As you enter Mukuru you are struck by the poverty.
The slums consist of sheet metal and wooden shantys, squeezed together side-by-side separated by narrow pathways and small, unpaved heavily rutted streets.
Every home/shanty seems to have a business of some kind in front - selling tomatoes, cabbages, butcheries, hair salons, selling plastic bottles or fried dough to name a few. Every "shop" has a sign with a unique name, mostly in English. One of my favorites is "Waka-Knife the Butcher".
Plastic garbage is everywhere. The paper trash is burned and the roaming goats eat the organic waste.
The slum is filled to the brim with people. Some are busily walking, some manning the storefronts, others just sitting and watching. The children are emerged in dust, stagnant water, and trash.
There are rows of sheet metal outhouses that serve as latrines...nothing more than holes in the ground with a little privacy. Those fortunate enough to have private latrines keep them padlocked for their own use. The less fortunate use plastic shopping bags which are heaped in large piles. These are often called "flying toilets."
The air is filled with many smells. The most prominant smell is that of dusty stench. As you pass by different areas of the slum you may smell the frying dough, or 2 day-old fish heads that are for sale, and of course there are the latrines and flying toilet piles.
Goats and chickens roam the streets among the mobs of people. Handcarts are the main transportation system within the slum, transporting anything from cabbages to plastic jugs of kerosene.
It is surprising the density of people in this slum, especially with the expanses of open land surrounding Nairobi.
