THE SHADOW CITY
The world's population just passed the 7 billion mark, and for the first time in history, the majority of the world's population lives in cities. In Nairobi, Kenya, one million people are crammed in to a piece of land the same size as Manhattan's Central Park. The Kibera slum is located five kilometers southwest of Nairobi's city centre. I worked on this longterm project between 2007 and 2012.
Despite its bad environment and health conditions, Kibera continued to grow rapidly during the 1970’s. The slum started booming with a population increasing from estimated 6000 inhabitants in 1965 to 62.000 in 1980, 250.000 in 1992, and 500.000 in 1998, with an estimated growth ratio of 17% per year. The population in Kibera continues to grow by 5% every year.
The average person living in Kibera does not have running water or electricity. Public latrines routinely overflows, children scamper barefoot through festering heaps of waste.
Kibera is one of the most densely populated places on earth; this means that an average of 1500 people live on the equivalent of a football pitch, or the area seen on this picture.
Kibera has residents coming from all the major ethnic backgrounds with some areas being specifically dominated by one tribe. This multi-ethnic nature coupled with the tribalism of Kenyan politics has led Kibera to be the site of ethnic conflicts throughout its near 100 year history, most recently in 2008.
The Odongo Family eating breakfast in the house. Clockwise from left it is Lavenda, Naomi, Meshak, Michelle, Augustin Odongo, Cynthia, Eunice and Clarissa. Homes in Kibera are made out of corrugated tin, mud, cardboard and plastic and consist of one room that serves as a kitchen, living room, and bedroom. Most homes are about 3 meters by 3 meters and have an average of five people living in them.
Soot, dust, and other wastes heavily pollute Kibera. Open sewage routes, in addition to the common use of Ôflying toiletsÕ, also contribute to contamination of the slum with human and animal faeces.
Yet another child become a grim statistic in Kibera; diarrhea, typhoid and dysentery are rampant, with child death rates running at almost four times the average for Nairobi.
A worshipper in Cathedral of Praise Ministry Church.
The old Nubian woman Zara Kafer. Life expectancy in Kibera is 46 years old.
Augustin and Clarissa in bed with two year old Michelle inbetween.
Children drinking water in the schoolyard of the Olympic Primary School in Kibera.
Pastor William Okelu Odongo (with cross) is leading the Gospel Ministry of African Holy Church on a Sunday in Kibera.
30 year old unmarried Christine Waweru delivers a 3 kilo baby boy at the Ushirika Clinic in Kibera on a saturday afternoon in march 2009. The birth of Beninah Mwende took nearly six hours.
The overcrowded passenger train only runs one time in the morning and one time in the evening, carrying kiberians to and from work in downtown Nairobi.
Half of the Kiberians are under the age of 15 and there are an estimated 100.000 orphaned children in the slum.
Nairobi’s centre is like any modern city but on its parimeter lie vast stretches of densely populated shanty towns. 55% of the city’s population live in these Slums. Although over a million people live here, the government recognise it officially as a “squat” or illegally occupied land, this allows them to basically do nothing for the inhabitants.
People from rural Kenya still come to Kibera to live, believing like so many others around the world that the city will give them the chance in life to make it, to own the big house and the big car and all the rest that “they have in the west”.
The ground in much of Kibera is literally composed of refuse and rubbish. Houses are often constructed atop this unstable ground and therefore many structures collapse whenever the slum experiences flooding which it does regularly.
The Odongo Family in the stick and mud house. From left to right it is Augustin Odongo with Michelle, Clarissa Adiambo, Cynthia, Lavenda, Naomi, Meshak and Eunice.
Afternoon traffic along the railway track through the slum area. Five of KenyaÕs six largest ethnic groups (Kikuyu, Kisii, Luo, Luhya, and Kamba) call Kibera Òhome.Ó
Only 1% of girls in Kibera have access to an all-girl, development program. Young women in the slum aged 14-24 are contracting HIV at a rate five times that of their male counterparts.
Young men works the late night shift in a car repairs shop. Most shops in Kibera stays open until midnight.
According to Medecins Sans Frontieres in Kenya, at least 15% of Kibera inhabitants are infected with HIV, but the rate could be much higher. Most infected people are youths, parents, and obviously young children. It is estimated that 1/5 of the 2.2 million Kenyans living with HIV live in Kibera.
Pastor Richard Ouya in Cathedral of Praise Ministry Church.
Kibera is home to the popular Olympic Primary School, one of the leading government schools in the country.
Bordering Kibera, a bird’s eye view of downtown Nairobi shows a well-kept and rather large golf course used by the city’s elite. In the 1920s the British colonial government here decided let a group of Nubian soldiers settle on a wooded hillside outside Nairobi.
Women and girls risk rape if they step outside their mud-brick homes after dark.