At the end of our 10-day trip to the Kibera slum* in Nairobi, Kenya, Carter Via told everyone, “Their story needs to be told. Tell everybody you know.” So, with gratitude and appreciation for all that I have and all that I’ve experienced, I am.
Carter founded Crossing Thresholds over ten years ago, working with local leaders to create three schools (K-8) in Kibera and a high school north of Nairobi. He also creates trips to educate and involve U.S. volunteers who come twice a year to build and maintain these schools and interact with the students.
This past July I decided to take my three kids on Crossing Threshold’s trip for several reasons: . I wanted them to experience a different lifestyle, 2. I hoped it would inspire them to give back to local communities after we returned, 3. I wanted to go to Africa. I knew Kenya didn’t need my kids to paint walls or hammer a nail; plenty of people can do that far better than they can. Rather, I wanted it for my kids, so they’d understand they could paint a wall, they could teach a child a game and it would make difference.
I was ambivalent about writing about this trip. I knew people might accuse me of virtue-signaling, slum tourism, or voluntourism. But after consideration, I’m okay with that. Call it whatever you’d like, just please keep reading. These are stories that need to be told no matter how we label them.
My only real hesitation was traveling halfway around the world for philanthropic purposes instead of focusing on vicinal needs. But a story about the Masai tribe, which is later in this article, reminded me that we’re citizens of the world, not just of our hometown, and geography doesn’t always dictate our charity.
So we traveled to Africa. Specifically, Africa’s largest urban slum. Kibera is roughly the size of Central Park and home to an estimated 800,000 - 1.5 million disenfranchised nationals. Because the government doesn’t “recognize” this rancid bit of land, they do not provide electricity, water, sewage, or police protection for its residents. Watching my children follow a man with a rifle through a squalid alley, cautiously stepping over rivulets of trash and sewage, brought the inhumane conditions into sharp focus. I thought images in movies and magazines had inured me to slums; I was wrong. The real brutality of poverty is a slap in the face.
Yet within these hellish few miles, punctured with disappointment, clogged with desperation for survival and escape, flickers an inexplicable hope. What tinders this hope is beyond Western reason and sensibilities. But there it is.
At Crossing Thresholds, everyone works in the schools and interacts with the students. As a group, we painted classrooms and scrubbed varnish-splattered floors, lifted heavy bricks to build a firewall, managed art projects, taught students games and surrounded ourselves with dozens of darling children who craved our attention and affection. All of us, even the boys, sat patiently while the girls braided our bafflingly straight hair (unofficial consensus is we’re a more attractive crew without braids.)
Every evening we returned to the hotel spent, hot and dusty. Dozens of bottles of Purex sanitized our dirty hands throughout the day (but never in front of the students and teachers) and we kept our filthy shoes outside of our hotel rooms.
Visiting a home in which these children live is an important part of the trip, to understand how poverty informs their lives and development. My oldest son requested that, after the visit, I not deliver a parental soliloquy about how lucky we are given how these Kenyans live. How he intuited my plan, I have no idea. But I relented.
This home is the size of two parking spots, typical for families of five, six, seven and more. We crammed in, arm-to-arm. The renter, a woman, holds her infant and tells us she has three more children, no husband. Her home is full, with only a sofa nailed from wood planks, a chipped coffee table, and one mattress. Thin floral sheets hang from the ceiling and cover the sofa to mask the rusting metal walls and cheap wood. Her “kitchen” is a small brazier, a pot, and a stack of plastic dishes on a shelf. When she has money she makes gruel of flour and water and maybe a few vegetables. When she doesn’t have money they eat nothing.
Desperate for food, it’s not unusual for a single mother to pour alcohol into her babies’ bottle so they sleep all day. Then the mother can leave the home to find day work. If she works she can buy food and they may both survive. If she doesn’t, mother and child starve. Statistically, girls sell their bodies at age 14 to earn money.
We left the home quietly, shaken by her life and surroundings. No motherly monologue necessary.
But like I said, they have hope; they believe that, despite living among dunes of rotting trash, life will uptick. Even in the filthiest reaches of the slum, residents keep their clothes neat and clean. They fix their hair and mend their children’s uniforms. They smile, greet us with Christian blessings and name their children Grace and Joy and Sunshine. The children expect, and receive, unabashed and unconditional attention from visitors; hardly a child is reticent.
Slum residents are primarily descendants of Kenya’s many tribes. One of the largest of these tribes is the Masai. Carter is friends with one of the Masai elders, Shani Yusuf, and related this story:
The Masai tribe is famously resistant to modernization. Many live on worn earth which is unable to yield significant vegetation. They work hard, beading jewelry and carving sculpture for the tourist trade while raising herds of thin cows which are their currency.
Only a few of the tribal elders have access to news and information given their isolation and scant finances. Shani has access to international news and keeps himself apprised of world events. So on September 11, 2001, he was horrified to learn of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, a place he had only read about.
Shani gathered fellow Masai elders to discuss the destruction. After a few days of meetings, to help the people in a city few of them had heard of and none of them had seen, they decided to donate 100 of their cows, or roughly 30% of their wealth.
100 cows.
All photos of children are printed with the permission of Crossing Thresholds, FaFu, Mobjap, and Center of Hope Primary School.
*Slum is a politically charged term in the U.S., however, Kibera Slum is the official title in Africa.