Mathare

I was super late because I stayed up all night and morning ensuring that my clothes were washed as we would be on the road for the next ten days.  Today was our last classes at UoN. We had three lectures. The first one was a presenter from USAID who explained their purpose in Kenya like working on the PETFAR initiative of Bush.  Followed by that lecture was two women who are from the Kenyan Women Finance Trust. This lecture was on Microfinance.  It was not a topic I knew much about but I was eager because it's a new popular social initiative.  I was really disappointed with the lecture though.  They were reading off the slides which is PRESENTATION DO NOT 101.  It was kind of funny but one the girls had to go with a sign to show the girl to slow down...it was embarrassing.  The last lecture was on Changes in the Rangelands by a Mr. Davi Nkedianje.  He discussed land allocation and the issue with fragmentation of the land that restricts the lives of pastoralist and nomads as well as the animals who move based on the seasons.

We had lunch and proceeded to our next stop which was to Mathare; another slum in Kenya. First we stopped at an orphanage by the name of Mogra Resue Center which is located near the Mathare slum.  The story behind the school and orphanage was inspiring and sweet.  The founder Hannah never learned English and her husband bought land and donated it to her.  The orphanage houses 140 children of all ages.  A British lady who volunteered there did the introductions and answered our questions.  Some points that she brought up was that Kibera is celebrity slum...as many of the residents pay an expensive rent compared to other slums.  Also, many of the residents in Kibera actually have jobs in Nairobi, they live in Kibera because of its perks.  For example, in Kibera there is 1 NGO for every 30 people in Kibera.  She made other critical speculations but I think some of it was bias.  Ben who graduated from Mogra Star to pursue Social Work now works as the community director gave us a tour of the facility.  He then took us to a nursery area and there were 3 cute babies there.  They explained that they feed the children all year round because sometimes it's the only meal they get per day.

We then drove to slum which was ten minutes away and similar to Kibera there were beautiful big homes nearby.  The school was deep with the slum in dilapidated facility that had a leaky roof, crooked stairwell, and narrow hallway. Simon, another graduate, gave us a tour of all the classes.  Once again most of the younger children sang and danced for us.  984 students attend school in this five story building 700 in primary school and 284 in secondary.  We went in and introduced ourselves, very few of them had questions for us. One thing i noticed was that all the students were well-behaved even when their teachers were not in class.  We went back home so we could have a review session since we would be leaving for Nyeri to Kisii to Kissumu.