Slum Safari: The Kibera Tour

Tin Roof River - Kibera - Kenya

A tour guide and a friendly neighbour

'The friendliest slum in the World' is the tagline on the card of Kibera Tours, a local independent tour office. Our guide Freddy gave us the card after the end of our walk through the streets of Kibera, the biggest slum in Nairobi, housing over a million souls, about a third of Nairobi's total population.

 And indeed everyone was very friendly during the tour. I would recommend it to anyone visiting Nairobi for the first time. At 2500 shillings (around 26 euros) per person, it's a bit pricey for what you get, but most of the money these guys earn go back to the community, so it's all good.

We found Kibera to be very fascinating, with many stories to tell and wanted to find out more about this tin city than what we were shown at the tour, so we spent 3 days in Kibera, visiting places, talking to people, trying to find out why these people chose to leave the countryside and move to the slums in and around Nairobi. 


Mzungu?

The kids had the most impact on me. They are so happy to see wazungus (white people in kiswahili), because most wazungus who visit the slums are mostly from various aid organizations, building toilets or clinics or helping out in one way or another. At any given time in the slum, if you are a mzungu (singular), you will be chased around by a dozen of children chanting 'How are you? Mzungu how are you?'. They were very sweet and I spent around 8 gigabytes on them.

I have many many pictures with kids, they love having their picture taken. I'll find some kind of picture widget and upload them all together sometime soon.

The Shopping District

The thing that makes Kibera stand out from all the other slums, besides being the largest, is the sense of community that you get there. Everything you'll ever need you can find in Kibera, there's many local businesses offering various necessities and services, from food markets to cinemas, to clothing districts. They have their own economy of lowered priced goods for everyone, they have schools, a radio station, a TV station, clinics, you name it.

For short term visits

The police don't visit very often, mostly because the people here don't like them. Instead they have built a citizen network of neighborhood watchers, serving justice where needed. Sometimes these vigilantes take their role too far.

I was informed by locals that some time ago a local woman noticed a shoplifter stealing something from a shop. She started yelling and in seconds a mob of people gathered around the smalltime crook, they put a car tire around his neck and burned him alive with kerosene. It can get pretty rough in Kibera.

Having this info in mind, we were pretty cautious taking pictures and videos. But you never know when someone will get displeased and for what reason. We had just finished doing some interviews at Kibera radio station and we were in the van, 12 of us, all fully equipped with our recording gear, going back to our accommodation in Karen, one of the rich districts of Nairobi, where many Catholics reside.

It was the guy wearing the cap

I was taking some tele-shots with my camera, just to fill my memory card and kill some time, when some guy came up to me and smacked my camera, accusing me of treating him and his people as animals. And to be honest, although surprised at the accusation, I did sympathize with his point of view, comparing the scene in my mind with a wildlife safari. 

I tried to reason with the man, explaining why we were there, but he wouldn't listen. In seconds there were over 30 people surrounding the van. The angry man kept yelling, threatening to burn us alive in the van. He said we had to pay for what we did.


I thought I'd rather pay with cash than becoming roast meat. 10 euros was enough to save our lives. It's common sense to bribe your way through in most cases in Kenya. The police are doing it, the judges too, it's in the air. The fella took the money and walked away, the crowd dispersed and we were left to do our business as usual. I got a comment from a friend afterwards saying that i gave him too much and by doing so we spoil them. I took it as a joke. We laughed a bit but the event did shake me.

Lesson learned: Next time, I'm putting 'Bribes' on the budget list.

All pictures are © 2010