HopeWalk Africa - Coming in the Spring of 2009
Nairobi, Kenya
March 26 - April 2, 2009
Until you’ve walked there you’ll never know the impression you can make.
Nairobi, the most bustling urban center in Eastern Africa, is also a cauldron of immense poverty and desolation. And yet, while children splash in the open sewage of the Mathare Valley slum, efforts guided by businesses and churches are well underway to refresh communities with flowing supplies of food, water and more. While some 650,000 children in Kenya have suffered the loss of their parents to AIDS, a life of hardship and exploitation on the streets is no longer the only option; there are models for compassionate care that are rising from the despair. While disease and destitution have spread a contagion of hopelessness in Africa, there are signs of hope.
The Mathare Valley, where you will walk this coming March...
• Is the oldest slum within the city of Nairobi, Kenya.
• Is a shanty village is 5 kilometers (3.2 miles) from the City Center.
• The area is very densely populated with almost 600,000 people living in a very small area of 2 kilometers by 300 meters (1.2 miles by .2 miles).
• The valley is a maze of low, wooden and earthen walled shacks with roofs of rusted iron-sheeting.
• Is a place for criminals, drug addicts, the unemployed.
• Few people are employed and others are doing small businesses. The unemployment rate in the slums is 70%.
• Those who can find "day labor" earn about $1.00 per day.
• Housing is inadequate with most houses measuring around 8 by 6 feet and holding 6-10 people, many sleeping on cardboard covering the dirt floor.
• There are very few bathrooms and toilets and you have to pay to use them. Most people can't afford this, so the open gutters outside their houses are often turned into sewers.
• The Nairobi River flows through the heart of the slum, having collected all kinds of garbage and sewage on its journey through the city. There is therefore no alternative source of safe drinking water.
• Doing laundry, washing dishes, and bathing are luxuries because there is no running water in the houses.
• There is no electricity. The nights are long and dark.
• There is every form of farm animal in the slum from chickens, pigs, goats, to cows along with their droppings.
• The most overwhelming smell that emanates from the slum though, is that of burning wood charcoal. This is the way that all cook their meals along the alley-ways. The consolation is that it disguises the other more offensive smells.
• The rate of HIV infection is difficult to determine since few are tested, but it is assumed that most adults are HIV positive. Once becoming infected the average life span of an adult is five years due to the lack of any medical attention at all.
• 80% of these households are headed by women. Of those women over 45 years of age, 71% have no formal education.
• Due to the rate that adults die of AIDS, there are thousands of orphaned children living in the slums. Many live with the oldest child - perhaps 10 years old - being the head of the household.
• The children are more likely to become addicted to sniffing glue than graduate from secondary school.
• Many of the children are acutely malnourished.
• The children cannot afford to attend school; 9 out of 10 children from poor households fail to complete their basic education.
JOIN US in March 2009 as we see first-hand the help and hope that we can offer. Space is limited so click on the REGISTER section today to receive more information!