Voice of Kibera

On the fist and second days of open mapping schools updates, we concentrated on Raila and Kianda villages of Kibera.

In Raila village, the enumerators visited Wells of life school, Tumaini Centre, West hills, Cromi Academy, St Christine, St Stephen and Maono School

Cromi Academy gave us the information we needed from them, but they also pointed out that they are about to shift the school because they had already bought piece of land somewhere else.

Hope academy, a school run by Tumaini ministries, changed the name of the school to Tumaini Hope Centre, which now runs Pre-primary, Primary and Junior secondary school. The school closed down the secondary school section in order to run Junior secondary school effectively, and also cut down the high cost of running both Junior secondary and secondary school.

West hill community is a new school that has started from scratch, and now operates classes from baby class to Junior secondary school. They have not featured in any of Map Kibera’s previous mapping and it was the first time the school was being mapped.

St Christine school, which had both Primary and secondary school sections in our previous school mapping, says they closed down the secondary school section due to high cost of running the school. The director shared with Map Kibera’s enumerators how he plans to shut down the school completely to concentrate on a different income generating activity.

Hoywik primary and secondary school was closed down after the school caught fire, what is left is a small part of primary school that goes up to grade three.

Tabasamu Imani centre is a new school in Raila village that was mapped afresh.

In Kianda village, among the schools we visited include Joy springs and Jitahidi school, both of which said they have school main centres elsewhere and if they were to give information, we should visit the main centres. Jitahidi’s main centre, according to the teacher we met, is still located in Kibera but in a different village.

New Langata School, located in Kianda village is said to have been shut down and our team could not reach anyone to confirm it.
St Collins Nursery School was untraceable and so it was not clear if they had shut down or just moved to a new location.
Young Achievers School has relocated to Ayany village from the Kianda area they were originally mapped.

The enumerators also visited Mary Mother of Hope Educational Centre which is operational and still at the same location they had been mapped from.

Goodson Child Care and St Andrews ACK School could not be traced from the locations shown on the map. We asked around and no one knew about any of them, as it seems like they had shut down for one reason or another. We retreaved phone number for St Andrews ACK School head teacher but the call went unanswered.

Blessed Divine Mercy pre-school
head teacher Elizabeth
hired the church premise
(New-school)
Location kianda
Status:Operating

2. Trinity Kibra Educational Centre
3. Blessed Hope Child Care centre
   change name to Shemelsa Schools
   Status: operating
   Location:neighboring Soweto West
4. St Collins Nursery School
   status:not operating
5. Hope and Shine Kibera Center
   new construction
   Location: Kianda
   Status:Operating
6. St George Orthodox School
   Location: Kianda
   a classroom yet to be completed (construction)
   Status: operating
7. Word Bible children’s school
   Location: Kianda
   Status: Not operating
8. Rem Outreach Community Center

Up to 3,200 waste bins have been installed in Mukuru Kwa Ruben slum, and are currently in use, serving over 7000 households and businesses’

Youth volunteers from Mukuru Oasis Youth group have been put in charge of taking care of the bins, in terms of emptying them regularly and making sure they are in good condition.

Organic wastes from the bins have been able to be recycled and used as mature for planting crops, which has been a source of income for the youth.

Map Kibera is proud to have been part of this project, and we are all looking part to being part of replica of this projects in other parts.

It’s been an experience conducting survey on the use of internet in Silanga village in Kibera.
Silanga in considered a controlled area (a village with no lighting and no internet).

Residents say that they have lived here for almost three months without electricity, and they were wondering how the installation of internet will take place without electricity.

However, the residents have been friendly, and have welcomed the enumerators, most of them having hopes of being connected to the internet in future.

After weeks of conducting surveys in the villages of Soweto West, parts of Gatwekera Village, Makina and Kianda.
Kibera Town Centre, who are part of a joint project funded by Livelihood Impact Fund, that also include Map Kibera Trust who head the survey team, erected street lights along Kona club-Gatwekera road.

The lights will address the security concerns raised by the residents during the survey, such as muggings along the dark corridors, fears of robbery incidences for businesses that run until late in the night.

The lights were erected in line with the feedback collected from the survey, as a way of giving back to the community.

The ongoing project will have a second phase of the survey, where enumerators will once again visit members of the community to asses the impact of the lightings and how that translate to improvement of livelihood within the community, in terms of income, business expansions, general security among other factors.

Young people from Kibera, and it’s environs came together to protest over what they called ‘Neglect of the Woodley grounds’ by the county government.

(Picture By Denis Ndolo)

This comes months after the Nairobi Governor Johnstone Sakaja did a groundbreaking at the facility to pave way for renovations that was to transform the stadium and illustrated by a banner that hang outside the ground’s entrance.
The protests, dubbed ‘Occupy Woodley’, saw a number of youth light bonfires along the roads that led to the ground, cut grass that overgrew inside the facility, as well as engage anti-riot police in a day-long running battles that left several people nursing injuries.

