Markham Nolan

Before I am lambasted, a caveat. The phrase ‘slumming it’ is haughty and deplorable at the best of times. I use it here in knowing irony that it’s been chosen as a Facebook photo caption by more than one ignorant gap year student or blundering slum tourist who’s pointed and shot at the slums. And in my short time working with the guys in Kibera, there was a steady trickle of conspicuous white people up on the railway tracks, snapping away at ‘chocolate city’, the nickname given the view of rusty corrugated iron rooves of the slum.

The debate over slum tourism, poverty tourism – call it what you like – provides rich pickings. There’s a pretty comprehensive digest of it here. And it crept up on me while I was walking home after doing some food shopping in the local supermarket about ten days ago.

I’ve been staying a ten-minute walk from Kibera. At 7am, the road outside the house is a conveyor belt for Kibera residents heading to work in the city or the surrounding suburbs. They pour out in the early morning, on foot and in matatus, and commute back in the evening. We were walking with the evening tide of people: myself, a student doctor from the UK, an English artist, and two Irish lads out for a short voluntourism stint, combined with a climb of Mount Kenya.

I had been in Kibera for the last few days, meeting with the Map Kibera and Kibera News Network teams and doing some work with them on editing and shooting stuff in Kibera. The Irish lads were keen to go and ‘see’ Kibera. The doctor and the artist both had things they wanted to ‘do’ in Kibera. She was doing some work in a clinic in the Kiberan suburb of Ushirika, and the artist wanted to meet Maasai Mbili and establish a link with them for a future project.

In a knee-jerk, I found myself extending an invitation to the ‘doers’ to join me, and almost in the same breath, trying to dissuade the other two from going in at all.

‘There’s really nothing to see,” I told them, uttering at once the truth and a complete lie. Kibera is just a town, after all, made famous not for sights nor history but primarily for its poverty. Of course, I had found Kibera a fascinating, visually compelling place, and had been viewing it through a camera lens for days as I filmed with KNN. It is colourful, vibrant and different. So to say that there was nothing to see made me a complete hypocrite.

But it spoke to my gut motivations. I’m not in favour of having a quick, purposeless gawp at relative poverty. If that’s what you go to do, all you will see is poverty, you won’t get any context.  If a rich American tourist strutted through my back garden taking photos without permission or without bothering to stop and say hello, I’d heave a plant pot at his skull and feel justified in doing so. If he was invited in by a neighbour and was genuinely interested in something about me, I’d probably put on some coffee.

In working with the KNN guys, I was able to interact, learn and contribute, much as the doc and the artist would be doing. I gave back, in terms of advice on editing, camerawork and planning. I helped the KNN organisers establish links with a major international NGO. I also felt very uncomfortable using my camera unless the guys gave me the go-ahead, and really didn’t feel comfortable taking obvious, cliched shots that one might expect to come away with after days spent in Kibera. It felt wrong, so I didn’t do it.

If you read Brian Ekdale’s ‘Before you go (if you must)’ points on visiting Kibera, one of the more striking directions he gives is: ‘Leave your camera at home’. Dead right. Had I done that? No, but then again, my purpose for going in was to document. So I couldn’t leave it. But at the same time, I wasn’t going in just to grab a few snaps and head off to Dorman’s coffee shop for a latte and a contemplative sigh. I’d got to know a gang of great people who I hope to stay in touch with for a long time to come. I had respected their work before arriving, and it was great to be part of that.

TMS Ruge puts it most concisely: “You really want change? Put down the camera, walk up to anyone in that slum, get to know them.” It’s a good threshold, and one I can say I’ve met. And in doing so, I pushed beyond the veneer that the snapping tourist sees. Not far, mind, Kibera is a nuanced, complex place, and like any neighbourhood, you’d have to live in it for a long time to ‘get’ it.

A few days in an area does not make one an expert, nor any kind of authority.  But having spent a week in Kibera, I’m beginning to understand how to begin to understand it. And understanding that’s where I’m at is very good beginning.

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