ‘village’ chief, and so will the neighbours if they really believe in the plans you have for their slum. This last part is the most important – let the residents of Kibera dictate the changes. They do not want the whole area to be demolished. They would fear the unknown and would consider it too much too fast. But would they like a paved road running through the middle of the slum? Would they like a market place opened out with buildings designed for business and small industry? Would they like a closed gutters and sewage systems instead of open drains and streams? More probably, and for this to happen demolition of some houses is vital. It is not possible to effectively achieve any of the above if we keep pussy-footing around the existing structures and status quo as most of the NGO’s are doing. And unfortunately NGO’s cannot be the people to lead this – I don’t believe that they will correctly judge the power balances in the slum to successfully evict the people who need to be moved, and then keep the buildings empty until they have been destroyed and replaced with the new engineering or structures. Even the government will have to be extremely sensitive, subtle and humbly accept that they will often fail. It will also take time, which is why I suggest we start now. 

At the same time, let us congratulate Uhuru Kenyatta on his promise to build a fish processing plant in Homa Bay on Lake Victoria, and hope that for once a Kenyan government will distribute investment and resources indiscriminately across the whole country.

In response to Julian Brazer’s study: ‘An Over-Crowded Land’.

I was dismayed to read the report by Julian Brazer MP on Immigration in UK. http://conservativehome.blogs.com/files/anovercrowdedland.pdf

It is an interesting read, and persuasive in parts, but what alarms me most is that I get a feeling the current government is using the immigration issue as a scape-goat for their failings in economic policy, and the state of Britain as a whole. To me, this is the worst kind of cowardice because it encourages the British public, who are worried and frustrated about the countries stability, to have a target group to aim their insecurities at; a target group who have no vote and no way of responding.

My attention was flagged to the paper by the suggestion at the end that we should temporarily deport asylum seekers to Kenya while they are having their cases examined, and I will come back to this. However, before I do I want to pick apart a few of Brazer’s preceding arguments.

Up until the labour government, immigration was balanced in that the same number of people were emigrating as immigrating, and in some years, more were emigrating. Recently, the excess in immigration has been around 200,000 per year, recently dipping to 180,000. With this continuing the population is set to boom, but what Brazer does not even mention is that British fertility rate has been decreasing almost steadily since the 1960’s. Without immigration, the accepted fertility rate to sustain a population is 2.33, but in Britain it is only 1.94. It is impossible to say at what speed the British population would shrink without immigration, but it seems irresponsible of Brazer to not even mention dropping fertility rates when his article is called ‘An Over Crowded Land’.

Also, it is misleading to talk about Britain as ‘one of the most densely populated countries in the world’. This may well be true, but ‘national’ population density is rarely a parameter used to depict a country’s woes or blessings: only in cases such as Monaco, Macao, Singapore, and UAE states can we see entire states with only urban land mass; for other countries, population density is only a concern in urbanised areas. In Britain, no urban area has significant population densities, and indeed, only 6.9% of British land-mass is classed as ‘urban’. Therefore using national population density in the arguments surrounding immigration, illegal immigrants and asylum seekers is unfair and sensationalist. 

Now to the Kenya issue. Brazer writes:

“ Crucially we need to take a long, hard look at the asylum issue.

No decent country sends people back to their countries of origin

to face persecution. We have made some progress in speeding

up applications, but they remain slow and, if we tighten controls

in other areas, applications may soar again. All too often people

disappear in the process. We must consider making treaties with

democratic Third World countries with plenty of space (few are

as crowded as the UK) and establishing two or three processing

centres abroad. For example, if we could secure a deal with

Kenya, it would be worth our while to make a considerable

payment per capita to them to provide a haven for Somali

asylum seekers, sent from Britain to have their cases examined

(by a British tribunal, as now). Those who absconded would not

then be able to disappear in this country.”

If this is based on the assumption that the asylum seekers would be detained in Kenya, then I would have a problem with this on the level of human rights, but you would have to question why they wouldn’t just detain asylum seekers in UK while their case is being examined. Surely that would be cheaper than carting them off to Kenya and back? If they are not being detained in Kenya (as I suspect Brazer intends), then Brazer is overlooking some concerning aspects of life in Kenya, especially for a Somali refugee.

As you will see in my blog below, Somali refugees in Kenya do not have an easy time, and around Christmas time, many Somali refugees living in Nairobi were forced to either return to their country (from which they had fled for their lives) or go to Dadaab refugee camp where opportunities and dignity are severally threatened. This was because of a government who suddenly turned hostile to the Somali community (ostensibly to the whole refugee community, but really only Somalis bore the brunt of it), and a population, who, in a case worse than UK, feel threatened by outsiders such as Somalis. In Kenya, the government have done a much better job than Brazer and his colleagues in turning the local communities against immigrants and fostering a situation where xenophobia is permitted. Unfortunately for them, Kenya has some neighbours who have harboured revolving battlegrounds within their borders: Somalia, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan, DR Congo to name a selection, and refugees have seen Kenya as a haven nonetheless. Now there are nearly 1 million refugees in Kenya. Here we really do have some of the highest population densities in the world (Kibera 800,000/2.5 sqkm) and the highest unemployment rates. But as a nation Kenya could not compete with UK in terms of population density, because it is a vast country. But 10% of the population lives in Nairobi, and 90% of the population lives in the thin strip of fertility between Lake Victoria and the coast, combining the rift valley and the central highlands. Most of the land mass in Kenya is uninhabitable, and Dadaab refugee camp in the middle of this hostile land proves this, as the inhabitants survive on food aid from NGO’s. So if the asylum seekers did abscond, where would they go other than to the areas of Kenya that suffer from far greater challenges from lack of population control than Britain? They would be victimised by the local population, and by the government that Brazer calls ‘democratic’.

