This photo reportage was shot on a humanitarian mission to Nairobi, Kenya, in two of the biggest slums in Africa: Dandora and Korogocho. Here, our crew initiated a project with street kids to guarantee them education and health care so that they will get the opportunity to leave the ghetto and live freely, deciding by themselves what to do and become in their lives.
Ghetto life is very tough. There is no food, often no water, no welfare. Sanitary conditions are very bad, leading to the spread of incurable illnesses such as aids, hepatitis, malaria and coronavirus. Everything is controlled by gangsters, so crime levels are very high. Unemployment can also reach some of the highest rates in the world, around 80%. So there is no safety in the blocks where the only way you survive is digging all day from sunrise to sunset with your bare hands in the dump located in the middle of the slum, looking for something with any value to sell for a few coins. Many do this with a baby tied to the shoulder.
Statistics tell a different story. They indicate that people from the third world are emotionally happier than those from the first world. Living without materialism, they have learnt life values affordable for everyone that transform human relationships through unity, family, helping each other, music and religion. Any relationships between the first world and the third world will help us to remember what really matters in life. This will also help them to find the right support for Africa to rise up after 400 years of colonisation, which caused the biggest state of poverty ever seen. We can build a better world by doing our best everyday to help them, finding solutions for the mistakes made in the past by our ancestors. – N
