 Team Reports |
Housing in KenyaChris Pratt — Barrie, ON
What types of homes are these thousands of bedkits going to and how useful are they to the children receiving them? This question was soon answered when we drove into the slums of Nairobi. Thousands of corrugated tin shacks crowd together to house close to one million people in the Kibera slum alone. We saw people rummaging through garbage for food and knew that we had come to the right place — these children were surely in need. Each shack is approximately twelve feet by twelve feet and can house an entire family. A small wooden door and one or two windows completes the construction. Life for these people is very harsh but we are still greeted with smiles and waves of hello as we pass. Possessions inside the homes are restricted to the bare necessities. The parents expressed to us appreciation for the mosquito nets as malaria is a major threat to everyone. None of the parents that I spoke with had a mosquito net. We were taken to the “Action for Children in Conflict” shelter by the director, an energetic young English woman, Eleanor Harrison. She takes in children from the streets of Thika, an industrial town of 147,000 at night but more than 300,000 during the day. The shelter houses up to twenty children for as long as six months.
The conditions are clean but humble consisting of three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a common room, and a kitchen — an area totaling about 800 square feet. The shower in the bathroom is a bucket and a scoop to pour cold water over one’s head. The children here are grateful to be safe and fed even though a piece of bread is often considered a luxury. We were taken to the “Action for Children in Conflict” shelter by the director, an energetic young English woman, Eleanor Harrison. Eleanor takes in children off the streets of Thika, an industrial town of 147,000 at night but more than 300,000 during the day and houses them at the shelter for up to six months. The condition of the shelter is clean but humble consisting of three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a common room and a kitchen for up to twenty children plus staff totaling about 800 square feet. The shower in the bathroom is a bucket and a scoop to pour the cold water over one’s head. The children here are grateful to be safe and fed even though a piece of bread is often considered to be a luxury.
There is no electricity because the landlord has failed to pay the hydro bill and therefore power was cut off even though Eleanor has paid her rent on time. She dare not complain for fear of being evicted. In Kenya, the tenant has nowhere to go to report this problems. They accept it and live without for fear they may have no other place to live. The trip was a touching experience that I will not soon forget. I would recommend the opportunity to participate in a SCAW distribution to anyone. |
