A man walks through the charred remains of Sinai informal settlement
(Photo: © Colin Smith/CMS)On 12 September a fire tore through the informal settlement of Sinai in Nairobi. Colin Smith, CMS mission partner, went to visit and reflects on people's solidarity, hope and big ideas...
September 12th, the day after 9/11. Not a day when it will be claimed that the world changed, but for a community of slum dwellers in Nairobi’s industrial area, it is a day from which life may never be the same again.
A leak of petrol from the Kenya pipeline flowed through a drainage system in Nairobi’s industrial area emerging in an open sewer that leads into the Nairobi river.
The sewer was in the midst of Sinai, an informal settlement hugging a thin strip of land between the industrial area and the river. Some residents, sensing an opportunity, began to collect the petrol floating on the sewerage and take it back to their homes.
What happened next is not known. A spark, a cigarette end? The result was a massive explosion which destroyed about 160 homes, took over 100 lives and left scores in hospital with serious burns.
Where only the desperate live
Today as I stood on the site which eight days ago had been alive with activity it was hard to believe that 160 homes could have crowded into the charred space remaining.
Only a few cement floors and the remains of an incinerated mattress gave any indication that this was a place that some called home.
It is not land for housing. It is beneath power lines, too close to the river and on top of a sewer line. It is not a place to live in by choice.
Of the 160 households only 19 owned their simple structure. The rest belong to absentee landlords who have somehow contrived to build where only the desperate would choose to rent.
I visited with a large contingent from the Anglican Church led by the bishop of Nairobi. About 150 people, mainly clergy had gathered at St Stephen’s cathedral to pray.
I was among those leading the prayers and as ever struggled to know how to pray in the face of such a disaster.
Solidarity in the face of disaster
From the cathedral we travelled a short distance to Tom Mboya Hall where those rendered homeless are given temporary shelter.
The Church brought gifts, collected at the service, which eventually totalled the equivalent of almost £5,000. To this was added gifts of clothes and food to add to the mountain of gifts collected by Kenya Red Cross.
So often, reports of humanitarian responses to national tragedies, perhaps especially in Africa, fail to grasp the agency and generosity of local people.
The government has promised substantial help for the injured and homeless – that is yet to be fully seen or realised – but the compassion and generosity of the church and of the ordinary people of Nairobi was there for all to see.
I even saw one of our former students with a truck load of gifts carried from the people of Kiambiu, another slum not much different to Sinai.
There may be competition, but also solidarity among those who struggle to survive.
A mix of joy and despair
The temporary “camp” was an emotive mix of hope, despair, joy and exhaustion.
Children bounced on a trampoline and sang and laughed, able in the moment to blank out the reality that some were now orphaned.
A children’s worker spoke to me of their sense of feeling emotionally overwhelmed. It is now eight days since the fire. The adrenalin has gone and the work goes on.
We were taken into the hall where the bishop spoke, scriptures were read and the choir somehow seemed to reach out in song to places where words alone might falter.
Somehow praying in the cathedral was a world away from standing with a megaphone as I found myself praying into the chaotic space occupied by those who sat huddled on mattresses surrounded by donated goods and wondering what the future might hold.
Later as we moved around the hall I was able to talk with a family: grandmother, aunt, cousin, mother and her two-year-old child whose space was reduced to a single mattress. Theirs was disbelief, uncertainty about the future and the reality of being alive but with nowhere to go.
Jubilee for Kenya?
Christian faith is rooted in hope, a hope that knows that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the one event that has indeed changed the world.
It is a hope which anticipates a new heaven and a new earth and in that longing and anticipation, it confronts what is with the reality of what can be.
If I pray with hope it is in the conviction that change is possible because God wills and purposes something else for our world.
It is something I was made profoundly aware of last week when I met with Jane Weru and a colleague. Jane heads up a small NGO which has worked with local communities and the government in making plans to properly relocate slum dwellers in Nairobi who are living in hazardous environments.
The big idea they wanted to discuss is to celebrate Kenya’s 50 years of independence, in 2013, by sounding the trumpet at the end of 2012 and declaring a year of Jubilee.
A Jubilee in which land is released to the urban poor, informal settlements get access to urban infrastructure and in word and action the church, arts and media, environmentalists, the business community, legal minds, politicians and non-governmental organisations press for justice for the urban poor and demonstrate commitment in practical action.
I don’t yet know where it will go, but I love the vision! Seeing faith driving a vision for a different city, where hope is embodied in action, I hope we can catch even a glimpse of those possibilities.
Today the Church gathered, publically and compassionately to weep with those who weep. In 2013 I hope we will rejoice with those who today believed they had no future but who discovered that the God of Sinai is the God of eternal possibilities.
Colin Smith is a CMS mission partner in Nairobi, Kenya. He leads the Centre for Urban Mission, which trains students in the heart of Kibera, one of Nairobi's largest informal settlements.
Colin blogs at http://nairobismiths.wordpress.com