If you are a piece of trash in a wealthy area of Nairobi, you and your plastic bottle counterparts are most likely to be reused in your own home. If you are one of the thousands pieces of trash among the mud and tin shacks of a slum, you are most likely to be tossed in a heap onto the side of the road to be burned. Yet, if you are an average water bottle, your life will certainly last much longer than your slum counterparts. All trash collection...
...n Sunday, Kenya has deployed hundreds of troops over the border and begun land and air artillery strikes on suspected Al-Shabaab bases. With the onset of war, repercussions are already being felt throughout Kenya. Jennifer, a Nairobi resident and 60-year-old widow, recently traveled to her home city of Meru, four hours north of Nairobi. Because Meru is close to a few ex Al-Shabaab bases, the drive took two more hours than usual. “There were...
Illustration by Louise McCune Consider the flying toilet. The term comes from the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Within the slum, there is often less than one latrine per 50 shacks, with each 12-foot by 12-foot shack containing, on average, eight people. Kibera sits on government land that never fully transferred legally to its pre-independence residents, and, as such, the government treats residents as squatters with no right or entitlement to...
...s and leave the premises immediately. As I left, I took a different route along the highway. Through a hill was big drain pipe, pouring the same orange muck into Kibera. The next day, I showed these pictures to a professor at Nairobi University, who wished to remain anonymous. The professor said this orange viscous liquid was definitely a type of toxic waste and added, “This wasn’t on the news at all because the train station knows how dang...
...can purchase per card, and it is physically the largest card, about the size of a credit card. Safaricom also is compatible with smart phones. You can have your iPhone unlocked at one of the two authorized Apple retailers in Nairobi or buy one here pre-unlocked so that you can slip in a Safaricom micro-SIM card. The phone will then function on airtime. You can then use the airtime to purchase a variety of Internet bundles to keep you connected....
...lmet looked full and new, compared to the red ones, which looked like they should have been retired from the ring a long time ago. On the official match list, the fighters that comprised the blue side were all either from the Nairobi police or the Armed Services teams. The fighters robed in red were from other Nairobi sponsors or other Kenyan provinces. Hajy’s fight was the eleventh and last fight of the day. Luckily Hajy saw his competitor...
This past week, I attended the annual Nairobi International Trade Fair, which is sponsored by the Agricultural Society of Kenya. Similar to a 4-H County Fair in the United States, which features children’s activities alongside agricultural displays, the fair’s marketed purpose is to educate the public on programs, companies, and organizations that work with Kenya’s agricultural and environmental sectors. Despite these good intentions, the Nairob...
On December 6 this past year, I was anxious to get to Goma, a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to witness the nation’s presidential election. While my flight was originally at 10:50 a.m., I headed to the Jomo Kenyatta airport in Nairobi at 7 a.m. in hope that I could instead catch an earlier flight. Little did I know that my desire to get to Goma in time for this historic statement would be worthless; the rest of the DRC and I...
...of Obama, this election is something to be proud of, one in which he ran and won as a candidate rather than a concept. And no American should believe that we need riotous celebrations on election night in Paris or Jakarta or Nairobi to know we elected the right candidate....
...be an open art gallery walk where all artists in Kibera can display their finest pieces. At night there will be performances from many famous arts groups around Kibera such as the Kibea Hamlets, a group of young acrobats, and Nairobi Ngoma, a group of traditional dancers and drummers. GG Spice, founder of Jah-Army said, “This is going to be a really big event. With all of the crazy politics going on right now in Kenya, people here in Kibera...
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