Mission Korogocho: Nairobi, Kenya

We visited church members in Korogocho slum Saturday. This is the home of many of the members of Victory Christian Center Church, the site of the Saturday and Sunday night crusades, and just down the street from the current location of the church. So, a little context on Korogocho will help you place the other posts to follow.

Korogocho got its start when the government relocated some people from a slum that was close to the city center. They were moved to small plots of land on the outskirts of Nairobi (at least, they were the outskirts at the time). They built houses of varying quality on the small plots, then gradually subdivided them, and filled in the rest of their plots with other shacks, and rented them all out to others, and used the rent money to escape the slums. So Korogocho is a maze of tiny rooms, with narrow alleys that intersect, twist, and dead end in unpredictable ways. There are a few “main” roads, and some alleys that are bigger at places. The rooms are typically no more than 10 feet by 20 feet, with a curtain dividing the space into a public room and a bed room. A family of 3-8 people live in each such space. The doors are planks of wood, with some kind of bolt latch, and from 1-2 feet wide by 4-5 feet high. Often no windows, and always open sewage running through the ditches. The rooms are very dark, even in the bright afternoon, with the only light coming through the various cracks in the walls, doors, and roof. According to Tom, though, we kept to the better parts of Korogocho, and didn't visit the worst parts.

We visited a few church members, each of whom had obviously gone to great efforts to clean up their home for our visit. We crowded 6-9 people into the tiny rooms, and visited and prayed with them. Several wanted prayers for a child in high school, that the child would get all As so that they would be allowed to stay in school, and maybe go to college. If one child can make it through college, then they might get a job that will allow the family to move out of the slum. Each person we met knew several other people that wanted us to visit and pray.

Some experiences: we passed a group of children, roughly 4-6 years old. They were giggling and saying “Mzungus” (white people, from a word that roughly means “people who traveled around the world”) –apparently just seeing us was hilarous. One younger child had never seen a white person before, and cried uncontrollably when she saw us. Anneliese was wonderful – she called out “how are you”, which is the only English many of the kids knew. They called back “fine, how are you”, and would keep that going back and forth as long as we were in range. We picked up quite a tail of children following us as we walked.

One disconnect for me was seeing Ruth in a group of kids. Ruth is about 4, and our family sponsors Ruth at the Victory Christian school/orphanage, and Elise had spent some time holding her and playing with her at the school. My vision of Ruth did not extend to her in the squalor of the slums. She looked so out of place, like she must have been photoshopped into reality there. But it was her home.

Moving along one of the "roads" in the van, we passed a man too drunk to stand, laying at the side of the road. People were stepping over or around him. Another man, almost as drunk, was lifting the hand of the lying down man. I thought he was trying to help him up. As we passed by (at about 5mph), it was clear that he was trying to steal the watch of the lying down man, but he was too drunk to succeed, at least while we were in view. All this at 2PM on a Saturday afternoon.

We passed one young man that Tom called by name. The young man turned away, and would not look at Tom. Tom said that he used to come to church but had quit and was now running with a gang again. Many people, however, called out to Tom by name and were glad to see him, and us with him. Almost everyone was curious about us, and most had big smiles and greetings to return when we reached out to them.

We passed another section where Tom said that if you walked through there, everything you had would be taken from you. I asked, and Tom confirmed that they would rob even him, they were that bold.

One group called out to us to join them any buy some soup. The soup is made by boiling goat’s hooves, yum. There was lots of omena for sale, which first appears to be a mass of flies, but when the seller waves his hand, the flies move and a pile of tiny whole minnows became visible. Cheap protein. Tom said that for most people, eating anything from the slum would “put you down” within hours, though the slum dwellers had stomachs adapted to the bacteria.

Overall, it is hard to believe that people could live this way. We have to realize, though, that they don’t sit around trying to be poor. They are doing what they can every day. A very common prayer request is for a job. One woman was sending job applications to hotels (what they call restaurants, many of which are nothing more than a table in front of a shack) and could still not find one to hire her. 12 hours shifts are common, and the people are pleased to find them. They are working hard, or trying to, but don’t have the skills or the economy around them. Despite the reasons for despair, there is a lot of optimism in Nairobi – things are bad, but people have hope that they are getting better.

The crusade Saturday night was amazing, but church on Sunday morning was even better, and the crusade Sunday night was even better than that. I’m sure we will have posts on that, but I wanted to give you some understanding of the surroundings.

Gerald