Too much talk on the issue of immigration during tough times is dangerous – the extremes can be seen in countries like Zimbabwe and Zaire under Mobutu, and Uganda under Idi Amin, where leaders turned on minority groups when their economies were threatened, and blamed them for the countries downfall. In Zaire this contributed to a continental war, and in Zimbabwe and Uganda the mass exodus that followed by the foreigners led to economic implosions with inflation rising over 1000% per year. This may seem far more severe than what is going on in Britain, but the banding together of asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and immigrants in political language and treating them all as the same problem, as Brazer seems to, gives people on the street the excuse to accuse anyone is who is not British of being behind the country’s challenges. The British government needs to stop looking for people to blame and take on the burden of responsibility, or the social upheavals they are desperate to avoid will only be exasperated.

The Voiceless People of Eastleigh

After ten working days running cooped up in iHub it was a great sense of freedom when we set off to Eastleigh on the other side of Nairobi to give out the first edition of the Tamuka Newsletter. Eastleigh is the area of Nairobi that has witnessed all the bombs in recent times: A suicide bomber in August, Molotov cocktails thrown into a Sunday school session in September, and an exploding public bus in November. By December Eastleigh had become a riot zone that left dead bodies on the street for several days straight.

Al Shabaab have a very ingenious way of inciting violence. Eastleigh has a huge Somali population, but a huge proportion of these are Kenyan Somali. These are people who have lived in Kenya for generations and are as Kenyan as anyone can be. This means that the recent war between Kenya and Somalia has even less to do with them than it does with the innocent Somali refugees who have fled Somalia seeking refuge in Nairobi. Unfortunately this is a message that other Kenyan tribes find hard to swallow. By setting bombs in Eastleigh the terrorists play on the ignorance of Kenyans, who then turn on their Somali neighbours as if they were the enemy. Walking through busy Garissa Road made me see how inevitable this reaction was. People of Somali origin have laid claim to much of the area’s cultural identity, from the aroma of strong spices, to shops selling middle eastern rugs, mosques and shisha bars. While Bantu faces huddle in the corner watching with suspicion, gangs of tall thin men amble slowly down the pavements holding hands and combing their straight hair.

Eastleigh after a bomb in November

As we walked along chatting with overly extroverted hawkers it was hard to imagine these streets being the scene of such violence only a month ago. It was hard to believe that tomorrow, as parties choose their nominees for the elections, the energy was likely to heat up again. It was hard to imagine the stories of Somali refugees being stopped by police and arrested for being foreign. Yet on just this one road we were stopped by three people who told us the same story. The police had arrested them, torn up their UNHCR refugee mandate in front of them and taken them to jail, only to be released upon a bribe of 1000 shillings. Apparently these are often plain clothes policemen who would never perpetrate such an act in front of a mzungu witness.

The saddest part about this harassment is that it is supposed to be something of the past. Plenty of NGO’s have conducted sensitisation seminars with police to make sure that treat refugees in Eastleigh just as they would treat anyone else, and reports from the NGO’s and the refugees was that it was working. However, in December the outgoing government issued a directive that all 100,000 refugees living in Nairobi should return to the camps. Why? Because of the bombs. This is a security measure. Do refugees who have fled one country because of a war, now want to be the people to start a war in the country that is protecting them? So the police, who drop their reluctant support of integration amongst refugees and use this directive as an excuse to literally scare anyone of Somali, Congolese, Sudanese, Ethiopian or Rwandese origin out of the city.

And it is working. CDTD, an NGO that works in the community in Eastleigh ran a vocational school for 125 refugees last year. This term their numbers are under 30. But where are all these refugees going? Are they to be added to Dadaab’s 400,000 population, to eat their meals at an ordained time, live in ordained mud houses in ordained rows, and wait for another mundane day to pass slowly by? Or will they return to the countries they believe to be too unsafe for their family? It is a tragedy that refugees of all people are being used a political tool, while they have no voice and not even a vote to come back with.

Call to action: mzungus in Nairobi let’s go and patrol the streets of Eastleigh, as it seems we are an unwitting group who can prevent this police behaviour!

2. All refugees and anyone else: text your views and stories to 4342. It is free and anonymous and will be seen by anyone who follows @TamukaHub or @XavierProj on twitter.

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

www.xavierproject.co.uk

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.