Ban Ki-moon 'humbled' by walk in Kenyan slum

from Monsters and Critics

By Tia Goldenberg

Nairobi - United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon paid his first visit to one of Africa's largest slums on Tuesday, saying he would work to improve the lives of Africa's poor, as residents of the sprawling area lambasted the UN for not doing enough for them.

Ban was visiting Kibera on behalf of the UN's housing agency, Habitat, as part of his three-country Africa tour.

'We have had many visitors here but we never see any results from their visits,' said Ann Wanjiru, a 37-year-old Kibera resident patiently awaiting Ban's arrival.

Wanjiru sleeps nine people in her small shack and must pay three shillings or about four cents to use the washroom - nearly the price of a small portion of maize meal or kale.

But Wanjiru, who was born and raised in the vast slum, said she has yet to see a change in her poor neighbourhood.

She came to see Ban to make sure he saw what her living situation is like, and called for an 'upgrade,' she said. Around 700,000 people live in Kibera.

Ban, meanwhile, zipped in and out of Kibera followed by a throng of slum-dwellers holding banners aloft reading 'We want affordable housing.'

He popped into several shops, housed in mud walls with corrugated iron roofs, before being briefed by Anna Tibaijuka, UN-Habitat's executive director, on flying toilets.

'They use flying toilets - you know when they do it in plastic bags,' she said. Slum residents, encouraged by the lack of toilets near their homes, often 'do it' in bags they then propel far away.

But Ban, looking calm and assured in a light-blue UN cap and tan safari shirt, said his first visit as UN Secretary General to the putrid smelling slum had humbled him.

'Having seen this situation where many people are suffering from a lack of affordable housing, sanitation, water and education, I am humbled and sad about their difficulties and their suffering,' he said, speaking on a hill overlooking the wide expanse of Kibera's l roofed homes.

'These people should not lose their hope,' he said.

Ban has said he would make the crisis in embattled Darfur a priority during his term with the UN, but in Kibera on Tuesday said the Millennium Development Goals, an eight-point plan to address poverty, should be fulfilled by the globally-set deadline of 2015.

The former South Korean foreign affairs minister said reforming the UN was also high on his agenda.

'I will make my best effort to make the UN more effective, efficient and more relevant,' he said.

But as Ban, the crowd of foreign journalists and UN staff moved out of Kibera, the hordes of slum-dwellers remained behind, retiring to the homes they say are overpriced.

'The UN has done nothing for us,' said Kibera resident Lawrance Makoka. 'We have not yet moved away from this place.'