ConKerr Cancer Blog

Kenyan people walk for miles each day to get from one place to another. Cars are a luxury so the roads are filled with young and old walking.  Motorcycles are prevelant and we often saw things as big as couches being transported on the back. While donkeys pulled carts full of hay and grass it is most often the women who are carrying the large loads on their back. 

The landscape of Kenya is absolutely beautiful and tea and coffee fields are everywhere. Families have crops of corn and kale up and down the major highways.

Kibera, which houses 1 million people, is the biggest slum in Africa and one of the biggest in the world.  The average home is a shack which is about the size of a typical room in an American house (12ft x 10ft).  The shacks are built with mud walls with a corrugated tin roof and a dirt or concrete floor. These shacks often house up to 8 or more people, many sleeping on the floor. 

Water has just recently come to Kibera and is provided to the 1 million residents through only two outlets.  Sewage runs freely in the streets as toilet facilities are nearly non-existent in the community.  Typically, there is just one latrine for 50 families and when full, young boys are given the assignment of emptying them with a bucket and carrying it to the river. It is estimated that between half and two thirds of the population is infected with HIV.

We visited the Nyumbani outreach program that serves over 5,000 children infected with HIV and living in Kibera.  The program provides health care, free HIV drugs and social services support to the children and their families.  Most of the children live with grandparents and relatives having lost their parents to HIV.  Without Nyumbani, they would likely die.