IRIN release new film about slum life in Kenya

IRIN is part of the United Nation's office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, with an independent online news service. The organisation is based in Nairobi, Kenya, and serves to improve the flow of vital information to those involved in relief efforts in the Great Lakes region following the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Slum Survivors, a two-hour documentary, focuses on a couple of individuals living in Kibera slum, considered to be Africa's biggest such settlement. The slum is situated in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, with about a million of the world's billion slum dwellers.

One character, Carol, is a single mother of three, who walks miles each day in search of work washing other people's clothes. It is a hand-to-mouth existence - sometimes she gets work and buys food, but most of the time she and her children go to bed hungry.

Carol's situation is so desperate that on more than one occasion she has come close to suicide. With no-one to rely on for support, she's left hoping for miracles.

“We hope that one day God will come down – we keep on saying that. One day God will come down and change our situations.”
The film also features Dennis Onyango who became underprivileged after his father left his mother for another woman. Forced out of school because of unpaid fees, he ended up in Mombasa where he found work as a disc jockey.

Life was good until inter-ethnic fighting forced Onyango back to the safety of Nairobi. But poverty and desperation pushed him into a life of crime.

“Many of my friends had guns. I had grown up in the hands of the police because my father was a policeman. He used to leave his gun on the table so I knew how to dismantle and reassemble guns, so my friends used to bring their guns to me for cleaning - that's how I got started.”

But these days, Onyango is trying to change. He wants to turn his back on crime and start afresh.

Patrick Mburu also shares his story in the film. Mburu says he has lost many friends to crime and believes hard work is the only way out of poverty for him and his young family. His parents were both alcoholics and so he has had to fend for himself from a young age.

Mburu empties latrines for a living. Most toilets in Kibera are privately owned and residents must pay to use them. There are so few toilets that on average each one is shared by more than 1000 people.

Most slum dwellers never finish school and end up trapped in poverty, which is why Patrick is adamant his kids will get an education.

“In Kenya, no education means you can't get a good job; that's why I send my son to a good school, because I want him to know that the job that I do is only for people like me who didn't go to school.

“So, I will struggle ... I will do anything but steal to keep him in school,” according to Patrick.

Mburu, Onyango and Carol among other characters that film used to bring out the life in Kibera. The same life is shared by many other slum dwellers in Africa.

On October 2, IRIN also released Picking Up the Pieces, a film based on real life in the northern par of Uganda which has been affected by war between government forces and the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels.

The 22-minute documentary film focuses on the post-LRA war situation. It explores how people in northern Uganda will settle the past between them and their hunters. Will they forgive or avenge the perpetrators of murder, kidnaps, and rape, in the same currency? The film also looks a the possibility of the International Criminal Court (ICC) trying the LRA at the Hague and giving the LRA a chance to be heard by elders in the traditional justice system know as Mato oput .

As its case study, the film focuses on Alice Ayot, who survived a rebel massacre in 2004, and was beaten almost to death by child soldiers. Ayot who survived only because her husband looked for her, thinking she was dead, says “For me, forgiveness is a bitter pill to swallow.”

Other films the NGO has media agency has released include: The Shadows of Peace: Life After LRA, Somalia: A State of Need, Gem Slaves: Tanzanite's Child Labour, and Losing Hope – Women in Afghanistan.