Amnesty International. "The Women of Kibera". YouTube, January 22, 2009: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaamPV4YDHU
There are many obscenities on the planet.
We have the global Jihad and related and contrasting "God Mobs", from which leisured coverage I'm about to take a break; for Joe Q. Citizen and Joe or Joey Q. Citizen-Journalist, we find ourselves hosting numerous violent oligarchies -- gangsters outfitted in political garb -- and what folk like the Committee for the Protection of Journalists would call "cultures of impunity", referring specifically to cultures that bump off honest critics and reporters with nary an ounce of consideration, doubt, or guilt; and we have the crooks in the boardrooms--i.e., the bankers, brokers, and unholy rollers who play at their tables with their dice but . . . everyone else's money.
No wonder on some days I'm inclined to lock the doors, turn off the phone, and disappear inside a good book.
In the not-yet-so-good global culture, however, "Kibera Special Settlement Area" may hold a special place in the good heart, for in it live an accumulated aggregate of about one million souls in a space that has been compared to New York's Central Park.
And they're asking for clean water . . . .
My mind, as has yours with a mouse click on the above video, looks on from the outermost edge of this human catastrophe and wonders why there is no New Town Movement in Kenya to produce new trading hubs, distribution centers, manufacturing centers, and even, say, convention center centers to get that population redeployed and anchoring both Nairobi's exurbs and and its defense nodes and parimeters.
We look and we look away.
In the conflict arenas, intellectuals and researchers may find their way in, try to manage their risk, and also find their ways out, and I think one may not blame any for staying out of any number of violent struggles for their impact on the mind as well as personal or family security. Kibera Slum, however, would seem other than a Jihadi or other flashpoint: instead, it is a challenge to developers, geographers, and land use planners, and if the world's best are not there disassembling the place in ways beneficial to its residents, please spell for me the reasons why.
Or the excuses.
For Kenya, Nairobi, and the residents of Kibera, there are pre- and post-1963 histories and policies that whipped what was once a Nubian soldiers' settlement into a slum lord's paradise. From web gleaning, I know something like that happened: learning exactly how that happened may cost me something in library resources (I have a growing wish list at Amazon--perhaps I should make it public and welcome contributions to the still private "Oppenheim Library").
For comparative misery, it's hard to believe there are twice as many refugees from Islamic conflict in Pakistan alone (and in Kenya's neighbor Somalia, about one million IDP's also, plus 250,000 Somali refugees in camps in Kenya), but those are the effects of militant Islam or what I call the "Islamist Front" on citizens in its autocratic, sadistic, and violent way.
Kibera seems to represent other kinds of conflict, starting with the division between the "detribalized" Nubian mercenaries helpful to the British but barred from settling on tribal lands.
It's going to take a little time for my mind to see the legal and political threads sewing up Kibera, but here is a part of the Wikipedia introduction to this most heinous public policy and land-use planning crime.
The slum originated in 1918 as a Nubian soldiers' settlement in a forest outside Nairobi, with plots allotted to soldiers as a reward for service in the First World War and earlier wars [3].
The British colonial government of the time allowed the settlement to grow informally, primarily because of the Nubians' status as former servants of the British crown that put the colonial regime in their debt. Furthermore the Nubians, being "Detribalized Natives" had no claim on Land in "Native Reserves". (Parson, Timothy (1997))
After Kenyan independence in 1963, however, various forms of housing were made illegal by the government, rendering Kibera unauthorised on the basis of land tenure. Essentially, since the early 1970s landlords have rented out their property to a significantly greater number of tenants than legality permits. Since the tenants, who are extremely poor, are unable to obtain or rent land that is "legal" according to the Kenyan government, the slum-dwellers find the rates offered to be comparatively affordable. The number of residents in Kibera has increased accordingly despite its unauthorised nature.
This process has been exacerbated because, over time, other tribes have moved into the area to rent land from the Nubian landlords. Since then, the Kikuyu have come to predominate the population and by 1974 had effectively gained control over administrative positions. This occurs primarily through political patronage, as certain owners are protected by local government officers largely based on their Kikuyu ethnicity, and changes in administrative personnel may have drastic impacts on a landlord's security. [4]
Kibera has residents coming from all the major ethnic backgrounds with some areas being specifically dominated by one tribe (eg. Kisumu Ndogo that is predominantly Luo). Many are coming from rural areas due to the problems of rural underdevelopment. This multi-ethnic nature coupled with the tribalism of Kenyan politics has led Kibera to be the site of small ethnic conflicts throughout its near 100 year history (most recently in 2002 in which many resident's homes were attacked by arson).
Early in my foray into Islamic conflict, I posted here a short poem titled "Choose Sides":
[ ? ] Us
[ ? ] Them
[ ? ] Other
Perhaps the perception of scarce resource in "meritocratic" cultures or endeavoring cultures urges reversion to cultures dependent on family, religious, or tribal identity for financial clout and succor.
Kibera Special Settlement Area poses a challenge to the modern mind (multi-ethnic, religiously plural and tolerant, exceptionally empathetic, ethical, human, and reasoning) to find its way out of genetic chauvanism and self-imprisonment.
It should cost the people of Kenya nothing to attend to their own rural development and defense, the education of their boys and girls, and the distribution of economic and defense nodes to draw from Kibera communities-in-embryo to serve the country outside of Nairobi.
My "small town" of 40,000 serves the Washington, D.C. area plus a four-state region as a distribution point, bedroom community and retail hub, and as a potential outer defense node for the mid-Atlantic.
For Nairobi, the development of merely 20 locations like it, around the outer belts of the town or out in the countryside, would disperse Kibera Slum.
Such a pursuit would probably make someone a lot of money too, and that for all involved.
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