"Kenya's Shanty Kids Go Online"
February 13, 2000
Electronic Mail&Guardian
September 24, 1998
Kenya's Shanty Kids Go Online by Philip Ngunjiri The marvels of the Internet have spread to the children of the sprawling shanty town of Mathare on the outskirts of Nairobi - from where they exchange images and share ideas and experiences with other children around the world. "We have been exchanging e-mail and images with children from Dhaka, London and Cape Town and other cities around the world,'' says Mohamed Dahir of the Mathare Youth Sports Association's (MYSA) ''Shootback'' Programme. ''The project provides the kids with an opportunity to express their voice and let them tell the story from their perspective,'' says Lorna Wong, the programme cordinator. ''Through photography, the youngsters gain self-esteem and understand more of the realities around them.'' Children aged between 8 and 18 years have been taught the art of photography and of editing images as they depict life in the slum that they call their home. Some of the images, 'Through A Child's Eye: Photos of and by African Children on the Internet' have been sponsored by the New York-based Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. Collins Omondi, a star pupil at Mathare, says it is about time they shake off the stereotype that depicts most childrem from the slum ''as glue-sniffing thieves... good-for-nothing kids destined to end up in jail or killed by mob justice.'' Omondi aspires to a career as a web designer and, at 15, already has caught the attention of business professionals in the Kenyan capital. He says the majority of the children training at Mathare have a chance to get a job as most Kenyans ''don't know anything about the Internet.'' Mathare, with a total population of more than 700,000 people, is one of Africa's largest and poorest slums. The majority of the population here are children who have no access to sporting activities. Their homes, surrounded by uncollected garbage, attracts a host of diseases that cripple or kill many of their number. Since 1987, the Mathare Sports Association has pioneered several innovative programmes in sports, environmental improvement and community development. ''With more than 600 soccer teams from 80 slum villages and estates in the city of Nairobi, MYSA is Africa's largest youth sports and community service organisation,'' says their leader, Francis Kimanthi. Every weekend, 25-30 teams help clean up the garbage and ditches around their homes. Also 125 of their numbers have received training in AIDS/HIV awareness, prevention and counselling in Mathare. The programme, introduced just one year ago, has 32 children - half of them girls - between the age group 8-18. ''The aim was to introduce the programme and to strengthen relationships between MYSA youth as well as to offer a vocational outlet for their creative energies,'' says Wong. The children have been trained to use a 35-mm-compact camera and ''to photograph aspects of their lives that they deem important or problematic,'' says Wong. These include family, community, environment, health and personal issues. Their photographs are being shown simultaneously with the World Press Photo Exhibition which is this year taking place in Kenya at the Kenya National Museums. ''It's the most moving exhibition by future photographers that I have ever seen,'' says Cecelia Noss, an attorney from New Rochelle, New York, who is currently on holiday with her husband in the East African country. ''Very impressive piece of work,'' added the husband, Rodney. The couple has purchased 50 postcards carrying some of the images that are on sale at the exhibition. ''I have been selling an average of between 100-200 postcards a day on behalf of MYSA,'' says Lucy Njeri of the Contemporary Art of East Africa Hall, where the exhibition is taking place. ''With the money collected from the sale of postcards and posters, we shall build a darkroom and media information centre in Mathare to demonstrate the children's talent,'' says Wong, who adds that a book detailing the works of the youth is also underway in Kenya.