As you enter Kibera, you enter a world of tin-sheet houses, trash-filled streets, no running water, flying toilets, and thousands of people. Yet the atmosphere is not one of total despair. A sense of waiting, hope, sadness, and joy, all rolled up into one big cloud, sits over this vast area. The kids play soccer in the streets, just as content with a ball made of plastic bags as a real soccer ball. Women talk to each other while they wash their clothes or cook, and men lounge with friends in between welding a new door or making a new bed frame. But there is no money, and it is not uncommon for someone to go with only one meal per day, if that.

Kibera, located in Nairobi, Kenya, is the second largest slum in Africa. Home to between 700,000 and 1 million people, Kibera holds 25% of Nairobi's population. The slum began as a place for Kenyans to come in their transition from the rural areas to the city. Yet, once in Kibera, many do not continue with the transition - they live there, they have children there, they die there. And so, this place of transition has become the home destination for far too many. The poverty, disease, overcrowding, and lack of infrastructure have made this place infamous around the world. Many of you are probably most familiar with it as the shooting location of the recent film The Constant Gardner.

One of the first questions that inevitably pops into mind when first arriving in Kibera is why aren't these people finding jobs in order to pull themselves out of the slum rut? All too soon you discover the answer: there are no jobs available in Nairobi. Each year, only between 4 and 10% of university graduates are able to find employment. If it's that low for those with a degree, you can imagine the impossibility of finding work for those without higher education. Thus, the majority of the population of Nairobi is left to its own devices to make some kind of living.