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.These are their school uniforms, I’m told.AMREF has even built a school here.Others, though, wear only tattered T-shirts and stand there barefoot in the dust and dirt.Many of them are covered in spots and scabs, but they beam smiles at us and say, ‘Hello Mzungu, how are you?’ I take a few of them by their little hands and ask them their names.But then they just turn shy.We plod past the newly built toilets to make our way to a water standpipe.The water here is filtered and almost totally free of bacteria, so everyone has access to clean drinking water from the tap.Since this standpipe was installed there has been a dramatic drop in illnesses, particularly those that cause diarrhoea.On the corner of a big, empty square we come to the AMREF hospital.In the entrance hall queues of the sick wait their turn to be seen.We’re taken upstairs and introduced to several of the staff.A gaunt, elderly man starts by explaining to us how difficult it was to get the hospital up and running.Even the aid organizations find it hard to make any headway in the slum districts.People are mistrustful because they’ve been let down by empty promises so many times before.Over time, however, the hospital has come to be well used, and one big advance has been that more and more women are now registering to have their babies there.AMREF is also engaged in providing medical training for local people, particularly from the slum district itself, which is one more step to improving things.After an hour we leave the building with a greatly increased respect for the incredible job the people here do to help the weak and the sick.Outside we come across a group of young people who work for AMREF after school every day.They tell us their job is a sort of reconnaissance task: they wander around the area, which they all know like the back of their hand, and keep an eye on what’s going on.If they come across someone seriously ill or wounded they inform the hospital immediately so they can get help.As a rule of thumb, people here don’t place too much value on human life.On the way back to the car I spot a mother pig with her piglets rummaging in the dross around a rubbish heap.Just two yards away from me a man stands urinating on some planks.A few feet further away an old woman is crouching in a shelter grilling fish in a pan over an open fire.Next to her about fifty raw fish lie on a makeshift table swarming with flies.I’ve never seen so many flies before, not even at the worst of times living in a manyatta.It makes me sick to even think that these fish are going to be sold and eaten.The temperature is thirty-five degrees and the stink is something rotten.The toothless old woman laughs when she sees how disgusted I look and waves a piece of cardboard to fan the flames.A few paces on a man is selling five corn cobs he’s grilled.I’m horrified but at the same time fascinated to see how much energy these people put into just surviving.Nobody complains; everybody just tries to muddle through as best they can.Back at the railway tracks I decide to buy a bag for my journey from one of the women there.She’s delighted to show me her selection.Naturally they’re all covered with dust having been hung out all day on her wooden stall.While I’m deciding which to buy a goods train hurtles past.People leap off the tracks, and I squeeze up against the stall as hard as I can.A cloud of dust sent up by the passing train covers all the goods and flies into my face.But within a few seconds it’s all over, as if it was just a fleeting phantom, and the women are shaking their goods free of the dust.To think they do this all day long, every day of their lives! Once again it brings home to me how privileged our lives are in Europe.I pay for the bag and we walk slowly back to the car.From every corner we hear the cacophony of music and voices as we drive off, slowly squeezing our way down the narrow alleyways, watched all the way by countless pairs of eyes.I feel anything but comfortable.As we drive back I mentally compare the life of the slum-dwellers with that of my family in Barsaloi.Obviously they don’t know the meaning of being ‘comfortable’ in our European sense, but they live in wide-open spaces with blue sky above them
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