Dagoretti and The Promised Land

By Kate Copstick June 2006

Felista Wangui Kibe has lived in the slums of Nairobi for thirty years.

For many years she has run a feeding project for the children there who are HIV+ or have AIDS, or who are orphans or caring for parents who are too ill to look after themselves, let alone their children.

One year ago Felista was given the use of a plot of land at Dagoretti Corner. From there she fed over 100 children; older children joined the project and taught the younger ones basic lessons; Felista gave them all as much support and love as she could.

The idea is that if you feed children, clothe them and give them some support and education, they will not take to the streets and parking lots to steal, beg or get themselves into trouble in other ways. In the time Felista ran the project, the incidence of “parking boys” – young boys who hang around the parking areas – dropped dramatically.

Then, the Cornerstone Baptist Church, of which Felista was a member, bought the land, requiring the vendor to evict Felista, the children, and, thereafter, bulldozing her little corrugated iron kitchen and school room.

Meanwhile, in London, a mad Scotsman by the name of Archie (deaf in one ear, lame in one leg and in the aftermath of a major heart attack, whose late wife was Kenyan and died of an AIDS related illness) had raised £ 500 to help buy the land from which Felista had just been evicted. After a careful study of the project and a voluntary visit made by Haddy Wadda whilst on holiday last year, CWAC matched the donation to raise it to £ 1,000. Sadly, the money came too late.

Felista was now running this project from another of the slum villages, where the women gave her space around their fire and helped cook the food Felista brought for the children each Saturday, the only day of the week on which they were fed properly. Other than that they would get a small cup of wimbi porridge (a little like dark brown gritty Complan but without the nutritional value). They sleep outside on the ground, many without blankets. They only have the clothes they stand up in and many have no shoes.  The football with which they play (rather well) is made from bits of collected discarded plastic tied into a rough sphere with string. They are astounding children: intelligent, articulate, charming, polite, caring and generous.

In the couple of months since her eviction, Felista had picked herself up and found another plot of land. Her plan was back on track.

This is how my visit went.

WEDNESDAY, 07th JUNE 2006

I, as a trustee of CWAC (Children With AIDS Charity), who has been helping Archie, check in at Kenya Airways (“promoted as the Pride of Africa”). I am with Archie (who now has a sore back too), his son, a donated computer for Felista, a big case of clothes and a large holdall full of donated medication – mainly anti retrovirals – for the children, and a letter from CWAC who had been pleading with Kenyan Airways for a little leniency when it came to baggage allowance.  They gave us an extra 20 kilos. I was told I could a) leave the medication behind or b) pay £ 350 excess.  My credit card was duly warmed up.

THURSDAY, 08th JUNE 2006

We arrive in Nairobi at 6.30 am local time. I am stopped at Customs and told I have to pay import duty on the clothes and medication. My still warm credit card is further heated.

Felista is waiting. She is a human cuddle with a smile that splits her face like one of those little PACMAN graphics from the old video game.

We slowly bounce, nose to tail with dented rusting Nissans, into Nairobi, breakfast, and head to the bank. I am threatened by three different lots of security guards when I attempt some arty GVs outside. The account is opened for the Dagoretti Early Child Education Intervention Programme and the thousand pounds deposited.

We head for the slum village of Dagoretti. It is all corrugated lean-tos and mud puddles. We hit the local bar (The Holiday Inn, by name) for a meeting with the woman who owns the land that Felista has her big brown shining eyes on. She wants the thousand pounds to buy her a year’s lease on the land. Or “the raad” as she calls it.   

The landlady is straight from Central Casting. They talk. And talk. And talk.  And then this marvelous woman announces that she will give Felista a year’s tenure free of charge, at the end of which Felista will have an option to buy for the equivalent of around £ 5000 per acre. Archie’s money will be going to work right away!

We head for the hills to see Felista’s new “raad”. The dirt track that leads up the hill would challenge a mountain goat, but we get there and it is beautiful. Calm. Green. I feel like I can see forever. Felista sees a kitchen, a clinic, a school room, little living spaces, toilets and space for goats, chickens and cows for milk, and a garden for growing vegetables. Felista sees a home for the homeless. Help for the helpless.  Love for the unloved.   I like what Felista sees.    

We meet the neighbours who appear out of the twilight like ghosts. They are related to the Masai and are tall, beautiful - and starving. Even the children. I spend about £ 3 and everyone gets a bag of Ugali (cornmeal) and a banana. We assure them that we will be back tomorrow and bump off into the pitch black.

FRIDAY, 09th JUNE 2006   

I meet up with Felista and we walk through the slums of Dagoretti, Congo Village, Ngando, Githembe and Waynee. She explains the system here that leaves HIV+ women and their children helpless and hopeless. We talk to people along the way.

We reach a little clinic and meet Sister Theresia, who has been looking after these women and children for a decade. We give her the medication we have brought. And she talks. It is moving, scary stuff.

