keep your head down

I took a tour of the Kibera slum, the largest in Africa. You're supposed to feel bad about being a poverty tourist, but fuck it, I wanted to see the place. "Kibera" means "forest" in Swahili, but that was all converted to fuel decades ago. It's desperately poor. Rivers of shit everywhere. I saw a dude eating garbage. I saw a small mountain of sardines, rotting in the open sun, swarming with flies and intended for human consumption. I saw an infant playing in the dirt next to an open sewer. I didn't take any pictures though; it was too depressing. You can do a google image search for Kibera and get all sorts of Sally Struthers poverty porn if you don't want to take my word for it.

Our guide there ran his own NGO, doing HIV education and job training for single mothers and all sorts of other good stuff. He lives there, too, with his wife and child, in a one-room subdivision in a slum rowhouse that is smaller than my college dorm room. It costs him $17 a month. He offered us lunch, but concerned about food quality and hygiene, I passed. Still kinda feel bad about this. I'm not one to turn down food.

Overlooking the slum is a ritzy golf course, the Royal Nairobi. Predictably, monthly membership fees are a large multiple of monthly rent in the slum. I don't want to be too unfair; the truth is the golf course predates the slum by about 50 years. But still. A person, and I mean the right kind of person, with the proper amount of training and skill, could, being so inclined, tee up, take aim and drive a golf ball over the fence of the club and directly into the heart of human degradation.



Photo credits: google maps, kookync, Royal Nairobi Golf Club website, 15000 hours in MSPaint