Kibera

Yesterday, we spent the day in the poorest place I have ever been -- Kibera, the largest slum in Africa. Neither words nor photos can describe the situation there, but let me try: narrow, uneven lanes made of dirt and trash, tiny shops and homes built of corrugated metal and cardboard, loud music pouring from ramshackle bars, people everywhere, smells, no sewers, adorable children in torn dirty clothes with their noses running, unsupervised toddlers playing in filthy water because they have no toys, feral dogs everywhere. Walking through Kibera is like what I imagine descending into Dante's inferno would be like.

We were escorted into and out of Kibera under the protection of the gang leader for the slum and one his gang members. Like Secret Service men in the US, they are constantly alert for possible problems, and yesterday, they put themselves between Beth and another AFK volunteer when one of the feral dogs began acting aggressively. I am not clear as to the exact role of the gang in Kibera, but I understand that among other things, its members try to counteract the power of the chief of the slum, who is a bad person and not interested in helping its residents.

We were in Kibera to work at the Kibera School for Girls, a project begun by a small nonprofit called Hope to Shine, www.hopetoshine.org, that was established by Kennedy Odede, who moved to Kibera on his own at the age of 11 and managed to not only live but to thrive in that he began some small businesses in the slum, learned how to use a computer and figured out how to get on the Internet, which ultimately led him to AFK. Currently, he is a student at CT Wesleyan University and returns to Kibera every Summer, which is where he will go back to once he graduates so he can continue helping his people. He and the other US students and recent college grads who are working with them have a steep road ahead given the overwhelming poverty and problems in Kibera, but their efforts have already won Shining Hope a Dell Challenge Grant, a Paul Newman Foundation Grant, and they are in the running for a significant grant from VHI, so they have a good start on raising much of the money they will need to achieve their short and long term visions.

AFK was instrumental in helping get the Kibera School for Girls off the ground offering both money and volunteer support and it will continue to do so for at least the immediate future. For example, while we were in Kibera yesterday, a team of volunteers catalogued hundreds of donated books from the US and will put the books on the now empty bookshelves in the school library. Also, the eye doctor on the medical team examined the eyes of all of the girls who attend the school; Beth and a nurse began conducting physical exams of the girls, nearly all of whom had problems -- stomach problems due to rotten teeth, upper respiratory infections, even a case of full-blown Aids; and the nurse practitioner talked to a group of men and women from Kibera about sexual health.

I was part of a team of three that worked with the children in each of the school's three classrooms teaching them how to make puppets and tell stories with their puppets. The youngest kids -- 5 and 6 -- made sticks using foam animal shapes and popsicle sticks, but the older children -- 7 and 8 and 9 -- decorated more traditional people and animal puppets made of wood with strings to move their arms, legs and heads. They really had a great time and when they found out that the puppets were theirs to keep and take home, the joy on their faces was indescribable because they have probably never owed a toy. One little girl who had decorated a people puppet kept kissing it, fussing lovingly with its red yarn hair and holding the doll out to look at, amazed that it was hers. Heart-warming to say the least.