05.01.2006
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Written Diary Tim Metz <tim@outofafrika.org>
The Lords of Slum - Mathare slum - Nairobi (Kenya)
I always thought slums were places where people who can't afford to buy a house or pay rent within the normal city limits build their own little huts from some basic materials they find on the street. It starts small and innocent on the outskirts of the city on unused land of the government. Slowly it grows into a complete slum-village and that's when the new found urban centre loses its innocence and starts to annoy the city council because they want to use the land for something else. By then the slum is so big though that it can't be removed anymore and it's swallowed up and surrounded by the rest of the city... boy, was I wrong.
Today I visited a slum for the first time in my life to do an interview with a girl who lives there. It's quite an amazing place, although not positively amazing. The best description is thousands of people living together in clay houses build on a gigantic pile of garbage. That didn't really surprise me though, it looks like that on TV as well so the image I had in my head matched completely. So far so good.
The moment I turned out to be a stupid white man occured during the interview. "The rent is about a 1000 shillings a month", she answered. Did I hear that right? "The rent?", was my surprised reponse. She looked at me like I was from another planet (I am!). "Ehmm... yes, the rent to live in this house?!". "You have to pay rent here?", I replied in disbelief. She looked amazed at her brother and then back at me. I could read her mind. "Does this guy really don't know you have to pay rent when you live in a house?". Clash of 2 planets.
I slowly started to realize what this meant: not only was this one of the worst places anyone can imagine to live in, you even had to pay for it! My stupid brains started working again. That also meant someone was actually making money out of this place. Some slumlord actually owns the slums!
I couldn't believe it. People are making money out of the families who live in the slums. To live on 15 - 20 square metres with 6 - 12 persons, a family pays 10 euros a month.
To them, that's a lot of money. To me, that's nothing. "How much would a piece of land cost then?", was my next thought. Turns out a standard piece of slum-land goes for 1500 - 2000 euros. That amount of land can hold 10 houses/families.
1+1=2. You don't even have to give away anything to do good here. I must be able to convince some people in The Netherlands to buy a big piece of slum-land. Familes can then rent for half the price they normally pay and within a couple of years the Dutch "investors" will have their money back and the family can keep the land. Not a profit-investment but a "do good"-investment... it's a win - win situation: you do good without losing a penny - the families pay half the rent they used to and end up owning the land!
One thing left to be solved though... the rent will not come in through electronic bank transfer every month. Any volunteers for collecting it?
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