Mathare: the most brutal slum in Africa
One of the largest, most cramped, and hands down the most brutal of slum on the continent. This isn't just Adam talking, who has only been there once so far, it is considered by the UN-Habitat Executive Director as a slum unable to achieve the Millennium Development Goals of improving the lives of people there by 2020... That's a dire forecast coming from the overly politically correct UN.
The most horrible place I've ever been
It is so terrible because the happiness and human dignity are bleeding out of people – figuratively, and too often literally. It is a place to lose hope, a place where people live in shacks the size of our bathrooms, and a place where these homes are routinely bulldozed or burned down by the police. Open sewers of urine and mounds of waste replace clean water and sanitation. Not surprisingly, things like education, television, and security that we take for granted are missing; it is a slum after all. Just don't forget about the myriad of things brought by clean and abundant energy, like electricity, light, refrigeration, and an oven that doesn’t give you lung cancer from the wood smoke. Imagine that just about every communicable disease and those from unsanitary conditions are rampant in Mathare and you're getting close. Typhoid, AIDS, yellow fever, malaria, and syphilis are just the beginning.
Inhumanity infects Mathare
The stories told by children in the slums read like nightmares. Unfortunately they are all true. I was told stories first hand in Mathare that I cannot repeat without shuddering. Excerpts from the book, "Image-In the MDGs" in the gallery are horrifying. The world needs to know that these realities continue today. Our hope is that by exposing these atrocities, some good can come to the Mathare Valley. More Living, less Bleeding.