Hope In A Hard Place

I hope my friend Ron won't mind me stealing the name of his photo exhibit, featured in his Chicago gallery http://www.artwithinreason.com/current.html. It features images from his journey through the Kibera slums earlier this year, and it's absolutely arresting.

It also helps me to process some of my experiences over the past few days. I haven't felt like writing because I've been so very haunted by what I saw during my trip to Kibera, and another slum area, Kisumu Ndogo. The Kibera trip was arranged to meet with Caleb, the young man who served as Ron's guide through Kibera.

Caleb is 29, and he's a process server for the government. He lives in Kibera with his wife, three children, and three of his deceased sister's children. I've seen many African slums over the past 5 years, but nothing prepared me for Kibera. Nothing possibly could've, other than perhaps a trip to Hell.

A million people are packed into cramped, tin-roofed shacks covering about 20 kilometres or so. The narrow, muddy, broken cobblestone pathways between those shacks are barely arm's length wide. The odor of garbage and raw sewage almost made me pass out at one point. But then I saw a toddler playing in a gutter full of filthy standing water and muck, and suddenly, my survival instinct trumped my intense maternal instinct.

I guess I'm still guilty that I didn't grab that baby and pull her out of that puddle. I was too paralyzed by the horror of what I was seeing. And I didn't want to die of cholera, or worse.

Kibera is the kind of place you can take a stab at describing, but nothing I could write would be adequate. Caleb and his family live in a room about 10 by 8 feet wide. There is one light bulb attached to a crude electrical outlet, but the day of my visit, it wasn't working. Caleb couldn't afford to pay the modest fee for electricity. There was one chair and one bed. I'm assuming anybody who can't fit into the bed has to sleep on the floor.

Against all odds, Caleb is trying to start an afterschool program for children in Kibera. I've done many stories on the need for afterschool activities for children in the U.S., so I was interested in his efforts. He hopes to provide regular services to at least 200 children.

Statistics say that the majority of people in Kibera are under the age of 18. This means Caleb might be able to help 200 of more than 500,000 young people.

Still, he has hope in a hard place.

That trip was on Sunday, and I went home in a somber, even dark mood. I mean, I became a journalist because I wanted to help right wrongs, expose injustices, blah, blah, blah. I'm here in Nairobi because I want to help journalists do the same. But how in God's name do you even begin to start in a place like Kibera?

On Tuesday, I went to Kisumu Ndogo with a young reporter named Irene. She had received an e-mail from one of her friends who works for an NGO here in Nairobi. It was about a woman who's suffering from a mysterious disease that's causing her limbs to swell. Doctors have been unable to diagnose it, and in despair, she turned to an "herbalist" who promised a cure...if she pays him 30,000 shillings, or about 475 dollars. He might as well have asked for 30,000 dollars. She has about as much of chance of raising that sum as the other.

I reminded Irene of a basic tenet of journalism....you can't do a story about every needy case because there are simply too many. If you do one, tens of thousands of other people will want their story told. However, with a little analysis, thought and creativity, a reporter can find a way to tease out a news angle that highlights a broader issue that has impact beyond the life of one person.

We decided to try and develop a story about the practice of herbal medicine in slum areas, and whether these so called "herbalists" are actually helping people or just getting rich off the desperation of the desperately poor.

When we got to the woman's house, the first thing I noticed was the "Obama for President" bumper sticker on the back of one of her chairs. Compared to Caleb's home, the setting was almost spacious. There were two rooms, and a bunk bed. Then the woman pulled back the wrap covering her leg, and once again, it was hard not to faint.

I don't know if Irene's reporting on this story will eventually wind up in the Nation. But during my visit to Kisumu Ndogo, I was reconnected to why I do what I do. If we can come up with the right angle, and put it all together in a compelling, informative package, maybe we'll help more people get the help they need. Maybe we'll help them avoid phonies who take their money and offer bogus cures. Maybe we'll raise awareness about the need for more research on herbal medicine. Or maybe we'll shed more light on the critical need for proper health care in Nairobi's slums.

In other words, maybe we can provide a bit of hope in a hard place.