Visiting a Slum

When I lived in Kenya I stayed with a group Priests and two of them do work in one of the slums called Mathare, which I lived fairly close to. The church was doing Stations of the Cross through the slum on Good Friday and I just thought it would be an amazing experience, and it was.
 
We literally walked though the slum and stopped at certain points that were designated "stations" between stations the group of people would sing. This took three hours and during this I was suffering from my first case of malaria.
 
Although it was hot and I was weak it was one if the more amazing experiences of my time in Kenya. I can't begin to explain to you what it was like to walk through this area. I was unable to take any pictures because I decided it was a bad idea to bring my camera into a slum. I also did not want to turn the experience into a tourist trip, I felt it would have been offensive to the parishioners that were doing this to celebrate Good Friday. You can google Mathare and look at pictures, which I encourage everyone to do, but know that it doesn't even begin to show what it is like.
 
The slum is basically in this valley and when you enter the slum you can look over the whole of Mathare. It is just a mass of rusted tin roofs and that is really all you see. As you go down into the slum you are walking on a narrow dirt road, cars do get down there, but honestly I am not sure how they fit. There is trash everywhere and the stench is a mix of sewage and garbage. There are little kids everywhere, most without shoes, and all I could think was about all the diseases they were probably getting.
 
There really isn't a sewage system so when you passed through a wet area or over a "gutter" you really weren't sure what you were walking in. The liquid in the "gutters" that would run through the street in no particular order looked like a mixture of soap and sewage and was almost thick.
 
The people were so welcoming though and happy to have us. Some of the women kept trying to get me to sing and offered to share their song book with me. Since I was a guest of the priests the group I was with took great care to look out for me. At no point did I feel my safety was in jeopardy. Someone was always next to me, or holding my hand and making sure I was in the middle of the group. I was sure that no harm would come to me even though Mathare is one of the more dangerous slums.
 
It is one of the harder things I did while I was there, but I am so glad that I did it. It was just another example of the unwavering kindness shown to me during my travels through East Africa.