Feature
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Meet the priest who lives in the slums
The slum is a beehive of activities, women frying fish along the road, young men on motorbikes playing loud music speeding up and down , some welding in metal workshops, children playing along the road as yet another lot of youth idle away time conversing amongst themselves. My guide, Paul Mwangi a member of St John’s Catholic Church Korogocho points out a shanty, a rickety board nailed on its wall reads ‘Holy trinity Church’. The rickety building has been converted into a changaa den and people are trooping in. “This is where both the old and the young meet and by evening you will find many people staggering out of there and others sleeping along the road,” he laments as we walk away. orogocho is a sprawling slum in Nairobi; the fourth largest after Kibera, Mathare and Mukuru kwa Njenga, with over 2 million people living in an area of 2 square
By Diana Kagwiria
kilometres according to UN habitat. Like any other slum in urban cities, Korogocho has a myriad of problems: alcoholism, drug abuse, prostitution, crime and many diseases including waterborne diseases, malaria, HIV and Aids topping the list. I was recently in ‘Koch’ as the slum is commonly known to meet Fr John Webootsa a Comboni missionary who has given up the comfort of living in a parish house to live and work deep within the slums.
THE SEED - VOL 25, No. 8 AUGUST 2013
It’s a life one would like to walk away from but Fr Weboosta has finally fit in. He says it was hard at first. He was attacked severally and robbed of his valuables but he says the gang members have realized that he is here to help them.