New dawn for Kibera but poverty persists

By Dann Okoth

The first batch of Kibera residents destined to occupy new high-rise flats will be moved today, if all goes according to the word of Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

However, a local NGO that has been surveying the poverty situation in Kibera slum says, unbearable squalor and grinding poverty will follow most of them into their new quarters. Many of those left behind continue to wallow in a situation that gets worse daily.

Fifty-year-old Asha Issa will be among the first group to move but she says she is not sure whether her situation would change much.

The widowed mother of six, living on the fringes of Kibera slum, has been pushed to her wits’ end by the twin challenges of food scarcity and high commodity prices.

She bends over to pick up her two-year-old daughter who is sprawled on the dusty floor one-roomed shack in the heart of the slums.

"This child has not had anything to eat for two days now, I have only given her some thin porridge" she mutters, as she cuddles the frail looking baby in her arms and attempts to give her some water.

Little money

"We have run out of food and the little money I earned from washing other people’s clothes is not enough to buy everything we need for a meal," she announces. A packet of UNIMIX meal (a fortified maize meal) for the child provided by United Nations-World Food Programme (WFP) four weeks ago had also run out and the toddler who already exhibits signs of malnutrition would have to survive on less nutritious adult meals, if any were to be found.

She is one among Kibera slum’s estimated 700,000 residents, many who form the basis of annual studies of poverty indexes that show they live on less than a dollar a day – and sometimes on nothing at all.

Some of those who are moved today maybe excited by upgrading of living standards, but their financial situation may not change much, says Odindo Opiata, Director, Economic and Social Rights Centre, which has been studying poverty in the slum and its affects, ahead of today’s exodus.

The NGO says: "The cost of food has gone so high, right now Sh100 cannot even afford half a kilo of flour."

The NGO says in the slums poor residents have had to device innovative survival methods to beat extreme poverty. Every commodity is sold in small bits.

Instead of buying the unaffordable one kilogramme pack of sugar, one can buy three spoons of sugar for two shillings.

Cooking oil, tea leaves, flour, rice and ablution items like soap are all cut into affordable sizes.

One meal

"With Sh20 I can buy sugar for two shillings, tea leaves for one shilling and a little floor with the rest of the money. That way, I can make black tea and ugali to feed my children for one meal," says slum resident Milka Ndunge.

The NGOs finds out that most families go without breakfast and lunch and just work for evening meals.

Shopkeeper Allan Njenga told the NGO’s researchers the ingenious efforts by shopkeepers to divide commodities into the smallest, buyable quantities commonly known, as ‘kadogo’ is the only way to help them survive.

Small packs

"People cannot afford even the small packs quantity of commodities anymore. We have to cut down into portions as small as they want," he says.

He notes that most bakeries have a small loaf of bread that is only sold in slums while milk companies also supply a special mini pack.

Sam Maina, a 23-old bachelor, resident of Kibera told the researchers: "I don’t cook in my house anymore because it is too expensive."

He eats roadside ready-made food like githeri or ugali which is also sold in portions to suit the money he has.

"The meal used to cost me Sh15 but recently they doubled the price claiming prices are high," complains Maina.

Others, like Joseph Onyango, have to make do with choma—not your ordinary juicy roast meat found in most eateries and bars but rather a piece of chapatti and soup. But at Sh10, he complains it has now become ‘very expensive’.

According to Walter Hongo, a community leader in Kibera, the hunger situation in the slums and lack of money has a heavy toll on their health.

"People die here from simple diseases because they don’t have enough to eat and their bodies have become very weak," he says.

The most tragic thing, he says, most young men working in the construction industry and who supported their families have been laid off due to the financial crisis.

Food shortage

According to Opiata, while the current move to improve housing is commendable, the government should also decisively address issues of poverty and food shortage for those already moved and those left behind.

"In the absence of such interventions, the efforts will simply be transfer of problems to better quarters," he says.