Joanna Goldberg sends biweekly communiqués from Kenya, where she’s living with her kid
“Slums are not ‘the problem.’ Rather, they are the spatial manifestations of urban poverty, social exclusion, and inappropriate government policies. Indeed, they represent an active, grassroots attempt by the desperately poor to take care of themselves.” (Sclar & Northridge. Am J Public Health 2003;93:138).
The organization I work with in Nairobi, GROOTS Kenya, supports youth, caregivers and families in Mathare, an informal settlement (“slum”) about five kilometres north-east of Nairobi centre. As one of the largest slums in East Africa and the oldest in Nairobi, Mathare is home to an estimated 300,000 to 800,000 people, depending on one’s definition of Mathare Valley. It’s not as infamous as Kibera, an even larger slum south-west of the city, and receives a lot less international and local development attention.
