Mathare

I took my first real trip to the deepest and darkest corners of the slum today. Dan, the program director, Bruce, a child at the center, and I went to see the shanty where he stays every night. It was built by a former street child and houses 15 adults and 14 children. Getting to it was a task in and of itself as I found myself crawling through trash piles, balancing along brick bridges that ran alongside and through the sewage that flows through the back alleys. At times I was ducking from the rugged tin roofs while balancing on stones and small walls while having to jump from one side of the little rivers to the other. I passed countless children answering nature’s call openly in the sewage, looking up with huge smiles and friendly greetings of “Mazungu!” (white person). I don’t think that they are used to seeing my kind so close to home. There were also the glue sniffers basking in the shade of the shanties and lounging around with the various bottles glued to their noses. I’ll get to this in another post.

We arrived out of the blue as I had no idea what to expect. I was told it was a makeshift center for street people. My conception was a horribly built brick building that was ready to fall down. I was greeted by a two-story tin box held together by inch and a half long nails and various lengths of wood. I was a little freaked out by the location and the fact that if something happened to me there…we just wont go there. But sitting in that sweatbox of a house, I wondered 1. Why am I here? and 2. why anyone would leave a mud brick house in the countryside to come live in the city? To the first, Bruce’s mom left her husband and then abandoned him in the streets and neither has yet to be found. To the second, the thought of a western lifestyle is more appealing than the alternative.