Кибера: крупнейшее трущобное поселение Африки

Urban slum in Nairobi, Kenya

Kibera (Kinubi: Forest or Jungle) is a division and neighbourhood of Nairobi, Kenya, from the city centre. Kibera is the largest slum in Nairobi, and the largest urban slum in Africa. The 2009 Kenya Population and Housing Census reports Kibera's population as 170,070, contrary to previous estimates of one or two million people. Other sources suggest the total Kibera population may be 500,000 to well over 1,000,000 depending on which slums are included in defining Kibera. In 2009, a survey conducted by the French Institute for Research in Africa found that the average Kibera slum resident lives in extreme poverty, earning less than US$2 per day. Unemployment rates are high. 12% of the population are living with HIV. Cases of assault and rape are common. There are few schools, and most people cannot afford education for their children. Clean water is scarce. Diseases caused by poor hygiene are prevalent. A great majority living in the slum lack access to basic services, including electricity, running water, and medical care. The government initiated a clearance programme to replace the slum with a residential district of high rise apartments, and to relocate the residents to these new buildings upon completion. The neighbourhood is divided into a number of villages, including Kianda, Soweto East, Gatwekera, Kisumu Ndogo, Lindi, Laini Saba, Silanga, Makina, Salama, Ayany, and Mashimoni.

[[Image:kibera. jpg|thumb|300px|Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2005. It is the largest slum in Africa and the third largest in the world. The colonial administration intended to keep Nairobi as a home for Europeans and temporary migrant workers from Africa and Asia. The migrant workers were brought into Nairobi on short term contracts, as indentured labour, to work in the service sector, as railway manual labour and to fill lower level administrative posts in the colonial government. Between 1900 and 1940, the colonial government passed a number of laws – such as the 1922 Vagrancy Act – to segregate people, evict, arrest, expel and limit the movement of the natives and indentured workers. Within Nairobi, Africans could live in segregated "native reserves" at the edge of the city. Permits to live in Nairobi were necessary, and these permits separated living areas of non Europeans by ethnic group. One such group were African soldiers who served the military interests of the British colonial army, and their assigned area developed into a slum, now known as Kibera. Kibera originated as a settlement in the forests at the outskirts of Nairobi, when Nubian soldiers returning from service with the King's African Rifles (KAR) were allocated plots of land there in return for their efforts in 1904. Kibera was situated on the KAR military exercise grounds in close proximity to the KAR headquarters along Thika Road. The British colonial government allowed the settlement to grow informally. The Nubians had no claim on land in "Native Reserves" and over time, other tribes moved into the area to rent land from the Nubian landlords. With the increase in railway traffic, Nairobi's economy developed, and an increasing number of rural migrants moved to urban Nairobi in search of wage labour. Kibera and other slums developed throughout Nairobi. [[File:Kibera Nairobi Kenya Slum July 2009. jpg|thumb|300px|Kibera slum was established in early 20th century, and has grown ever since on public lands, around water streams and railway tracks. Its current residents are people from all major ethnic groups of Kenya. By then, Kibera was not the only slum. A 1931 Colonial Report noted the segregated nature of housing in Nairobi and other Kenyan towns, with housing for Europeans reported as good, and widespread prevalence of slum property for Africans and other non European migrants.

Kibera is in southwest Nairobi, from the city centre. Much of its southern border is bounded by the Nairobi river and the Nairobi Dam, an artificial lake that used to provide drinking water to the residents of the city, but now there are two main pipes going into Kibera. Kibera is divided into thirteen villages and two estates, including Kianda, Soweto East, Gatwekera, Kisumu Ndogo, Lindi, Laini Saba, Siranga, Makina, Salama, Ayany and Mashimoni.

Kibera's morphology is very dynamic. Between 2006 and 2014 a spatiotemporal change of single buildings and building blocks across the areas of Lindi, Mashimoni, Laina Saba and Soweto East was measured (77% rise in number of buildings, density increase by 10%). Yet, its organic structure and pattern (building blocks, pathways), generally remained unchanged.

