In Africa's largest slum town, a retired railway worker has turned an abandoned shack into a library for the local children.
Every afternoon at four o'clock, Joseph Otieno unlocks a dented metal door at the edge of Kibera, Nairobi. The sign above the door reads "Community Library" - painted by hand and fading.
Inside, there is no electricity, no computers, and no matching chairs. Three uneven shelves hold fewer than 200 books, their spines softened by years of use. Still, the children begin arriving before Joseph finishes sweeping the floor, quietly lining up with exercise books pressed to their chests.
Joseph is not a teacher, or a trained librarian. For most of his working life, the 62-year-old was a railway clerk, checking cargo manifests and recording arrivals. When the railways downsized, he retired early and returned to Kibera. "This place raised me," he says. "Even when it was hard, it did not throw me away."
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Abandoned books
The library began almost accidentally. During the Covid-19 pandemic, an informal school nearby shut down permanently. Its desks were removed and its roof dismantled. One morning, Joseph noticed a pile of books dumped outside the locked gate, the pages curling. He carried them home in plastic bags, five or six at a time.
At first, he lent out the books from his sitting room. Five children came the first week, sitting on the floor and reading aloud. Then 10. Parents began to complain about the noise and the crowd - space in Kibera is carefully negotiated.
Joseph found an abandoned shed nearby and convinced the owner to rent it to him for 8,000 shillings a month, which he paid from his pension. He moved the books there and opened the door every afternoon.
"If the books disappear, so does the future they are pointing to." he says, explaining his motivation.
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A future engineer
One of the regular visitors is 13-year-old Aisha Hassan. Her family of five shares a single room a few minutes' walk away. There is no table, and evenings are noisy with radios, conversations and the clatter of cooking pots.
At the library, Aisha sits by the doorway to catch the light, tracing words with her finger when the sentences become difficult. She wants to be an engineer, although she has never met one. Last year, she came top of her class.
"Baba Joseph tells us knowledge is a tool," Aisha says. "If you lose it, you are empty-handed."
The challenges of keeping the library open are constant. When it rains, sewage backs up and floods the floor, forcing Joseph to lift the books on to plastic crates.
Two books were stolen last month, likely sold for scrap. Joseph records every loan in a handwritten ledger, listing names, dates and small fines, that almost no one can afford to pay. He does not insist on payment. The system, he says, is mostly symbolic.
When asked why he continues, Joseph shrugs: "If I close, the children will not protest. They will just adjust to less. That is how people survive here: by adjusting downward."
'Please buy more books'
On most days, Joseph stays in the library until dusk. He helps the younger children sound out words and settles disputes over whose turn it is to read a popular book. He does not lecture or motivate. He only insists on quiet and that they take care of the books.
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"I want them to be familiar with books," he says. "So later, they are not afraid of them."
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Last week, Joseph received a letter delivered by hand. It came from a former student who is now studying at a college in Eldoret, in the west of Kenya. Inside was a folded 1,000-shilling note and a short message: "I learned to read here. Please buy more books."
Joseph read it twice, then folded it neatly and placed it inside a dictionary - the thickest book on the shelf, and the one the children struggle with most.
At four o'clock the next day, Joseph unlocked the door again. The children slipped inside one by one, choosing books they already know by heart.
