Korogocho
2009
It was a day that will forever be embedded in my soul, a day where I witnessed first hand the most unbelievable form of human suffering. Walking into the tin huts it was as though I was entering a dark cave, a dark cave that had been harboring emotions of fear, sadness, and deep longing for a better life.
Two women sat across from me on their beds; by beds I mean a pile of all their possessions that had been thrown together in order to create some sort of resting place. In this hut their lived four generations of women and children living with HIV/AIDS; their husbands had all died or abandoned them and they had been left here alone, struggling each day to keep themselves and their children alive.
Flies bite my feet, and a feeling of claustrophobia overtakes me. How can this be, how have we as a human race allowed this to continue. Alice begins to speak telling us that she looks for work each day, and only gets the occasional job of washing clothes twice a week for 20 cents a day, she has two children.
We move on to the house next door, not knowing if I can take anymore, tears have been pouring down my face for the last ten minutes. This house was even smaller where a woman and her two children live, she is HIV positive and so is her seven year old daughter. At first she is very reserved as she speaks softly in Swahili telling us her story, she begins to pray in her native tongue and that is when all the emotions begin to pour out, she cries for her daughters whose legs can hardly hold her up, she prayers for her three year old son who she has to leave alone in the hut when she gets the opportunity to work, she cries for her life and all the pain she and her family has endured.
Her daughter has not spoken a word but suddenly she begins to weep, it is like no other cry I have ever heard, it is a cry from the depths of her soul, a cry that no child should ever have to feel, this is life in Korogocho.
Two women sat across from me on their beds; by beds I mean a pile of all their possessions that had been thrown together in order to create some sort of resting place. In this hut their lived four generations of women and children living with HIV/AIDS; their husbands had all died or abandoned them and they had been left here alone, struggling each day to keep themselves and their children alive.
Flies bite my feet, and a feeling of claustrophobia overtakes me. How can this be, how have we as a human race allowed this to continue. Alice begins to speak telling us that she looks for work each day, and only gets the occasional job of washing clothes twice a week for 20 cents a day, she has two children.
We move on to the house next door, not knowing if I can take anymore, tears have been pouring down my face for the last ten minutes. This house was even smaller where a woman and her two children live, she is HIV positive and so is her seven year old daughter. At first she is very reserved as she speaks softly in Swahili telling us her story, she begins to pray in her native tongue and that is when all the emotions begin to pour out, she cries for her daughters whose legs can hardly hold her up, she prayers for her three year old son who she has to leave alone in the hut when she gets the opportunity to work, she cries for her life and all the pain she and her family has endured.
Her daughter has not spoken a word but suddenly she begins to weep, it is like no other cry I have ever heard, it is a cry from the depths of her soul, a cry that no child should ever have to feel, this is life in Korogocho.
