• 30 July 2018
    There is a lot of hardship growing up in Mathare, like in any other informal settlement. Reaching 30 years for a young man and not being dead is an achievement. Reaching the age of 25 for a young woman and not being pregnant or forced into early marriage is an achievement. We end up losing most of our people in Mathare. We survive with one or less parents.
  • 30 July 2018
    I was born in Mathare and it was not easy growing up here. At times we don’t have the necessities, the basic needs, like water and housing. My childhood was not so nice because sometimes in this village there is fighting between the landlord and tenants, so the landlord shuts your house and you have to sleep outside.
  • 18 January 2018
    Ngai Mutuoboro was born in Chuka, Kenya, in 1939. He describes it as being in the period “when the colonial people came”[1], during the time of British colonialism.
  • 24 November 2017
    I was born in Kibera and I grew up in Kibera. Being in the informal settlement, I can confess that it is not an easy journey. You are born into a very tough environment; an environment with unsuitable shelter, no access to clean water, it is a challenge.
  • 13 October 2017
    Police violence in the slums of Kenya: “I learned that he had been shot down by a police officer” is a short documentary with Kenyan human rights defender Stephen Mwangi from Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC).
  • 12 October 2017
    In July, PBI was requested by Atiriri Bururi ma Chuka (‘Keepers of Chuka Community Land’) Trust community group to accompany them to a court hearing related to the case against them. Since colonial times, ABC Trust has been campaigning to reclaim a particular section of the Mount Kenya National Reserve in Chuka, which they maintain to be part of their ancestral land.
  • 12 October 2017
    As of September 2017, almost half a million registered refugees and asylum seekers are being hosted in Kenya, of whom 64,208 are in urban areas (mainly Nairobi).[1] Leaving one’s country and becoming a refugee is usually a person’s last resort; HRDs most commonly become refugees due to insecurity related to their human rights work.
  • 11 October 2017
    When I was young I used to have many friends in Mathare, we really enjoyed the life of the slums because we were a part of it. We were born there and it was our home. Living in Mathare, one is always surrounded by people; we school together, we shop together, we work together, we go to church together, we do everything together. Growing up, we were like a family there.
  • 2 October 2017
    I grew up in Kisii, in the western part of Kenya. Life there is good but there are too many people and not enough resources; you can get plenty of food but there is not much work so it is difficult to pay for school fees and other expenses. I moved to Kibera when I was in my mid-twenties.
  • 11 September 2017
    I come from a family of four daughters. My father was never really in the picture, but I never felt the absence of a father-figure in the house; Mama has been such a role model in that sense. She would say “whatever you want to do, you can do it”. Whenever we would complain about not having a brother to help us fix household things, she would push us to learn how to do it ourselves.

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