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Partnering to Transform the Slums of Nairobi
(October 2002)Even as I ask the question I decide I've probed too quickly and quite unrelationally. Pastor Imbumi Makuku, whom I'd first met just moments previous there in western Nairobi, simply walks and smiles with his eyes alert to the passing landscape. "There's no talking about Kibera," he says in a soft, unassuming voice, "when you're breathing all this fresh air."
I withhold my next questions and chat on more personal levels as we follow a worn, dirt path to Kibera, Kenya's largest slum, the second largest slum in all of Africa. Walking with us are three American college students who've been working with Pastor Makuku in Kibera for the past month. They simply call him 'Makuku.' Together they share an evident friendship and frequent humor. I immediately enjoy the lilt of Makuku's laughter.
After a bit less than a kilometer, we arrive. At least I assume as much as I take in the scene before me. Covering the landscape are rusting, corrugated metal roofs jammed together all the way to the horizon over a couple of hilly slopes. The walls of these temporary structures are made of mud and sticks.
More immediately I sense two things. Firstly, the smell. Though I am standing in a place quite different than my own home and usual surroundings, I note something quite familiar for garbage and sewage seem to have a strangely universal stench. Here in Kibera it is no different. It's the rotten smell of things dead and finished, unwanted and wasted and unlike any one scent, a compounded emission of stench not intended for human senses, much less one's living and working quarters. I reel and pause a moment.
The second thing I sense is the visual reality of this odor. After crossing a set of railroad tracks, we enter the slum by walking through a large garbage pile, though this same garbage serves us well as stepping stones of sorts, solid footing to help our entourage leap from garbage outcropping to garbage outcropping over a meandering, sewage-filled creek. To cross we must skirt dangerously close to the water. As I leap, I hope that my worn shoes don't slip from the garbage and into the muck.
Makuku motions with one hand and says, "Welcome to Kibera," as we complete our successful crossing.
My intention in this visit is to learn more about Makuku and about his partnership with Servant Partners. As I enter Kibera for the first time, I am glad to know that godly men and women are pursuing a vision of service in this place. How hopeless I'd feel if I didn't know of a church plant in Kibera pursuing holistic, transformational ministry.
One of the first things we pass is a long, wire fence. Within moments several children come running to the fence calling out Pastor Makuku's name. They reach their arms through in an attempt to grab at him and shake his hand. Makuku gladly stops and returns their greetings, their words and their smiles. He seems to have plenty of time for them, though I know already from our initial conversations that he's only begun a very full day. I shake some hands as well, greet them in my minimal Swahili - "Habaree" - and discover that their small fingers are surprisingly cold.
We walk through an endless stream of mud and wattle structures, lanes sometimes less than one meter wide, over canals. We pass women selling maize, a coupe of butcher shops and other kiosks. I dodge various chickens and ducks underfoot. Makuku stops many times to greet friends and children. "When you carry a Bible around here," he says, "they'll know you're up to a lot of good. It's like a policeman in full uniform."
After twenty minutes, we finally arrive at the church that Makuku and his wife, Martha, have recently planted, Kibera Reformed Presbyterian Church. At present, the church has nearly thirty members, most of whom are young, in their early 20s, and of the Luyia tribe, though Makuku is intentionally reaching out to other tribes. He thus uses Swahili instead of Luyia, "or we will close out other tribes completely." Like Servant Partners, Kibera Reformed Presbyterian Church wants to reach across racial and economic divides.
"We have said," Makuku continues, "that we are a church of Christ and we want everybody to know that if they stop in here they are welcome. We want to transcend the tribal system that our political system thrives on."
The church itself is an oblong, eight by thirty foot room of mud and stick walls and a dirt floor. It contains a dozen wooden benches and a table and opens up to a narrow walkway through a couple of wooden doors and windows on one side of the building. They also rent other rooms for various purposes, a total of seven rooms for 5,000 Kenyan Shillings a month (about $70 US). In the dim light of the church, Makuku and I talk further though we're interrupted intermittently by visitors, whom I'm glad to meet. After a while a young girl brings us hot tea.