Monday we made our way into Nairobi to meet with the executive director of a school and foundation started in Nairobi's infamous Kibera slum. Of course, traffic in Kenya is similar to other international cosmopolitan cities...HELLISH and scary. I counted at least 12 times that we almost ran into something in the 45 minute drive to Kibera. For those of you doing the math, that's one evert 3.5 seconds.
Kibera is a large swatch of land unrecognized by the Kenyan government. It was inhabited by squatters many years ago who refused to leave and subsequently have created their own city within a city. There is high crime and a dense population. What's fascinating about the Kibera slum is the hierarchical structure amongst people who reside in the same abject poverty. There is a hill in Kibera that is designated the ghetto while the base of the hill is called the slum. The ghetto is diffferentiated because of their official access to electricity. Kibera also has the distinctive structure where your family's status is equated with how many people share a household toilet. In Kibera slum, they actually charge people outside of the family for use of the toilet.
We went on to tour the school and the Children of Kibera foundation during that morning and then in the afternoon made our way to St. George's School for Girls. This is a school with a very British history and ethos. It's a prestigious boarding school with over 900 girls. They were very formal but remarkably pleased to host us. We visited classes and spent time talking shop with the school administration.
The day was capped off by dinner in Nairobi. We were joined by a school alum who is doing Peace Corp work in a small village north of Kenya. We had a rowdy and lengthy dinner where we passed around platters of grilled goat (the cut of goat chosen by our group) local spinach, corn meal paste and marinated chicken all eaten by hand and finished with the local beverage.
0 comments:
Post a Comment