Going to Korogocho

 Today I spent the afternoon in one of Nairobi's largest slum, Korogocho. Situated in the East side of the Kenyan capital, it is the home of more than 150 000 inhabitants in less than two square kilometres. 

 I was committed a story on 'Health Text', a new system of SMS allowing Kenyans to get medical advice via text messages. And I met an adorable Kenyan journalist working in Nairobi for the NGO Internews, who raises funds for the project and to connect it with some local radio in slum areas.

I had interviewed him last week and he mentioned the Korogocho slum as one of the areas where the project would be the most useful.

So I convinced him to take me there to meet the local radio's journalists and health workers he is working for to put the project into place.

Korogocho is just at 20 minutes-drive away from Nairobi business centre, on the northeast side, just like Kibera is 30 minutes outside of the centre to the southwest side.

I met the journalists from Koch FM and two health workers from the area. All of them live in Korogocho and act as community workers voluntarily, like ‘Florence’, who started as an AIDS advisor a few years ago. She moved into the slum for the rural Western province when her parents died. Now she is happy to work for free for her community because she knows it’s the only way to make the living conditions change and improve a little.

The Health Text initiative would allow slums’ dwellers to get access to medical advice for a cheap amount, in an area where most people live in shack with no access to water and no electricity.  

It remains difficult for the slums’ inhabitants to get any attention from the Kenyan government. Most of them are informal settlement and are not even registered as habitations. This is why community workers are investing in “mapping” to complete the settlement’s official existence and obtain the authorities’ recognition.

Korogocho was also one of the strongly hit sites of the 2007-2008 violence that followed the disputed presidential election on December 27, 2007. At least fifteen men died in one incident at the end of 2007, according to Reuters, when ethnic and political divisions resulted in rioting and battles with the police.

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On our way back the journalist launched this inevitable conversation about post-colonial relations between African and European countries, comparing East and North Africa. And he made an interesting comparison between Kenya and Algeria. According to him, the two countries have been the most integrated into the former settlers’ administration and economy and have ended up having the most violent conflicts to reach independence. I had never looked at it this way; Kenya and Algeria are so different. But it might be an idea… As I’m planning to go again to Algeria next year, for the 50 years of its independence, it is probably worth remembering.