Kibera provides a stinging assault on the senses. Yet despite this, it is the day that I visited the street children of Nairobi (beginning with my visit to Moses’ gang) that has affected me most deeply and remains imprinted in my memory as a symbol of hope amid adversity.
Moses is the leader of one of the hundreds of ‘street gangs’ that have emerged across Africa. He is 21 years old, and yet I would have guessed he was nearer to 35. His gang is typical in that it comprises of poverty-stricken children (mainly orphaned by AIDS), who are forced to the streets of major cities in search of a better life. However, the reality of living on the streets is a desperate one, as I was about to discover.
Having been introduced to Moses, it began to dawn on me that this small alleyway, covered in litter and ankle-deep wet mud was not a meeting point; it was actually where this gang of over 100 children lived. Then, as I began to focus on details, I found myself within touching distance of at least twenty children, some as young as 8, all of whom inhaled deeply from glue bottles. Before I could process this however, I found myself struck frozen by the sight of two babies, naked and caked in mud, crawling unattended through a mire of human waste. Their mother lay unconscious, a glue bottle resting on her chest.
The poet T.S Eliot said “human kind cannot bear very much reality” and by this point I was reaching my personal threshold. I therefore took out my video camera with the dual aim of capturing what was unfolding before my eyes, as well as hoping that by viewing my surroundings through a camera lens, I could forge some emotional distance from this human tragedy. Yet emotional detachment is impossible when you are filming a 12-year old girl with HIV, who produces her baby daughter from beneath a robe and begs your wife to take her to England. And who could blame her? The life of a street child is dominated by hunger, illness, fear and low self-esteem – sniffing glue provides the only (albeit temporary) anaesthetic against the grind of existence. Many of the street kids I interviewed also complained that they were harassed and beaten by the local police and shunned by society. When I think back now on the short time I spent with these children, I am reminded of Mother Theresa’s words “the most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.” By this definition, I believe I had just met some of the poorest people on the planet.
The drive back to the office was undertaken in stunned silence. Kibera had been a harrowing experience, yet there is a vibrancy and feeling of community there, as well as examples of international concern and action that enabled me to at least imagine that things could improve. In the back alleyway of that marketplace, I could think only of Moses and the street children living a life utterly without hope.