The threat to national security posed by mushrooming slums can best be told through the story of Mr Joseph Njoroge, a 40-year-old businessman who runs a clothes stall in Korogocho slums.
Recently, he was happy to meet by chance a former school mate. They went to a hotel to catch up on old times. But one thing turned their get-together into a moment of sorrow and reflection.
Of their 30-odd male classmates, only about six remain alive. Nearly all of them went into a life of crime and met their deaths through police gunshots, mob lynching or death resulting from gang rivalry.
Others succumbed to a myriad of health complications. Quite a good number died of Aids-related complications while others were dispatched died due to treatable diseases but which they could not afford.
Others succumbed to complications brought about by hard drinking of cheap liquor manufactured in almost industrial scale in slums. Still others were wasted away by hard drugs, also cheaply available.
At 40, when “real life” is supposed to be “begin” according to sociologists, it was profoundly tragic for Mr Njoroge and his friend to realise that the number of their childhood friends are barely more than the fingers of one hand.
It is a reflection of the frightening rates of crime and lawlessness in some of the city slums of which Korogocho, Dandora and Mathare are notorious.
“We live on a prayer here, in every sense of it,” said Mr Aloysius Irubu, a manager at Peace Building Initiative — a programme started by St Teresa Catholic Church in Mathare to address problems facing slum dwellers there.
“You walk around these slums and the sheer hopelessness that hits you hard on the face and you realise why, for these children, picking a gun to rob is as easy as someone else going to the supermarket to buy a packet of milk,” he said.
But this is the story Kenyan slums — are hotbeds of some of the grimmest vices. One wonders just how safe the country is with such a teeming youth population in the grip of poverty and idleness.
“Despite all the lofty projections about economic growth, despite the grand development plans we set, all will fail if we do not address the slums. The greatest threat comes from there,” said Mr Kingsley Kariuki.
And he should know better. Mr Kariuki works with Muungano Wa Wanavijiji, a group of non-governmental organisations advocating for the rights of slum dwellers.
For one to appreciate the full extent of the challenge that slums pose to national security, one needs to look at national security through the larger perspective.
In a country where the average lifespan is 63 years, according to UN report, life in the slums can be brutally shorter. In many slums, a young man of 25 years is regarded as an old man.
Right from birth, the odds are stacked against those in the slums. Children start life on poverty’s front line. Many die before they are five years old from indoor air pollution and easily preventable diseases.
“A child born in the slums is socialised in the way of violence and deprivation. How realistic should we expect that child to grow up responsibly and contribute to the well-being of the society?” posed Mr Kariuki.
Adulthood promises little respite. One only needs to pay a visit, as we did recently, to “Nigeria” — a small section of Mathare slums near St Teresa Catholic Church, along the road to Moi Airbase in Eastleigh — to know why.
For the drug lords, most of who live in posh gated estates, the slums are the best places to do their business. For one, the residents provide a ready market for the drugs.
“Many youth find an outlet in this business,” said our guide, whom we shall only call Eunice to protect her identity. “I was once here and I thank God I have managed to pull myself out of it.”
Many do not manage to lift themselves out of the quagmire with tragic consequences. She revealed that she was once approached to be a mule of a West African drugs kingpins operating out of Mathare.
She declined the offer, but the temptations of quick, easy buck proved a greater temptation to many of her friends, and the result has been more pain to many families already living on the fringes of life.
Tens of these young women from Mathare are currently languishing in various Asia jails after being arrested. “I cannot blame them. It is difficult as a young man to see your whole life wasting away doing nothing,” she said.
On a typical Friday or Saturday evening, hundreds of young men flock to Nigeria for their dose of crack. But that is not all, some of the city’s notorious criminals congregate to buy and sell weapons and plan their next targets.
A little bit further from Nigeria, in Huruma at Bondeni village, by the banks of the sewage-filled Nairobi River, are the brewing dens of the city that produce illicit liquors.
Tales of young men and women killed and maimed by the killer brews are all too common. “If there was no demand I would not be brewing this stuff,” one of the young men brewing the liquor informed us.
But a recent NTV expose of women living with HIV in Korogocho slums preparing a potent drink made of anti-retrovirals meant to control the virus and formalin serves as a sobering reminder of the dangers the brewing dens pose to the country’s health sector. (READ: A most shocking discovery )
This shadowy business, operating totally out of reach of the taxman, hurts genuine manufacturers in many ways. More often, their brands are used to market the fake brands.
It was also in Huruma and larger Mathare that an informant told us of the hundreds of youth who have been recruited by Somalia’s insurgent group Al-Shabaab.
“Those were my friends and they were not fundamentalists. They were not even Muslims. They were promised good money and having nothing else to do around, they signed up. A man has to do what he got to do, I guess.”
For many women in Nairobi’s crowded slums, life is fraught with danger. Violence against women is widespread where ineffective policing results in rape and other violence against women going largely unpunished.
That is not all. The slums are the main suppliers of Kenya’s flesh market. Young women, unable to find work, mainly due to lack of education, often opt to peddle in city’s flesh pots themselves to make ends meet.
