kibera

I spent a few days on this trip visiting the Kibera Slum, the largest slum in Africa.

To the slum-dwellers of Kibera or Dharavi, all this may seem distant, indeed far-fetched.

Life inside Kibera, whether journalists and editors deem it worth repeating or not, is a desperate affair for those that call it home.

In Kibera, on the city's south side, what little food there was reached prices the poor could not possibly afford.

He was actually living in the Kibera slums when his father called him and told him about Artemisia and the value-add potential.

Schlangen, who had come to Kenya via Egypt, said that he would remember Kibera as a place of hope.

Map Kibera is a stellar example of "public participation GIS" -- involving a community in the creation of a map.

Four decades ago, the Nairobi slum of Kibera, barely two kilometres (a mile) from the leafy charm of the city centre, hardly existed.

The organization is working to build a digital public map of the Kibera community for the residents and organizations working there.

Today he's a community organizer in Kibera, one of the biggest slums in East Africa.

While Kibera is an extreme example, lack of wastewater treatment is a global issue.

But in practice, Google has left out wide swaths of African cities -- the Kibera slums of Nairobi, most notably.

A man uses a photographic film strip to observe an annular eclipse near the Kibera slums in Kenya's capital Nairobi, January 15, 2010.

People use photographic film strips to observe an annular eclipse near the Kibera slums in Kenya's capital Nairobi, January 15, 2010.

The post-election violence that put Kibera on the media radar this winter was long over.

Martin Oduor guided the Dutch group for Kibera Tours, which promises that its profits will stay in the local community.

Here a girl washes her muddied sandals along a dirty water canal in the Nairobi slum of Kibera on March 21.

Other Kibera residents have taken a different path.

This is Kibera, Kenya, one of the largest slums of Africa.

Kibera, like most African slums, is a true arrival city.

A month ago I visited Kibera, the largest slum in Africa.

When I was 18, I founded an organization that provides education, health and economic services for Kibera residents.

An opposition supporter runs with empty canisters to bring water to extinguish a burning house in Nairobi's Kibera slum January 29, 2008.

It was about 7am on a Saturday when I arrived at one of Kibera's many entrances.

Youths celebrate New Year's Day with fire crackers in Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya January 1, 2010.

The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 1 billion people live in slums like Kibera.

Recently however the results of Kenya's 2009 census were released: according to the official tally Kibera has just 194 269 residents.

The United Nations Population Fund estimates that 1 billion people live in slums like Kibera - one in every six people in the world.

The team for the Kibera Open Street Map project in Kenya reports a similar phenomenon: "Build it and they will come . . . slowly. "

When you look at Kibera now, they look back.

I want to make sure everybody in America knows Kibera.