Unmasking the rape culture in Kenya's Mukuru slums.

According to the Wangu Kanja Foundation, between October 2015 and May 2016, 120 rapes against girls and women as well as 29 sodomy cases against boys were reported. This translates to 5 rapes every week.

Mukuru Kwa Reuben does not exhibit any kind of urban planning at all. Corridors and broken sewer lines intersect into garbage points. Sanitation is at its very basic.

A panoramic view from the edge of the slum, along enterprise road, reveals a sprawling slum with all the hallmarks of poverty.

In the evening, street lighting is spotty, leaving large swathes in darkness and hence prone to criminal activities. Sometimes, crime does not wait for dusk to fall. Like the afternoon events of Thursday, September 1, 2016.

A 13-year-old form one student had been sent to buy soap by her elder sister – the parent figure in the house. The girl failed to return home which prompted her sister to start searching for her along the alleyways of the slum.

She did not immediately find her but instead heard a shrill voice and cries coming from a shack - the default housing structure in many informal settlements. She forced the door open and was met with the horror of her young sister dripping blood.

The little girl had been raped and her perpetrator was hiding under the bed.

A chaotic scene ensued. The perpetrator, a man described to be in his late twenties, was handed to the police at Ruben police post who detained him and called for help from Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) who attended to her then transferred her to the Nairobi Women’s Hospital for further treatment.

“That is what happens here week in week out. It is the norm,” laments Wangu Kanja, the founder and director at Wangu Kanja Foundation, operating from Mukuru Kwa Ruben slum.

Being a revered activist against sexual and gender based violence, Wangu was roped in on the girl’s case.

Following up on the rape case, we called the Executive Director of Gender Violence Recovery Center at Nairobi Women’s Hospital, Alberta Wambua, who confirmed that indeed the 13-year-old underwent surgery to correct rape related injuries at the hospital’s Lavington facility.

“She underwent treatment and has already been discharged,” she said, nearly a week after the crime was recorded to have taken place.

The slum, opines Salome Wahome*, an informant of sexual and gender crimes in Mukuru who volunteers at Wangu Kanja Foundation, is a crucible of rape and sexual violence.

“It is almost institutionalized rape; such that the society sees nothing wrong with it. Those who live here and are vocal against it are threatened with death or arson,” Salome says.

Salome requested for anonymity citing that her life has been threatened before after reporting a teacher who sodomised young boys and raped young girls.

“This man conducted tuition using pornographic videos. He would call a student at a time to his office, and ask them to try out what he was teaching. It took the courage of one girl who refused for him to touch her that we got to know about it,” she recounts.

Unfortunately, many parents in Mukuru suffer silently, or have to agree to an ‘arranged deal’ that sees the perpetrator go scot free.

Eunice Khamati* cannot forget the events that led to her discovering that her first born son had been sodomised by an old man she can only identify as ‘Gathu’, a water vendor at the time in Sinai, Mukuru slums.

“I got to know the truth in August 2010,” she says. “Time had passed – maybe months – by the time I got to find out.”

Her son, now 13, had been showing weird symptoms.

“There was something amiss. A blob of flesh was protruding from his anus. It was extremely weird. A lady friend suggested that I get traditional medicine, saying it is a generational curse in my family. I did bu my son got worse. He was in pain, he could not sit and was dripping blood,” she says.

Left with no option, Khamati took her son to Kenyatta National Hospital, where the patient was referred to Nairobi Women’s Hospital.

“It is at Nairobi Women’s that my son was prodded until he recounted everything that happened – in painful excruciating detail. I was lost for words. I was mad at him for not telling me earlier,” she says, stifling a cry and fighting off tears.

In his defense, Khamati’s son told his mother that the old man had threatened to kill him and his family if he dared to talk.

While her son was being treated she went back home – feeling out of spirit – and passed by Gathu’s usual water vending point, where she told him to meet her at the chief’s office.

“That was the last time anyone saw him. He fled and nobody, not even his former neighbours, know his whereabouts,” Khamati says. The ordeal left her “mentally unstable” and her son lagging behind in class.

Five years on Khamati’s son is yet to make a full recovery. His rectum slides out every now and then “and I have to push it back in with my hands: I don’t think the treatment he received back then corrected his system,” she says.

Between October 2015 and May 2016, Wangu Kanja had received and recorded 120 rapes (against girls and women) as well as 29 sodomy cases against boys. This translates loosely to five rapes every week.

“Every parent is worried every day when they leave home in the morning to work and bring home food,” Khamati, who does manual laundry for a living, says. “I do not feel safe in my house. I do not feel that my children are safe in the neighborhood. I would wish to be moved to a safer place.”

According to Dr. Caroline Ngunu, Deputy Director of Health at Nairobi County, slum areas have high incident rates of rape “because the set up in informal settlement areas make them conducive for crime due to poor lighting, poverty, male dominance, overcrowding and other population pressures.”

Wangu Kanja, also a survivor of rape, believes that more stringent measures, beyond the law, will have to be instituted to effectively halt rape.

“A police unit that specializes on rape and other SGBV crimes ought to be created. Officers at this desk should be trained on how to tackle such crimes,” she says.

On this call, she is supported by Roselyne Mukabana, Nairobi County GBV coordinator.

Roselyne says: “We are pushing for a special unit that deals with SGBV to be created. It will hasten the process of handling the victims as well as prosecuting the perpetrators.”

Roselyne’s office is currently involved in setting up five health points, dubbed Tumaini centers, in Mukuru, Dandora, Kangemi and Kayole area, to be operational by end of the year.

“The aim is to create health centers where a victim of rape can be attended to holistically: They will not need to be referred elsewhere,” she said.

The irony in the rape of the 13-year-old girl is that the incident took place a day before the launch of a toll free SMS code for reporting cases of rape (and other forms of gender based violence) which took place at Ruben center in Mukuru slums.

The code, 21094, is open for use by any Kenyan from any part of the country, and was created through concerted efforts of the county government of Nairobi, ActionAid Kenya (AAK) and Wangu Kanja Foundation.

“Already one in three women has experienced some form of violence. This has to stop. Human rights have to be protected and respected,” Bijay Kumar, Executive Director of AAK said while making an impassioned appeal during launch of the toll free number.