|
|
Kenya: Flickers of Hope Amid Filth And Wasted Lives
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
The Nation (Nairobi)
OPINION
12 May 2008
Posted to the web 12 May 2008
Rasna Warah
Nairobi
A FEW HUNDRED METRES from the Kenya School of Monetary Studies (where the Grand Coalition met for a "bonding" session last week), on a steep mound of mud and rubbish, stands a communal pit latrine shielded by rusting mabati sheets.
To get to this "toilet in the sky", residents have to climb a rickety ladder, a hazardous task, considering that both the latrine and the mound on which it sits overlook a stream of raw sewage.
Those who do not want to risk losing a limb while trying to get to the toilet have access to another equally hazardous latrine located next to an open sewer, which overflows periodically, especially during the rainy season.
A few metres from the second latrine stands a self-help school run by youth living in the neighbourhood. It was here, in Mathare North slum, last week that I met a remarkable young man named Okidi and his equally remarkable colleagues - all in their 20s - who manage the school and are responsible for teaching some 200 slum children.
The school is managed purely on voluntary basis. Okidi and his colleagues earn whatever parents can afford to pay each month.
The classrooms are dark and damp and the rickety benches on which the children sit are donations. The holes in the mabati door of the classrooms let in some light and air, but as there is no electricity, the door is left open so that the students can read what they are writing.
This ethnically diverse group of young men and a woman are doing what the Government has been unwilling or unable to do - providing education to slum children who do not get a place in overcrowded public schools.
Okidi had brought me to see the school for one reason: he wanted assistance in building more schools and technical training institutes in the slum. But he did not want either NGOs or politicians to get involved, because he trusts neither.
Both politicians and NGOs promise a lot, he told me, but deliver nothing. And both have used young men like him to get themselves elected or to secure funding for their NGOs - funding which never finds its way back to the slum.
I met Okidi and his colleagues when I was in a particularly bad mood. I was behind on some deadlines (including for this column) and was feeling particularly cynical about everything to do with Kenya.
I was even contemplating leaving the country, moving to a place where politicians do not cynically trample on the hopes, aspirations and lives of ordinary Kenyans and where there is predictability and order - a place where I would not have to wonder when or where the fire will burn next time.
THESE THOUGHTS WERE THE culmination of a series of events that had reminded me that it was "business as usual" in Kenya.
A few days before, I had entered into a quarrel with a matatu driver who had blocked a whole street, causing a long traffic jam. Despite my repeated pleas for him to move, he sat in the middle of the road, taunting me. I knew then that the bad old days were back with us.
Then, for some strange reason, after serving me efficiently for years, a bank and a utility company could not trace my payments on their computers. For me, this signalled the return of the era when Kenyans had to beg utility companies and other service providers to enrol them as clients and customers, and when clients and customers were always guilty unless proven otherwise.
I also started noticing other things that irritated me. Like the fact that all the beggars in my neighbourhood were blind and that their helpers were little children who should ideally be in school.
Hundreds of questions entered my mind: Were the beggars really blind, or was this just a gimmick to make money? Why were they not sending their children to school, or were the children being used by some sinister cartel?
And then, just when I had started to lose all hope, I was invited to join a friend to visit the slum school. It was here, amid all the human waste and wasted humans that I met Okidi and his colleagues - bright young men and women who understand that they are perfect targets for recruitment in vigilante groups and criminal gangs, but who have resisted joining these groups because they see themselves as catalysts that can bring about real social change.
Their ambition is not to join politics or to form an NGO, but to serve their community in the best way they know how.
|
As I left the slum, I asked Okidi's colleague, Ben, which neighbourhood he would choose to live in if he had a choice.
"Mathare North," he replied, without the slightest hesitation. "If I move out, who will teach the children?"
Ms Warah is an editor with the UN. The views expressed here are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
