3-22-12–Kibera

Kibera is the second largest slum in the world; only Soweto in South Africa is larger. We had passed by it previously, but today we had some time to kill before heading to Lake Nakuro so Newton gave us a mini-tour.

There are more tin buildings than the eye can see, all the way to the horizon. Apparently the central part of the “city within a city” is more residential, and there were market stalls lining both sides of the street that circled the area. It appears to be fairly self-sufficient. The stalls had every single thing you could imagine you might need to live and Newton said those things actually cost less in Kibera than elsewhere. For example, a loaf of bread might be 50 Ksh (Kenya shillings) in Nanyuki but only 30 Ksh in Kibera.

I could see children playing in school uniforms, women hanging up clothes, men building some sort of house, a german shepherd on a rooftop (that was odd – and there are very few dogs around Kenya, totally unlike say, the Bahamas where there are packs of strays and they aren’t generally kept as pets like we do), AK47 toting officers, trash sorting folks and so on. Aside from the extraordinarily unsanitary conditions (I swear there’s no trash pick up anywhere) I think Kibera was pretty cool. I saw one man outside a butcher shop sharpening his knife. He was using a bike wheel with a wire set up on the axel that he would step on and off of – that would make the wheel spin which would in turn spin his whetting stone. It was totally awesome. If I didn’t hate hawkers so much I would have enjoyed walking around. I’m not sure Newton would have been OK with that though!

We drove to a peak that overlooked Kibera and discovered a camera crew there filming a musician playing some weird pipes using Kibera as the backdrop. When questioned they explained that they were filming musicians from all over the globe for the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s 40th year of her monarchy. So that’s kinda cool – we got to watch some of the filming and maybe we’ll get to see it on TV. Princess Elizabeth was on safari (about 100 meters from where we broke down that day) when she was told about her father’s death. She was actually in a tree when she learned she was the queen of England.