Kipchumba Some wrote a sobering description in an article yesterday’s Daily Nation about problems in Nairobi’s slums. The grinding poverty and lack of any feasible alternative future make young men easy recruits for al Shabaab in the same way that they make young women easy recruits for prostitution. Given the choice between a terrible life and no life at all, many people make horrifying choices.
The article describes a 40-year-old man, Joseph Njoroge, who recently had cause to reflect on what had happened over the years to his schoolmates. Out of a class of about 30, only about six were still alive. The majority had died as a result of police shootings, mob lynchings or gang warfare. Others had died from AIDS complications and other complications for which they were not able to afford medical treatment. Some had died from alcohol or drug abuse.
Although Kenya is experiencing economic growth, the effects are not felt in the slums. The brutality and hopelessness of life in the slums remains undiminished, and people from rural areas continue to migrate to the slums in search of urban employment opportunities. Slums are by their nature largely beyond the reach of law and order, and they remain a hotbed for national insecurity.