On Sunday our team split in half in order to attend two different churches. I went with Michelle (AIM staff) with team team-members to Word Impact. It took us about forty minutes to walk there from our house, but I enjoyed it. We walked through an open market area, and down the only road that leads into Kibera, all the way to the end where the church sits. Word is a very small church, so the fifteen of us more than doubled the room of people. They were larger before the violence here in Kenya began, but because Kibera is a conglomerate of several different tribes, many people left the church. It is primarily a Luo congregation because that is what the pastor is.
We learned in cultural training yesterday that each tribe is very passionate about defending its own people. So when the violence broke out between tribes, even neighbors and friends began to attack one another. In one case, the deacons of a church killed the pastor’s entire family because he was of a different tribe than they were. The pastor was able to be rescued before they could get to him as well. Often when there are tribal conflicts, neighbors and long-time friends will break into one another’s houses and rob and murder them. Because Kibera is a bit of a melting pot, the tension between tribes must be carefully balanced.
After church we were walking to the AIM House (AIM’s orphanage) when a drunk (and probably drugged) man came up and began to harass Michelle. The four guys with us tried to distract him and hold him back until us girls could get on ahead, but he was persistent and would not stop following us. Eventually, they had to fully stop with him while the girls continued on to the orphanage. He was arrested a few minutes after they left him. This is pretty common here except usually the police don’t step in. They have mob riots and if you point out a thief or someone causing trouble, the local people will come out of their homes and beat him. They don’t trust the police, so they take it into their own hands. In extreme cases they will tie a tire around the man’s neck and set it on fire and watch him burn to death. This is Kibera. This is a lawless land where the people govern themselves.
On the flip side, though, we have met some pretty phenomenal people there. On our tour and scavenger hunt our team met a Kenyan man named Orlando that has his Masters in Christian Education from the States. Orlando returned to Kibera in ’95 to teach here, and still lives in the slums. We met a born-again woman named Beatrice that owned a small shop off of Karanja Road–one of the larger streets in the slums. These are the people that help keep Kibera from spinning out.
