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I walked down one of the serpentine, narrow allies in the slum to meet a friend who owned a local bar near the river. I had discussed with him that I could visit to talk to some of the young men wasting their days inside his bar. He was a former Maji Mazuri youth but had left the group when his girlfriend got pregnant and he had to start working in one the bars his older brother owned to take care of his new family. About a year ago he had saved enough money to open his own small bar. As a former youth, however, he still felt responsible to support some of the younger men he met in his bar to make different choices in life and he knew Maji Mazuri could help.
At ten in the morning the bar was already packed with jobless, young men who clearly were half way through a jerry can of Chang’aa, illegal alcohol. This sight always made me sad. I sat among them and we began to talk. We talked about how their days looked like, how they struggled to survive and what had brought them to be in a bar at ten in the morning. I was struck by their candidness and touched by their insights. After a couple of hours I asked them to visit the Maji Mazuri youth coordinator, MC, who lived in the slum and whom they all knew very well. I explained about Maji Mazuri’s work with the youth in the slum. Some reacted shy, reluctant to believe that contacting Maji Mazuri could make a difference, but one young man stared at me intensely.
After a few weeks I had to travel back home. A year later, August 2009, I travelled back to Kenya to work with Maji Mazuri on strengthening the Maji Mazuri Education and Talent Program. Upon arrival I was anxious to go to Mathare and meet my friends. I went the same day and also met some of the new youth members. One of them looked very familiar. It was the young man from the bar. He had met with MC who had advised him to join the Maji Mazuri youth group. Frank, as he is called, had not only joined the group but had been able to access college education via Maji Mazuri at the same time. In one year his whole life had changed. He graduated in December 2009 and he now works as an IT technician at a company in the city centre.
This story illustrates how powerful and pivotal the Maji Mazuri Education and Talent Progam is. Frank made the journey from the river to the city centre in one year because of the opportunities Maji Mazuri was able to offer him. Eight Maji Mazuri youth graduated college this year, eight youth who are now finding their way on the job market, eight youth who otherwise would have been forced to brew illegal alcohol, engage in crime or in prostitution in order to survive.
On a crispy cold morning in September 2005 Buda and I walked down to the river to get hot charcoal from the Chang’aa (illegal alcohol) brewers to cook our lunch with. Once in a while we took a day off from work, to cook lunch together for some of our friends. When we arrived down at the river that day the men were in the process of filling the jerry cans with Chang’aa. This complicated process involved cooling the copper coil in the river until all the alcohol was caught in the jerry cans after which the residue in the drum was released from the drums with a loud explosion. The men had to take great care while doing this so we decided to wait before disturbing them. We sat among the men who were gambling close by. They rapidly played a complicated game of cards and I had a hard time understanding the rules. I observed the men instead. One guy stood out. Jeff. I had seen him down at the riverside before. He had a natural authority about him and he looked at me with an amused and slightly defiant look on his face.
“No 50 Cent here!”
and he gestured to all the men hanging about. “Here, we are all 10 Cent. We don’t get rich or die tryin’ÉÉWe just try dying!”
Lack of fundamental resources has other detrimental social consequences as well. Without the basic availability of toilets and in order to maintain their social dignity, women are forced to defecate only in secluded areas at night, making them susceptible to violence.
Furthermore, in the rural areas of many developing countries, women and children are not able to acquire an elementary education because they are required to work to provide each day for their family or village. They may have to walk even up to 5-miles to fetch water from a contaminated river, pond or stream. The containers used to transport water usually hold about 15 liters of water and weigh up to 15 kilograms. Such a physically difficult and time consuming responsibility means that these women and children are not able to go to school due to fatigue or simply because they are not afforded the time.
In addition, many young women in these areas are marrying between the ages of 12 and 16 years. By keeping these women in school, they can become educated and potentially avoid marrying at such a young age. This ultimately benefits the local community as older, more educated women might opt for smaller, more economically manageable family sizes resulting in more moderate population growth and less pressure on available resources. As surprising as it sounds, these positive changes all start with providing basic start-up resources to these families and their children so they can sustain safe and healthy lives and have the time and the strength to start and finish school.
