Text & Illustration by Brian Otieno Ochieng

At birth children are born equal. It’s the society which
underestimates the other. Well wait until you visit my home. Kibera is
the largest slum in Africa, everyday innocent small girls walk out of
their shanties to get formal education. It’s a relief to the parents
around since primary education is offered free after the goverment
announced the initiative. Despite that ,most of the girls still are
not able to get educated because life has become too hard for them for
survival. Incidences like this has led to a large number of girls drop
out of school at a tender age.Wait until you see a twenty one year old
girl with a seven year old child, this makes you wonder, what has age
really turned into.
Teenage pregnancy is the norm of the day. Parents are overwhelmed
with the duties of looking after girl child because the society around
don’t really care.Even the best can be misled, Kibera is a home to
about eight hundred thousand people. It’s a small space to hold such a
large number of residents but alot of the population has grown due to
this early pregnancy. Illiteracy level is still high in my home
because of a number of dropouts. Women leading since they are the most
affected at a tender age. It’s a sad thing to see our girls living
lives like this because this is what makes the vicious cycle to
continue. Giving birth to children at a tender age when your not able
to financially and even emotionally support them.
Walking around you would see many kids aimlessly wandering around.
They end up emulating the lifestyle of their parents. Due to this,
KiberaAID came up with the strategies to try make the life of ghetto
children a reality and make them live their dream. Giving them
education and basic needs. This is a positive step towards the
realization of a better future but in order to raise the living
standards, we must find a way to educate the children and give them a
hope for a better future in order for them to try and focus on
education.

German

Bildung für die Kinder ist eine Grundvoraussetzung für eine gesunde Gesellschaft. Aus diesem Grund geben wir den Kindern das für sie so wertvolle Schreibmaterial.

Englisch

Education is the footing for the future of a community. Especially children need education in order to get a chance for reaching a better life. Therefore we decided to give them basic goods for attending a school.

LIFE’S NOT A BED OF ROSES

Wait until you meet a youth from the largest slum in Africa, Kibera.
We grew up together,
didn’t know much except to survive.
Each and everyday we strived to make a better life.
Only to realize at the end it’s a lie.
Everybody took a turn leading to a better destination.
But they didn’t mind how the destination would turn to be.
Life proved to be difficult,thats all.
Ends couldn’t meet, some had to find a way.
Life without opportunity
Crime became the only option for sure.
Robbing the poor to be less poorer.
It’s a dangerous life but no alternative.
Infact it’s a life full of thorns cause any wrong turn you make, leads to your maker.
Don’t expect much in life, we only need daily bread
living from hand to mouth Just because the door to opportunities is sealed.
Living dangerously. Counting your days to the grave.
If only there could be a different way, most, infact all could have took the other way.
But living life the hard way making only the best to survive has turned boys into monsters,
girls into harlots,
Kingdom of sodom and gomorah could feel ashamed.

Orphans at a tender age struggling to make it in life whatsoever.
Mature criminal minds at puberty.
Call it the university of life
as all this is as a result of drug and drug abuse.
Just praying to God
youths in my ghetto will get positive energy.
It’s a fight we engage everyday.
Hoping to win the fight
but I know, it needs more to win the war.
Cause the gospel is already in its place,
live short and enjoy
that’s the motto to go by,
death has become the norm of the day
no one’s afraid to loose a life just hoping things will change.
A day when each and every youth will engage to fight vices
but for now that’s the life of a ghetto youth.
Sad reality!

©vbollah

The importance of education in Kibera.

Education is one fundamental resource that every human being should be
subjected to. In Kibera slums we have a huge lot of uneducated youths
who end up terrorizing the lives of their educated counterparts.
Without proper education here in Kibera Slums, a large majority ends
up becoming exactly the opposite of what society expects from them.
Boys start stealing and breaking into people’s homes. This is
therefore a major source of insecurity but with proper education this
profanity can be reversed hence the youths here can be kept busy with
schoolwork or engage themselves with other legit things that can help
build this vast community of Kibera or themselves as individuals.

Through proper education, the youths can come up with innovative ideas
of how they can uplift their living standard here in Kibera. Come up
with business ideas where one can be his/her own boss to ease this
huge number of unemployment and joblessness. Through this then
insecurity and cases of thefts and robberies will be narrowed down. As
we all know, „an idle mind is the devil’s workshop“. The youths here
need to be kept busy at all times guaranteed that at the end of the
day, they’ll have earned a living. People here need to prosper and
live and not just to survive for the day. Survival is what makes the
typical human being to do things that are not in line with what the
society expects. And for one to live and prosper then education comes
in as the most significant resource.

Majority of the youths I have come across only finished their form
four education and it’s not that they failed to qualify for a course
at the university. Money happens to be a big problem here hence a lot
of them don’t go to the university because of school fees issues. But
majority of them would really want to further their education if they
get like a wellwisher or a sponsor for that matter.

Now here’s exactly what education will do to the youths of Kibera:

Improve the living standard of people hence reducing crimes and
lowering poverty levels.

Education will aid nature intellect to a broader perspective.

Through education we alleviate the living standards of the people of
Kibera by creating skilled labour since most of the people living in
Kibera are working as semi-skilled hence they end up living poorly
because of underpayment and poor wages but through education we can be
able to raise the living standards of the upcoming generation.

Through education the youths can know and learn ways by which they can
fit well in the society and stop idling around which will end up with
things like doing drugs and robberies.

That means education is a basic significant resource that every human
being should be subjected to.

By Storitellah Bryan Jaybee, Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya.

Englisch

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Deutsch

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