Finding Real

‘How many people live here?’ I ask Piers as he leads me further up the rise through growing piles of rubbish.

It’s mostly made of used plastic bags because that’s what you do with plastic bags in Kibera when you finish with them. Whether they are your toilet or your food vessel, sooner or later they end up on the raw dirt streets. Everything else melds into a twisted, stinking mess that seems to be everywhere I want to step.
It’s unescapably hot. And dry. My long cotton pants are browning with wind-borne dust.

Piers laughs. “How many to the Government? Or how many really?”

“How many really?” I look out over the rise we have just climbed. My eyes have been glued to the ground, the rubbish, the unkempt train line that runs half-covered in dirt. Now I look up to see the true reach of this slum-city. Well, Slum suburb technically but one of the things I learned in Kenya is to discard technicality. Everything is fluid.
My eyes adjust as a breathtaking expanse of tin huts and houses and shops are laid before my eyes, all glued together with mud. Children play in dust and sweat gleams from the ebony torsos of young men running like warriors in a game of soccer. I hear coughing and the beeping of cars and voices that cry in Swahili rise into the morning smog, all permeated with the stench of waste and defecation. It’s frailty and strength, courage and despair all in one. Of one thing I am sure- this is more real than anything I have ever seen.
Piers has walked with me all day, a Mizungu- white- woman he has never met. Without him I would have been robbed by now, endured the taunts that come with the colour of my skin. But he is greeted with reverence by everyone we pass which tells me that he is born and raised of this untouchable pocket of Nairobi. He helps keep order where city police dare not go. Kibera is a law unto itself- order created from the chaos of desperation. They all know how delicate this balance of relative peace is; how easily things could fall.
Minutes pass before Piers rests his hand on my shoulder and I realise I have been staring silently. He is much taller than I, and the scars on his face tell of a slum-life I could never imagine. But his gentle voice tells me he would not leave for the world. His place is to give his life to Kibera and all who dwell within its boundary.

“Three hundred thousand” He says, and I look around shaking my head.

“That’s what the Government says?” He nods. “And what do you say?”

“Millions, my friend.”