Kibera is known as the second-largest slum in Africa, after Soweto in South Africa. We often hear about it in numbers 500,000 people, 800,000 people, perhaps even a million. These figures sound abstract, almost distant, as though they belong to another world. But behind each number is a face, a name, and a story.
When I visited Kibera recently, I realized how easy it is to hide behind statistics. We read reports, we pray for change, we trust that the government is “doing something.” Yet, walking through those narrow paths, I saw children whose smiles could light up the world, children filled with laughter, curiosity, and joy at meeting someone new who had simply come to say hello. And in their eyes, I saw something hauntingly familiar: myself.
The difference between their lives and mine is circumstance. Many of these children are born to young mothers doing their best with what little they have, working long hours in unskilled labor just to survive. The cost of this survival is often unseen: abandoned children left to navigate life alone. Without guidance, a young girl may accept affection from strangers who take advantage of her innocence. It is not uncommon here for children to raise children.
This is the matrix I speak of, the endless loop of hardship, neglect, and loss, passed down from one generation to the next. It is a cycle of suffering that continues not just because of poverty, but because of indifference.
In that vast slum is a little girl, someone’s daughter who dreams, who laughs, who could one day change the world if only given a chance. What if you and I decided to fight for her? To give her options to teach her how to read, to think, to dream, and to believe she is worthy of love and a future?