The children that are sponsored in our program come from
Kibera slums. It is the largest slums in Kenya and the second largest slums in
the world. It has occupants of up to a million people living in an area of
about 2.5km².They stay in
single roomed mud houses. The roofs are made of rusty iron sheets that have
been often been on for more than 30 years. There are few roads, mostly just
small paths leading to the different houses with sewage running through the
shacks as there is no good sewage system.
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| Kibera slums |
During the rainy season living in the slums becomes a
nightmare. The roofs leak, water comes in through the doors and sometimes
houses constructed near the rivers are carried away by the floods. Mudslides
are sometimes experienced by people whose houses were constructed where there
is a lot of soil. People lose their lives during this season especially small
children who often get lost when it is raining.
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| open sewage |
God has been good to our Riziki children as none of them has
been badly affected by the floods. It is a cold season too and we pray for good
health for our children. They are doing well in school as it is a month since
they went back to school for second term. One of our children in boarding
school came home after the reports of his mother being admitted at the Kenyatta
national hospital reached him. He refused to go back to school until the mother
gets well as he says he will not be able to concentrate on his studies.
He is from a single parent family and the mother is the one
who has raised him together with two other siblings. She was diagnosed with
tuberculosis but we later learnt that it was not the first time to get the
diagnosis and she had stopped taking the first lot of drugs. She is an
alcoholic but doesn’t get enough food to supplement the drugs which made her
very weak. Even if she gets well she
cannot tell where money will come from for her to be discharged. Her daughter
gave birth while she is still at the hospital. The new mum has no one to take
care of her with her baby. Two days before giving birth she had stayed on an
empty stomach for lack of something to eat.
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| flooded river |
Soon after giving birth she was discharged and allowed to go
home. She was shocked on arriving at their place to find part of the wall had
fallen down due to the heavy downpour the previous night. Her mattress was also
wet because the roof leaks and there was no one at home to put containers as
they usually do when it rains. Stranded and very weak and not knowing where to
start, she took all her clothes and spread them on the bed and laid her
daughter to keep warm. She sat down and
cried for the most part of the night. The following day a neighbor pitied her
and fixed the wall of their house.
This new mum is using old clothes as diapers as she cannot
afford to purchase any. She cannot ask anyone for assistance as she is not sure
who fathered her child but the one she thinks of is a drunkard and uses bhang(marijuana).
He came to see her a week after delivery and gave her a dollar to buy
something. Life for a girl child in Kibera is not easy. Girls sell their bodies
in exchange for a small sum of money just to be able to take care of their
needs, especially purchasing sanitary towels. Peer pressure among teenage girls
is also high as everyone wants to do what the other person is doing. Teenage
pregnancy has become the order of the day in Kibera slums and if you reach a
certain age without a child people will always think that maybe you have been
aborting.
The society has accepted this behavior. The morals that
people use to highly uphold are no longer there in this current society. Girls
as young as 13 years are getting married and by the time they reach 20 years
most of them have up to three or four children. The rate of school dropout has
also gone up as parents have become unable to control their children. Some
pretend to be going to school but go to places where they are influenced into a
life of crime.
Thank you to everyone who supports Afri-lift because it is
through touch a family and child sponsorship that we are able to impact the
lives of people living in Kibera. We see a better Kibera in days to come through
education that is being given to the younger generation.
