Matahre Slum:
Mathare valley is one of the biggest slums in Africa, located in Nirobi, about twenty minutes from downtown by car. There are about 180,000 people in the slum. U can smell the leftover and waste in the slum everywhere. There’s no field for people to bury their garbage in the slum. Residents in the slum suffer from poverty. The clothes are mostly from the donation of other countries. Therefore, you can always see people wear “Gap” or other fancy clothes in the slum, which makes a big contrast in my eyes.
In the slum, there are a lot of illiterate children, who have nothing to do but just hang around with their friends all day long. A lot of children can’t go to school because they can’t afford tuition ($700 NTD every semester) and uniform. For the children who can go to school, they don’t have good learning environment. The education in the slum can’t make most of the students competitive enough to get job in downtown. Eventually, most of them have to go back to the slum. The education is not very developed and organized in the slum. The soil in the slum is very poor so residents can’t grow anything themselves. They have to go to downtown to buy fruit and sell it in the slum. They don’t have any basic knowledge of money. They spend all the money they make, not to mention saving and managing money.
School:
Henry, the director of Community care development organization, showed me around in the slum these days. Most schools there don’t have lights for kids to study. Therefore, the classrooms are always dim. Sometimes two or three classes have to stay at the same classroom because there’s not enough space for more classrooms. Every single chock can’t be wasted. So, it’s not allowed to throw it away till it’s too short to use. Besides primary and secondary school, there are also skill training schools. I visited a tailor school where students learn how to make and fix clothes. Because of the lack of cloth, they have to practice with papers. There are not enough sewing machines in the classroom so three or two students have to share one machine. Even though students have some qualified skills, they can’t get a good job because they don’t know how to promote themselves, how to make money, and deal with people. There are student clubs in the slum for school students and it can provide students extracurricular trainings, discussions and other activities in order to prevent them from fooling around and learning bad things. There are also HIV/AIDS schools in the slum.
Residents usually pee and poo or they would just dump the waste on the road. In order to keep the environment clean, there are a couple of toilets set in the slum. People who want to use the toilet have to pay 0.15 NTD per month. By doing these, they can solve the some problems of public hygiene and decrease the spread of diseases.
There are also couples of clinics in the slum. The medical equipments in the clinic are old. If some people in the village get HIV/AIDS, they can only provide temporary accommodation and simple treatment because they are unable to take care of the patients. What they need the most is the training sessions for residents there. They have to educate people the knowledge of sanitation and HIV/AIDS. But there are not enough staffs or volunteers in the clinic to do that. The clinic doesn’t charge for giving consultant, but they will charge little for medicine. Clinics are not registered so they can’t get any support from government. The reason why the clinics can’t register because equipments are too old and staffs are not officially qualified.
Another clinic is for epilepsy. Kenyan government excludes students who have epilepsy at school and in society. So, they have to be sent to another special school. However, epilepsy is not mental disease and it won’t affect other people. According to the interview I have with the patients, they are always unemployed because of it. One of the volunteer in the clinic is also the patient of epilepsy. Once while she was cooking, she had seizure, which made her burned by boiling water. Her boyfriend left her with her child. Now she has to wear mask and long-sleeved shorts to cover her scars. It’s not just the scar of the skin but also the scar of her heart. This incident stimulates her to work as a volunteer here. She also wrote the play about the epilepsy, inviting Youth Group to play it. She hopes that people could know more about the epilepsy so that patients can be treated equally and receive good care in the society.
Mathare valley is one of the biggest slums in Africa, located in Nirobi, about twenty minutes from downtown by car. There are about 180,000 people in the slum. U can smell the leftover and waste in the slum everywhere. There’s no field for people to bury their garbage in the slum. Residents in the slum suffer from poverty. The clothes are mostly from the donation of other countries. Therefore, you can always see people wear “Gap” or other fancy clothes in the slum, which makes a big contrast in my eyes.
In the slum, there are a lot of illiterate children, who have nothing to do but just hang around with their friends all day long. A lot of children can’t go to school because they can’t afford tuition ($700 NTD every semester) and uniform. For the children who can go to school, they don’t have good learning environment. The education in the slum can’t make most of the students competitive enough to get job in downtown. Eventually, most of them have to go back to the slum. The education is not very developed and organized in the slum. The soil in the slum is very poor so residents can’t grow anything themselves. They have to go to downtown to buy fruit and sell it in the slum. They don’t have any basic knowledge of money. They spend all the money they make, not to mention saving and managing money.
School:
Henry, the director of Community care development organization, showed me around in the slum these days. Most schools there don’t have lights for kids to study. Therefore, the classrooms are always dim. Sometimes two or three classes have to stay at the same classroom because there’s not enough space for more classrooms. Every single chock can’t be wasted. So, it’s not allowed to throw it away till it’s too short to use. Besides primary and secondary school, there are also skill training schools. I visited a tailor school where students learn how to make and fix clothes. Because of the lack of cloth, they have to practice with papers. There are not enough sewing machines in the classroom so three or two students have to share one machine. Even though students have some qualified skills, they can’t get a good job because they don’t know how to promote themselves, how to make money, and deal with people. There are student clubs in the slum for school students and it can provide students extracurricular trainings, discussions and other activities in order to prevent them from fooling around and learning bad things. There are also HIV/AIDS schools in the slum.
Residents usually pee and poo or they would just dump the waste on the road. In order to keep the environment clean, there are a couple of toilets set in the slum. People who want to use the toilet have to pay 0.15 NTD per month. By doing these, they can solve the some problems of public hygiene and decrease the spread of diseases.
There are also couples of clinics in the slum. The medical equipments in the clinic are old. If some people in the village get HIV/AIDS, they can only provide temporary accommodation and simple treatment because they are unable to take care of the patients. What they need the most is the training sessions for residents there. They have to educate people the knowledge of sanitation and HIV/AIDS. But there are not enough staffs or volunteers in the clinic to do that. The clinic doesn’t charge for giving consultant, but they will charge little for medicine. Clinics are not registered so they can’t get any support from government. The reason why the clinics can’t register because equipments are too old and staffs are not officially qualified.
Another clinic is for epilepsy. Kenyan government excludes students who have epilepsy at school and in society. So, they have to be sent to another special school. However, epilepsy is not mental disease and it won’t affect other people. According to the interview I have with the patients, they are always unemployed because of it. One of the volunteer in the clinic is also the patient of epilepsy. Once while she was cooking, she had seizure, which made her burned by boiling water. Her boyfriend left her with her child. Now she has to wear mask and long-sleeved shorts to cover her scars. It’s not just the scar of the skin but also the scar of her heart. This incident stimulates her to work as a volunteer here. She also wrote the play about the epilepsy, inviting Youth Group to play it. She hopes that people could know more about the epilepsy so that patients can be treated equally and receive good care in the society.
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