Frankfurt In what has become a tradition, visiting a new country requires making some notes on the experience to mark the place in our minds and memories for the future by noting some things that were distinctive. Uganda is not a destination country. Perhaps it’s best that way. Kenya has become one. Talking to …
Tag: Nairobi
Are Water Cartels Allowed by the City to Fleece the Poor in Nairobi Slums?
Nairobi Visiting with ACORN organizers and members in Korogocho, we kept hearing stories about water cartels, as they were termed, fleecing the poor with higher water charges. The story was confusing. Were these private operators that were allowed to use a vital public service in order to exploit slumdwellers or was this story apocryphal, and we were …
Is Kenya Starving the Poor to Play Politics?
Nairobi Talking to ACORN Kenya organizers and leaders, one thing jumped to the top of the conversation quickly when education was raised, and it was not the poor quality of the books and classrooms this time, it was food, specifically school lunches. Everyone from slumdweller to education expert agrees that a child’s ability to …
Community Radio Comes to the Nairobi Slums
Nairobi Visiting Korogocho, where ACORN Kenya has worked for the last more than eight years, we wanted to make sure that we had an opportunity to visit an interesting experiment in community radio, KOCH-FM 99.9. Years ago, I had noticed there might be such a thing when we were visiting our groups, but we had …
Catching Up in Korogocho
Nairobi Technically it was a holiday in Nairobi, which only meant that there were fewer traffic jams and that schools and banks were closed, but for many, if not millions, it was another workday. We had several meetings in Korogocho with our leaders and with a larger group of members and others, including addicts, scheduled …