Kibera, Nairobi might be the worst of the slums for the rest of the world but for me, it is home. I am the eldest of five children. I am 15 years old. My younger sister Cynthia is 11, my twin siblings Cole and Cyril are both three years old, and our youngest Blessing is only 1 year old. We all live with our parents in a small house with its rusty ceiling and mud-packed walls. There are no partitions in our house, not walls at least. We do have a curtain to separate the bedroom from the rest of the house though. My mother stays at home, but my father works wherever he could be a driver. Recently, he was hired by rich students from America to drive them around Nairobi. He will be back in time for dinner. Dinner in this sense constitutes of a bowl of Omena (little fish called silver cyprinid) and Ugali (maize meal porridge). After dinner, we will all sleep early because we have a lot to do tomorrow. By the time I and my siblings wake up, mother will have been back from the Toi Market, Kibera’s largest informal market. This month she would add white corn, beans, and cooking oil to her list of groceries so we could have Githera (corn and beans) for lunch at our school. Hopefully, father earned enough for us to watch a movie in the cinema around the corner this coming weekend. It is hot, and the plastic seats are uncomfortable but it would be worth it.
I always worry that I and my siblings will not have a better future. The government does not care about Kibera because they only see it as the slums, and the residents are treated as squatters. Money is scarce; school is far, and jobs are rare. It is us who suffers because of this.
Works Cited
Higgins, Abby. “Life in Kenya slum sheds light on growing global reality.” The Seattle
Globalist. The Common Language Project, n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.
“Boomtown Slum.” The Economist. The Economist Newspaper Limited, 22 Dec. 2012. Web. 1
Rodriguez, Barry. “Culture Guide: Eating in Kibera!” World Next Door. WordPress, 10 July
2009. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.
“A Day in the Life of a Kenyan Student.” Friends of Kenya. Blogspot, 6 Mar. 2010. Web. 1 Nov.
2014
“Day in the Life: Kenya.” Around the World. TIME for kids, n.d. Web. 1 Nov. 2014.
