Kenya: From rubbish dump to cabbage patch!!! Wow!

Rubbish is everywhere in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum, just a few kilometres from the centre of Nairobi. It lies not just between the ramshackle dwellings, but often underneath them, rendering them vulnerable to collapse in times of flood. 

But the face of the slum is beginning to change as fresh vegetables spring up where trash once lay rotting. 

The youth in Kandimiru, one of the villages within the slum have, through a self-help group, established the first organic farm on what was once a garbage dumpsite. 

“We wanted to keep the area clean so we saw it fit to have a garden,” Augustine Oramisi, the chairman of the Kibera Youth Initiative for Community Development, a local umbrella body for self-help groups in Kibera, told IRIN. 

Most of the youth involved in the project were involved in the post-election clashes that rocked the slum earlier in the year, Oramisi said.

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“The problems [in the slums] might be big but we also have the solutions,” Agoro said. “What these people need is a push, not pity.”

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