The Uganda Railway Line passes through the centre of the neighbourhood, providing passengers aboard the train a firsthand view of the slum. Kibera has a railway station, but most residents use buses and matatus to reach the city centre; carjacking, irresponsible driving, and poor traffic law enforcement are chronic issues. Kibera is heavily polluted by human refuse, garbage, soot, dust, and other wastes. The slum is contaminated with human and animal faeces, due to the open sewage system and the frequent use of "flying toilets". The lack of sanitation combined with poor nutrition among residents accounts for many illnesses and diseases. The Umande Trust, a local NGO, is building communal toilets that generate methane gas (biogas) for local residents. A community radio station, Pamoja FM, advocates not only upgrading Kibera slum but also all the slums in Nairobi. Kibera Journal has existed since November 2006. The paper covers issues affecting the people of Kibera, and it has played an important role in training the youth in basic journalism skills that they use to cover issues in their communities.

Most education centres in Kibera are classified as informal, but various initiatives have been underway to add schools. Some start as babycare centres, which later develop into schools. Most are not regulated by the government. Some of the notable schools are Olympic Primary School, one of the leading government schools in the country. Other government (public) schools in Kibera include Kibera Primary School (also called Old Kibera), Ayany Primary School and Toi Primary School. Facing the Future School (FaFu), as well as several church owned and privately owned schools are also in the area. Notable Secondary schools include PCEA Silanga High School, owned by the Presbyterian Church of East Africa, Raila Educational centre, and Olympic Secondary School, among others. There is the vocational PCEA Emmanuel Technical Training Centre, offering self employment skills to the residents and the Tunapanda Institute, offering free courses on technology, design and business skills. Several other local youth organisations, like the football (soccer) team the Kibera Black stars, are also concerned and involved in educational projects.

thumb|300px|The ground in much of Kibera is composed of refuse and rubbish. Kibera is one of the most studied slums in Africa, not only because it sits in the centre of the modern city, but also because UN HABITAT, the United Nations' agency for human settlements, is headquartered close by. Ban Ki moon visited the settlement within a month of his selection as UN secretary general. The clearance of Kibera was expected to take between two and five years to complete. The entire project was planned to take nine years and to rehouse all the slum residents in the city. The project start was postponed several times when Prime Minister Odinga was unavailable to oversee the first day. Also present were several dozen armed police officers to oversee the arrangements and to deter any resistance. There is also controversy over the timing of the project, with the first phase, rehousing 7,500 people, being delayed by five years and one government official stating that if the project continues at the current pace it will take 1,178 years to complete. Robert Neuwirth devotes a chapter of his book Shadow Cities to Kibera and calls it a squatter community, predicting that places like Kibera, Sultanbeyli in Istanbul, Turkey, and Dharavi in Mumbai, India, are the prototypes of the cities of tomorrow. Among other things, Neuwirth points out that such cities should be reconsidered and not viewed merely as slums, because many locals were drawn to them while escaping far worse conditions in rural areas. Michael Holman's 2005 novel Last Orders at Harrods is based on a fictional version of the slum, called Kireba. Bill Bryson visited Africa for CARE and wrote a companion book called "Bill Bryson's African Diary", which includes a description of his visit to Kibera. Kibera is the backdrop for the short film Kibera Kid, which featured a cast entirely drawn from residents. It has played in film festivals worldwide including the Berlin Film Festival and won a Student Emmy from Hollywood. Recently, Hot Sun Foundation and Hot Sun Films started the first film school in the slum, the Kibera Film School. The school teaches the youth from the slum how to make films and tell their stories. In 2009 through 2010, the Kibera Film School and Hot Sun Foundation collaborated on the feature follow up to Kibera Kid, which is titled Togetherness Supreme. In his documentary Living with Corruption, Sorious Samura stayed with a family in Kibera to film the corruption that occurs even at the lowest levels of Kenyan society. Furthermore, Kibera is portrayed in the Austrian 2007 documentary Über Wasser: Menschen und gelbe Kanister. In 2011, the BBC aired a reality show documentary TV program called Rich, Famous and in the Slums about Kibera. The program showed four famous and rich people, after working at the worst jobs available in the slums, moving in with four local impoverished families and getting to meet the actual conditions in which they live. They were:
A single mother away from her two children, supporting them and her parents through prostitution. A family of young orphans living in horrible conditions. A single mother of 6, with HIV, who owned a small beauty salon and volunteers as a community health care person. A 20 year old newcomer to Kibera, one of many pouring in from other parts of Kenya hoping to find a job in Nairobi. The Economist published an article in 2012 suggesting that Kibera "may be the most entrepreneurial place on the planet" and that "to equate slums with idleness and misery is to misunderstand them". The 2014 novel Bingo's Run by James A. Levine features a 15 year old from Kibera. The Netflix 2015 series Sense8 features a character named Capheus based in Kibera, showing the hardships of a fictional matatu driver there.