(Picture By Denis Ndolo)
Area Member Of County Assembly Davidson ‘DNG’ Ngubuini had, a day earlier, said to have met with a few representatives from local football teams in an attempt to stop the protests from taking place.
The MCA reportedly explained why the project, which was spearheaded by Nairobi governor, had stalled and promised to revive and and complete the renovation, in partnership with the Nairobi county government.
Unconvinced youth still took to the streets and demanded accountability from the leaders over an alleged budget that was set aside to renovate the facility.

The have promised to occupy the ground again untill action is taken to save the facility from collapsing.

Map Kibera, together with Livelihood Impact Fund, have concluded the first phase of the phone call follow-up on first respondents of the Security Lighting Impact survey, that took place in Gatwekera, Kianda and Soweto villages of Kibera.
The experience has been good so far

According to our enumerator Prinscilla Avichinga, most respondents answered the additional questions positively.
Some of the residents the enumerators spoke to, were happy about the follow up questions and commended the enumerators for a ‘delivering the promise without asking for money in return’.
Some were quick to add their own suggestions through the calls, on how they wanted the lights set up, for better security within their businesses along the road.
The challenges the enumerators encountered through the phone call included abusive and rude response from some residents, some calling back in the late hours of the night.
Others hanged up without getting the full information while some gave the phones to kids to answer for them.
A few had moved out of Kibera and were either upcountry, or living elsewhere within Nairobi.

Following the government’s announcement on Monday 24th June 2024, that they had allowed demonstrations to go on as long as they were peaceful, orderly and with no property destruction, several Kenyans went to the streets to protest the passing of the Financial Bill 2024.
Tuesday 25th June, the day of the massive protests dubbed ‘Occupy Parliament’, started well. Kenyans of all walks of life from different parts of the country came out to the streets to exercise their constitutional right to demonstrate.

Kibera residents came out massively to join their counterparts in the central business district, leaving their neighborhood of Kibra, peaceful through out the day.
Destruction of property was witnessed in the CBD, as the large number of protesters stormed into several government buildings.
A number of protesters were shot at the parliament buildings with several others injured both in and outside parliament.

There were reports of abductions and mass shootings in different parts of Nairobi later in the evening of that fateful day.
In the afternoon of Wednesday 26th June, President William Ruto yielded to pressure and announced that he had sent back the bill to parliament to be withdrawn in totality.
War of words erupted between the office of the Deputy President and the National Intelligence Service leadership, with the former accusing the later of failing to sufficiently inform the Presidency of the impending attack on government facilities, by the protesters.

Kibera residents have come out in large numbers to join in on the ongoing protests against the finance bill 2024.

The youths, drawn from different parts of Kibera, met at Olympic village this morning and made their way to the CBD to join their counterparts from other parts of Nairobi.

The government, through the interior ministry, had okayed the protests but in a turn of evernts, the police have been witnessed lobbying teargas at a group of protesters in Nairobi.

The protests are expected to on throughout the day.

(Pictures by 8K TV)

Mapping different villages in Kibera comes with different experiences,
Soweto east village in the far east end of Kibera have the most insecure residents, having witnessed massive demolitions from the halted slum upgrading program.

Any government or NGO activity in the village is met with resistant and suspicion. People fear being left homeless by projects that most of them don’t understand.
Laini Saba, which is the immediate neighbor to Soweto East, is interestingly the opposite. They are inquisitive and want to know more of any ongoing project. And once they understand it, they welcome it and actively take part in it. With most of them seeing it as a way out of the slum, to better housing facilities.

Silanga village is currently battling the dams eviction issue is difficult to judge as per now. Emotions are high in this village where fear and hope are mixed up with residents hoping for a good Samaritan to offer them an alternative place to relocate.
Willingness to talk to our enumerators conducting the household survey is at 50/50

Kibera residents living along the dam-line in Silanga village of Kibera are living in fear of pending evictions, after they were notified to move away from the swampy land along the Nairobi dam.
Most of them have lived here all their lives and have nowhere else to go.

This notification comes in the aftermath of the recent heavy rains that wrecked havoc, not just in the said village, but across the country as a whole.

Silanga was heavily hit, several houses were swept away by floods and a number of people, mostly women and children, lost their lives.
We spoke to Johnstone Muriro, also known as ‘Ras Murish’, a structure owner in the area, who has started demolishing his structures by himself, in order not to be caught unaware when the government will have started the official demolitions

“We are being told to leave but have not been given an alternative place to locate to, so we are just living in fear.’, says Ras Murish,

Ras says that the government had initially intended to demolition the whole of Silanga village which would have affected a bigger population. But after the talks, they agreed to only demolition the structures that were sitting on the swampy area.

There are ongoing talks between the evictees and some of the local NGOs who are have somehow partnered with red cross to come up with a small compensation that can get the evicted residents start off their life elsewhere.
“Those who were affected by the floods from the long rains already left, some went upcountry while others went to live with their relatives. Those whose names have been identified by red cross are not the ones who were affected by floods.” Says a resident who did not want to be identified.