TOUGH LIFE IN KIBERA

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.

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.

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.

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.