I spend £ 75 and buy Ugali and soap for 100 of her HIV+ mothers’ group.  Sister Theresia tells me God will bless me. I wonder aloud whether perhaps it would be better if God blessed her mothers in the first place, and I wouldn’t need to enter the equation. After all, they believe in him. I don’t.

We drop in at Felista’s house. She is out of the worst part of the slums and now lives in a little breeze block house. It has a concrete floor, hole in the ground toilet, tiny primus camping stove and three rooms. It is Felista’s palace. She shows me her office – a box under her bed – where she keeps meticulous accounts for the project.

We go back to Dagoretti Corner and break in to see the land on which Felista had her original project. I am balanced on a stump, shooting my camera over the high corrugated iron fence around the land, when we encounter the landowner’s sister.  She and Felista begin what might euphemistically be termed “a heated debate” in Kiswahili. Jackson, the taxi driver (who has sort of become part of our group) and I peel Felista away and we leave.  

We go back up into the hills in the bright sunshine and film the new land which Felista calls “the promised land”. Now there are about five times the number of neighbours. They have come with a proposition for me.

While I am spending about another £ 15 on biscuits, Ugali and soap, they tell me they don’t like taking handouts. They ask if I can find seed money for them to start a beading business. They are experts in the art of beading. They have worked out how much they need. It is £ 500. They don’t want the money, just the beads and the strings and the needles. And they believe they can then become self sufficient. I promise I will find the money by September when I come back.

On the way back we drop in to Nyumbani – an orphanage for AIDS orphans and homeless HIV+ children, which CWAC has been supporting for some time. It is beautiful – set behind high walls, in acres of gardens, with the kids living in little houses set round a playground. Tiny coffee coloured nuns pick flowers and nod “Karibu” (“welcome”). It feels like a good place. Archie and Nyumbani go back a long way and he shows us around like a proud parent.  There is a tennis court…a huge vegetable garden…a tiny graveyard.

We leave and eat choma and ugali (yup, everyone eats ugali here. Ugali is to Kenya what the chip is to Glasgow).  

SATURDAY, 10th JUNE 2006

I spend £ 150 in the local wholesaler and buy – guess what? – ugali, cooking fat, sugar, rice,  biscuits and soap. This will last Felista’s children about a month. £ 150! That’s one dinner for two at Locanda Locatelli, or a couple of bottles of fizz at China White. Or three grams of indifferent coke if you’re that way inclined.

We spend the day in Githembe with about 150 children: charming, intelligent, articulate, wonderful children - who are totally destitute. They tell me their stories; they explain the problems of their lives; they tell me what they need; they share with me their hopes and their fears. It is overwhelming. They get wimbi porridge with rice, margarine and sugar added, in worn plastic mugs or washed out tin cans salvaged from rubbish dumps. They worry that I don’t have any and offer to share.  

The mums stir goat bone and potato stew in a vast pan while I talk to the children, then we hand out the clothes and the children start singing. I attempt to dance and they fall about the place laughing. And teach me how to do it properly. (Well, as properly as I can with my skinny white woman’s ass.)

They eat stew and suck bones and I talk to a group of HIV+ mothers. I am honoured and humbled because they have never talked to anyone before like this – the taboo that surrounds HIV has ensured they are completely cast out from society. Yet these are women who just want to care for their families and themselves.

Back at The Holiday Inn, in the evening, we eat more ugali and choma and the lovely landlady appears with her husband and her stunningly beautiful daughter and we sign the agreement for Felista’s “raad”. Felista looks like she might burst. We go dancing.   

SUNDAY, 11th JUNE 2006

I fly away.  

I make lists.

This is what I am going to do.

 1. I will make a plan of the land and divide the five acres into 100 lots which I will “sell” for £ 100 per lot, thus raising money for Felista to buy the land with. I will sell to the rich, to celebrities, to the great and the good.

2. There will be a lunch event hosted in London by Felista and her landlady.  The plan of the land will be cut up and those who have “bought” lots will get the piece of the plan they have “bought”, signed by the landlady.

3. Then we will start to build. Toilets: £250  Clinic: £2000   etc. etc. etc.

People (who will, of course, be found in advance) will donate a 4 wheel drive vehicle (VERY necessary).

One day, in the very near future, we will build Dagoretti on the promised land.

4. In September I will go back to Nairobi to see how Felista is getting on.  

I will stop off at Kenyan Airways (“the Pride of Africa”) to discuss with them the waiving of all excess baggage charges for medication and donations for HIV+ children in Kenya.

5. At Christmas I will be there again to see the New Year start in The Promised Land. By then Felista will have enough funding to buy some of the land. And, hopefully, building will start.

6. I will ensure that filming of the project development continues. There is already about 6 hours of footage, including interviews with all protagonists, children, mums and community leaders.

Updates to follow...

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