SLUM VILLAGE:

THE RICH REMAIN RICH, THE POOR REMAIN ………

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHY THE RICH REMAIN RICH, AND THE POOR REMAIN POOR?

Life in the SLUM VILLAGE of Soweto. Mesmerizing poverty, magnetic hospitality and a sad humbling exprience of neglected people and places. Soweto slums are located in Kayole Estate, Embakasi Division,Nairobi East District in Nairobi,Kenya. A few kilometers away from East and Central Africa’s premier air hub, the magnificent and Lov-able Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, the gateway to sub-sahara Africa. Soweto is 15 kilometers East of Nairobi city center.

The origin of the name Soweto is south African. Soweto is an acronym of South Western Town of South Africa during the apartheid era, widely known today as Soweto township.

The Kenyan Soweto slum village was started in 1976 by construction labourers working at the Jomo Kenyatta International airport. It was at this time that the infamous Soweto uprising of 16th June 1976 took place in south Africa and the Kenyan airport labourers borrowed the South Africa name Soweto for their new slum.

Due to airport security concerns,Soweto slum was relocated in 1980 to an adjacent piece of land owned by the Kenya army,Embakasi army baracks to be precise.

The slum grew rapidly and this development didn’t amuse concerned army generals. The slum had to be relocated for the second time. In 1989,the slum was relocated across the Ngong River, by the government, to an adjacent public piece of land through a resettlement scheme established for slum dwellers.

Soweto has a tired pale old look. Rusty tin huts, mud huts and a few stone walled houses, dot the slum’s landscape. The standard size of a hut is an area (space) of ten square feet. The hut’s floor is made of dirt.

Soweto slum is heavily congested with tiny huts mercilessly encroaching on every inch of available land. Even river banks have not be spared either. Each hut accommodates an average family of seven, excluding visiting relatives.

The streets are narrow, rough, eneven, unpaved, dusty and horribly muddy, in the rainy season. Raw sewage runs down the dirty streets as heaps of uncollected garbage greet visitors. Soweto streets are friendly , safe and peaceful during the day. Since there is no street lighting, it is not safe to walk the streets during the night.

The slum villages air is highly polluted and is likely to choke you like interminable serpents of smoke from factory chimneys of an Industrial landscape.
Soweto slum is unplanned, hugely under-developed, neglected, marginalized and extremely poor. Unpleasant feelings of object poverty hit you like a thunderbolt, once you set foot in this hospitable urban slum.

The slum has no running water, no sanitation and health facilities, no public schools, no sewer line nor does it receive any kind of local government services.
And yet Soweto is still alive and kicking energetically, despite a seemingly endless journey into a world of untold poverty.

The groans of old lowly sloping tin roofs, an ever speeding wind raising dust in its wake, crying hungry children, and heavy footsteps of despair, add to the already unbearable levels of noise pollution.

The streets are teeming with humanity. Hawkers, passers by, idlers, out of school children , streets people and donkey cats, all competing for space on the narrow streets. The slum is home to a population of around one hundred thousand people.

The people are proud, friendly, hardworking and peaceful. They are trapped in a ceaseless cycle of poverty due to lack of jobs. They are unemployable due to lack of trade skills. Trade skills training opportunity is not available to a Soweto youth because there are no polytechnics here nor can he attend one outside this slum due to lack of money.

The majority live under a dollar a day which they struggle to make. They earn their living through hawking, menial jobs, prostitution, brewing and selling illicit alcoholic drinks, pushing illicit drugs, crime and tiny businesses. Only a few are lucky to have lowly paying government and corporate sector jobs.

Because their parents are illiterate and poor, Soweto children can not take advantage of the government free education program due to lack of money.

The cost of mandatory school uniform parents, feeding and shelter are a major burden to parents. To enroll in a public primary school, a slum child needs school uniform and money for school expenses.

The demand for public school places is cutthroat and expensive because demand is higher than supply. The slum child can not complete. The option for the slum child is to join closer to home informal education centers. Slum based education centers will ask for school fees. Pupils without scholarships will opt for child labour as they drop out of school.

Poverty denies schooling to girls, thereby contributing to discrimination and oppression of the girl child.

As children from poor families enrolled grow older, the opportunity cost becomes greater, thus increasing the likelihood of abandoning school. Dropping out of school because of poverty virtually guarantees perpetuation of the cycle of poverty.

Therefore, lack of education perpetuates poverty, and poverty constraints access to schooling.

- End of article one of four on Soweto slums-

Help pay for a slum child education:
To sponsor a Soweto Child’s education, please get in touch with Susan of Wisdom Nest Primary School, email: wisdomnest2000@yahoo.com.
To learn more about the school visit: www.wisdomnest.co.ke

NB/ SLUM TOURISM:
Susan can also organize a tour of Soweto slums for you. Consider yourself invited, i.e, an invited guest of WINCEP.
Thanks for your time and visit.
Steve.
Article source: www.wisdomnest.blogspot.com