couldn’t remember any sort of altruistic impulse as my reason for being me here. I only pictured myself three months earlier, curled up on my family room couch reading books on cultural sensitivity, or shopping in neighbourhood department stores for appropriate clothing, thinking this was a chance for me to enlarge my experience and pick up others’ points of view. I’d been driven simply by a desire to escape not to improve the lives of these poor people.
I had no answer for this man. His piercing stare lingered, awaiting an explanation. It was all I could do to turn my head to avoid meeting his eyes. Brenda and I quickly rushed away, still wishing there was some sort of answer, any answer, to give.
By the time Brenda and I parted ways to return home from our shopping trip it was raining, with a chill in the autumn air. I hurried down a side street to catch a matatu back to the suburbs, my rain-soaked pants sticking to my legs and my hands jammed in my pockets.
Then I heard it: a sharp yelp from an intersection about ten metres up the street. Drawing closer, I could see two street boys hovering over a third boy lying on the ground. Keeping my distance, I continued on my way. It wasn’t an uncommon scene: I’d seen many street boys harass one another, stealing one another’s little food or the glue they sniffed. Yet the third boy’s cries echoed through the empty street, his quick yelps turning to desperate, wordless pleas as the others beat him with sticks. The sound seized my heart as I drew nearer, both with fear for my own safety and in alarm at the scene unfolding before me.
Then I saw what the boys were after: the fallen boy’s jeans. He struggled on the ground, outnumbered and overpowered as they stole the only protection he had against the night’s cold. He fought in vain until his attackers successfully yanked off his jeans and ran away, the echoes of their feet smacking pavement ringing down the empty street. Their victim tried to chase after them in his bare feet, but to no avail. For him, it was a harsh lesson in survival of the fittest.
No one helped the boy. I certainly didn’t. I’d only watched in astonishment, not knowing what to do. I was clearly larger than his attackers and could probably have fended them off. But then what? More street boys would likely come to their help, and then it wouldn’t be me against two; it would be me against eight, maybe more. And if I did get the boy’s pants back, nothing would stop him from being robbed again minutes later, after I’d returned to my home—a home with running water, a stocked refrigerator, warm blankets and a window I could shut to keep out the cold.
Empathy was overruled by desperation, and desperation created chaos. It wasn’t just happening here, at the corner of Koinange and Muindi Mbingu streets. It was happening across town, across the hundred various slums within Nairobi, across the country, around the world. I didn’t know where I stood in this equation. I’d never been so desperate that I might steal someone’s only pair of pants yet neither had I ever to defend myself against such an attack. I had never had to defend else from physical attack. I didn’t know what the outcome would be if I did.
I had so many questions. The voices inside my head wouldn’t shut up as I continually asked myself questions I couldn’t answer. Why were so many kids living on the streets? What was the government doing about it? Were international aid organizations assisting? Did the kids make enough money to live even at a subsistence level? Did they make any money at all? What happened to them at night? How did they get this way? And, most of all, what could I do?
I met many children throughout Nairobi, as street children were unafraid about approaching strangers, begging for handouts. There was a group of boys who lived along the route from my home to my matatu stage and, after running into the same recognizable faces, I began to often stop and talk with them. One afternoon I met Moses, a ten-year-old boy who lived on the streets. He was immediately endearing, brimming with charisma. We made plans to have a proper chat, both so I could potentially include his story in my research and, because I was simply fascinated by his life experience, so unfathomable to me.
The next day he and a few other boys sat with me on the curb by an open-air market close by my host family’s house. Their English was about as limited as my Swahili, but we still managed to understand one another. Each of the boys sipped small packets filled with milk I’d bought for them—a small price to pay, I thought, for fascinating conversation.
Because we’d arranged to meet in this upscale neighbourhood, Moses wasn’t huffing glue today. But normally, he said, he spent most of his time in the slums and any money he could find on what he called his “gum”; huffing it took away his incessant hunger, made his body feel good and helped him forget the cold. It was, he said, the most efficient use of his money. Even though he knew inhaling the toxic substance could cause serious, irreparable damage to his young body and brain, in his desperation he clung to the numbness provided by its high. His father had died of aids and his mother was now also sick, so she couldn’t afford to provide food for Moses and his siblings. With no way of surviving at home, Moses had to leave his village for the big city. Here Moses found other children who lived on the streets, having also fled their homes.
Moses pointed various kids out to me, knowing each of their stories. “That guy’s parents both died. This guy just ran away from home for fun. This other guy doesn’t even know how he got here.”
Depending on the day and season, street life presented a range of serious dangers, from violence between street kids to malnutrition and disease from the brutal conditions. Later that winter, in January 2003, the newly elected government representing the National Alliance of Rainbow Coalition, or narc, would send large trucks into Nairobi’s streets, rounding up street children and taking them to state-sponsored facilities. I found out then that Moses himself avoided the trucks but later spent several intermittent sentences in city jail; he told me this never changed his preference to live on the streets.
Now, though, in those early days in Nairobi, I thought about how homeless people were regarded in North America, recalling how saddened I’d been to learn in school that children make up about a third of the homeless in America. It never made sense to me, when the commonly held stereotype of the homeless had more to do with mental illness or addiction, not a desperate underfed child on the street clutching a teddy bear, like one homeless child I’d seen here. How was this allowed to happen? How could people so young even survive?
Brenda was working with a development organization in the slums just outside of Kibera, and she invited me to tour the slum and see the true picture, away from the disturbing images shown in television commercials: children’s wracked bodies, their open sores and bloated bellies, their weak efforts at swatting circling flies as they lay limp against flaking mud walls, while a groomed celebrity spokesperson pleaded on their behalf. Yet in the pit of my stomach, I felt apprehensive. Would I be welcome? Could I handle seeing such poverty?
Walking with Brenda through Kibera’s narrow streets, it was impossible to ignore the suspicious glares of the slum’s dwellers. Garbage was strewn along rows of tiny houses and through corridors formed by sheets of grimy, rusted tin siding. The stench of sewage hung heavy as we stepped carefully through red-brown puddles of dirt and recent rain. Green plastic bags were caught on rocks every few steps, leftovers of last night’s “flying toilets”—Kibera’s solution to a lack of public sanitation. I’d heard of people relieving themselves into bags at night, then throwing them out of the window; the evidence was all around us as we continued forward, careful not to slip in the mud.
But heading farther through the streets, a different story emerged. Echoes of children’s shrieked laughter rang everywhere. Mamas in vibrant headscarves popped their heads from doorways, calling their kids for dinner, while other women worked makeshift vendor stands, selling fresh fried dough for five shillings; the smell of the cooking oil wafted mouth-watering aromas. Entrepreneurial men worked shoeshine booths and cobblers clustered on street corners. More and more children chased one another through these elaborate corridors, dodging the litter as they splashed through the streaming gutters.
