Reality in Kware Slums

The following excerpt taken from www.beaconafrica.org is a look at Kware slum, home to the women trained at Beacon of Hope.

The Kware slums are no different from other slums beyond the suburbs of Nairobi, the capital city. They are densely populated and congested, and poverty is rampant. Kware has about 60,000 people living on square feet and desperate poverty has led to a deep sense of apathy and hopelessness, alcoholism, prostitution, battery, and an increase in crime in the surrounding estates.
The people in Kware are desperate for some form of employment, they dream of one square meal a day when most of us indulge in three. Most of all, poor nutrition, inadequate health information and services leads to widespread infection and disease. Poor immunization means even preventable diseases are unchecked.
Depression, the resultant alcoholism and promiscuous living also lead to a high level of HIV infection. In fact, 90% of the women who work at the BOH center are infected with HIV; a majority has full-blown AIDS and constantly struggles with, and succumbs to opportunistic diseases. This reality has prompted us to open a makeshift health clinic on the BOH premises where we stock medication donated by well wishers, and friends of BOH.
The fight to survive has led many to prostitution. It is no longer surprising to learn of families where the mother and her daughters are engaged in commercial sex, many times with the full knowledge and reluctant support of other needy family members. As these men move from hovel to hovel and sexually take advantage of these women, they leave behind a deep sense of hopelessness, disease and bitterness. After some time, the women become skeptical and they are driven by bitterness and hopelessness to infect others with HIV even by choice.
The single women especially are easy pray for wealthy business men who promise them a meal or two in exchange for sex. Unfortunately, there are illicit beer points all over the slum, where cheap, but highly flammable and corrosive alcoholic beverages are found in plenty. Many have been known to die of toxic poisoning from these brews.
Inevitably, there is also a high level of teenage pregnancy and the vicious cycle of poverty continues as children raise children.