Chronicles from Kenya: Fire!
By gef on Feb 28 2011
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I got a call from Fred, the GEF Kenya Director, that there was a fire in an informal settlement (aka. a slum) where some of our students live and attend school. I met Fred there and as we began to walk deeper into the settlement it was clear that this had been a devastating fire for the community. To my knowledge no one was hurt.
On the outskirts we passed by piles of furniture, mattresses and bags – stuff families had saved from their homes before the fire came their way. Farther in we dodged burnt blankets and twisted metal objects as the heat grew stronger and bits of ash flew in our faces. Apparently the fire was still moving along nearby, but it had clearly already done its damage to the area where we were heading.
We met up with one of our students, let’s call her Leigh, who took us over to where her house used to be. In its place was a pile of twisted sheets of corrugated metal. It is difficult to imagine that prior to the fire there were a row of homes. In fact, I had visited Leigh’s home a few years ago, and while it was a modest one-room building where Leigh, her father and sisters stayed, it was still their home and they were very happy to have it.
Fred told me that the homes in this settlement are generally constructed of wooden beams or poles set up as the frame of the house with corrugated metal sheets attached for the walls and roofs. When the fire blazed through, along with burning whatever was inside the homes, it burned the frame of the house causing the homes to collapse and the metal to warp under the heat.
What was amazing to me, and definitely not amazing to anyone who lived there, was that while another part of the settlement continued to burn and families were trying to get out of its way, the part I visited was already rebuilding… and this area was still smoking and hot. Men were pulling out salvageable sheets of metal and one home was already under construction.
Leigh and her father were planning on spending the night with their pile of stuff in the midst of the scorched metal. I asked Fred how much it would cost to put them up in a hotel because I was concerned for their safety staying outside at night. It turned out that for roughly the same amount for one night in a hotel/guest house the family could cover an equivalent home in the neighboring settlement for an entire month. And how much was this amount we were discussing? 13 dollars.
As I walked back out of the community, maneuvering around metal and furniture, I was struck by how calm everyone was. Many of the men were pulling metal; the women were seated with their things in conversation with their friends, while the children ran around chatting and playing. I told Leigh that she was being very strong for having just lost her home. “It’s difficult,” she said, “but it’s life in the slums.”
Suzanne, GEF Associate Director
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