By Dylan Ellis
What are slums and how do they form? The definition of a slum differs from country to country and each faces its own challenges. People Of Kibera’s website states some of the challenges they face day to day: living in one room houses made mostly of mud and whatever scraps residents can find. Most rooftops consist of corroded tin sheet metal. There is no running water, and most water has to be purchased from brokers, otherwise it is dangerous to ingest. Residents have little or no access to electricity anywhere in the slum. Other problems include widespread unemployment and low wage-earning rates, less than $1 a day on average, and that’s on days that you can find work. Rampant disease, from malaria to cholera to HIV, as well as a lack of funds to treat them. Lack of ownership for their own property, as will be discussed later, making everyone in Kibera an illegal resident. (Slum) These conditions also contribute to the never-ending cycle of poverty that most citizens endure (Kibera).
Slums fall into two categories, as defined by UN-HABITAT; Slums of hope are “Progressing” settlements characterized by new, usually self-built structures and usually illegal inhabitants (i.e., squatters) and that are in, or have recently been through, a process of development, consolidation, and improvement. Slums of despair are “Declining” neighborhoods, in which environmental conditions and domestic services are undergoing a process of degeneration (Worldbank, 27). Kibera falls under the slum of hope category because most residents move there to find employment opportunities. For them, Kibera is just a stop on the way to something bigger. It has affordable rent for people without a steady stream of income so people can live there for very little while trying to earn enough money to move on to a higher economic class. Affordable rent, even for those with almost nothing, is a main reason why slums are ever growing. Kibera is also having its living conditions improved, as shown by a collaboration between the Kenyan government and UN-HABITAT in the slum upgrading project, where thousands of residents are being upgraded into affordable modern housing units in an attempt to improve general living conditions for the people of Kibera(Hope). This is more evidence that Kibera is indeed a slum of hope.
How did Kibera come about? Kibera started as a piece of land given to the Nubian mercenaries from Sudan who fought for the British crown in World War I, and were allowed to take up residence just outside of Nairobi after the war. For some reason they were never given their title to the land and that is why to this day everyone in Kibera is considered to be squatting illegally (Slum). A large majority of the houses in any particular slum are build by the resident or the tenant renting it out. There are virtually no building codes to adhere to because everyone is on the land illegally, acting as “squatters”. This adds to the daily danger of life in the slums. At any time there could be a break in, your house could fall down or you could just catch a disease from lack of shelter and a lowered immune system. There is also no protection from local authorities. The police are afraid to venture into the slums for fear of the mob. In Kibera, the mob deals with crime and thieves in its own way, by beating the criminal to death and burning them. Thus the corrupt police are scared to cross the tracks into Kibera (Barcott, 49).
Most slum-dwellers fall into 4 groups: rural migrants, displaced persons, refugees, and foreign workers (Greenfield). It is very common for people from rural communities to migrate to the slums in search of employment, water, cheap rent, access to education or health care, and general infrastructure that they wouldn’t have access to in the country (Greenfield). The other three groups tend to migrate for many of the same reasons, but they also have the push of nowhere else to go guiding them to the slums. Displaced persons and refugees are people that have been forcefully evicted from their homes and must migrate to a new, preferably cheap home and Kibera seems ideal for most. Most of the foreign workers that are in Kibera, migrants that can’t find work elsewhere, are unskilled laborers that can’t find employment elsewhere so they seek it in the massive slum. This is interesting because it throws a different perspective on how slums are viewed by Western society. We see slums as a place of despair yet all these people flock to them on a daily basis as a beacon of hope and of ambition for the future.
In a subtle shift of policy in 1974, Nairobi removed certain building restrictions, allowing essentially anyone to come to Kibera to build structures to rent to tenants. When combined with the ongoing trend of urbanization, this action propelled Kibera's population growth rate significantly, constantly attracting immigrants from all over. Another factor in slum growth, especially in Kibera, is the population growth rate. Assuming a current population of around 700,000 to 900,000, Kibera has grown on average 11%-12% per year since the 1960s (Slum). This is an extremely high growth rate, especially in a place with such minimal resources and poor housing conditions. As people arrive from rural areas, they not only bring themselves to add to the crowded slums, but they also bring their children and future children, continually adding to the poverty cycle.
Yet people still choose to live in such a place. Why? The government clearly doesn’t share the same feelings about living in Kibera, and their own President told the local newspaper, The Daily Nation, that Kibera is “and eyesore and a shame” (Hope). I find it odd that a place that is full of people trying to make their lives better through living in a slum are slandered by their own leader in such a way. Maybe a way to start improving the slums is to change how it is perceived in the outside world and this might help people to understand the true situation of hope inside the desperate shantytown.
So how are the poverty cycle broken and the growth of slums halted? 60% of people living in Kibera are making less than a dollar a day, and the amount of unemployed youth is sitting at 80% according to People Of Kibera. There is not enough access to steady employment in the slums or slightly outside and so residents need to resort to working odd jobs to make ends meet. To break the cycle in Kibera, organizations need to help establish strong youth leaders so that they may grow into the next generation of leadership in Nairobi and start to move Kibera out of the hole it is currently in.
Barcott, Rye. It Happened on the Way to War. ; A Marine's Path to Peace. Bloomsbury, 2011. Print.
Greenfield, Thomas K. Issuu - You Publish. 29 Jan. 2010. Web. 24 Sept. 2011.
"Hope for Kibera?" Moja Moja - 2:14 Ministries. 5 Oct. 2004. Web. 23 Sept. 2011.
Kibera Foundation: Home. Web. 23 Sept. 2011.
"Slum: The People of Kibera | Kibera Overview | Intro." Slum: The People of Kibera | Home. Web. 23 Sept. 2011.
Worldbank. Monitoring What Matters.
http://siteresources.worldbank.org/ECAEXT/Resources/MonitoringWhatMatters_chapter4.pdf>
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