Kibera

Mom came to visit us at the beginning of January. It was a great visit! On one of our many trips, Mom and I went on an Embassy tour to the Tabitha Clinic in Kibera. Kibera is the largest contiguous slum in Africa and a short 30 minute ride outside Nairobi. It is said that approximately 60% of Nairobi's Kenyan population live in similar informal settlements, so the pictures you are about to see represent how many Kenyans that I see every day
are living today.

The Tabitha Clinic is a clinic sponsored by the Center for Disease Control. In 2005 they began this, the first infectious disease project in an African urban slum. They use the clinic to treat the people that are sick or malnourished in the village but also to collect data. They are trying to prevent and minimize the impact of the common diseases that threaten entire villages in Africa.

I feel fortunate to have been able to visit the clinic and see what improvements they are making for the people in Kibera and hopefully someday, all of Africa. It is hard to say however that you enjoyed an experience like this; however, the trip for me was enlightening but it was also very surreal.

The pictures below are sad, but they are definitely real. I hope some of you will have a glimpse (as I did) of a part of the world I knew existed but never thought I would actually see.

Thanks Mom for taking this journey with me. I love you!

Left; A picture of Mom and Me after our visit. Right; a man carrying what looks like about 15 kg of maize flour on his head.

Middle: Store "type" fronts along the path as we walk closer to the clinic and the homes.

Right; the sewer system that runs through the village.

A funny story to lighten the mood of looking at these pictures :) ...

While trying to take a picture of three women standing at the corner with their babies, I accidentally stepped back and into this sewage line. As if it wasn't bad enough, the women all went....Eeeuuuwww! Now you know that must have been REALLY bad! I guess that word is the same in English as it is in Swahili. Ha

Pictures of the Tabitha Clinic. They actually carried all the materials by hand through the village to make this clinic stand here today. If they had brought in a helicopter to carry some of the materials, the tin roofs of all the housing would fly off the housing structures.

Right and Left; pictures of Kibera and the homes with tin roof after tin roof of homes stacked on top of one another.

Middle; another picture of the sewage line.

Oh...sweet babies. :)

Picture in the middle (my guess); A sign the people of Kibera made to, at one time, welcome a Senator visiting their village? Right; a food stand.

Left; Looking at the outside of the village along a railroad track. Middle; a daycare building in Kibera with volunteers helping to feed and also play with the children. Right; someone hanging clothes to dry outside their home.

If you want to help learn more about the Kibera Slums and the Tabitha Clinic or think you might want to help, click on the link for Carolina for Kibera below:

http://cfk.unc.edu/tabitha-clinic.php

Carolina for Kibera is affiliated with the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.