For criminals, hanging of boots on power lines is a sign of true redemption

It is not strange to walk in a Nairobi slum and come across shoes hung on electricity lines or telephone cables. This is how reformed criminals mourn and remember their dark past.

While this might appear to a first time visitor as primitive ghetto culture, the decades-old phenomenon tracing its roots to the United States, has deep meaning to those who understand it in Kibra and Kamukunji where it is conspicuous.