Some of the sights of Africa II

My driver for the morning of sight seeing, as I mentioned in a previous blog here, was an African gentlemen. As we passed through Nairobi and then into the countryside towards Karen I learned a great deal from him. He told me that Nairobi means "a place of water." Before the British colonized Kenya the Masai had brought their cattle to water in Nairobi and thus it was given its name.

He told me that when Kenya was given independence from the British that the British were given the choice whether to stay or go back to Britain. Many of them sold their land to the Kenyan Government and left. The land that the government purchased was divided up and given to landless Kenyens. Some of the British chose to stay and remain to this day, living primarily in the very wealthy parts of the city. The British had originally brought Indians from India with them as Britain had of course also colonized India. The descendants of the original Indians are often now employers are present Nairobis. Something seems a bit out of whack in this picture to me.

I saw a large amount of people in wheelchairs, and they were getting themselves around. That was very odd indeed to me. My driver, Joshua, told me that only in last 20 years or so has Polio been eradicated in Kenya. So many older people have the disease. And also that there are cases of the Polio vaccination actually causing Polio in the children that receive it.

In one of the other pictures in the blogs from the 9th of October there is a woman with a burden upon her head. I am seeing much of this. Joshua told me that there are five slums in Nairobi. The largest slum has 800,000 people living in it. Nairobi has over 3 million people in all. He said that the government has a plan over the next twenty years to house the people from the slums in affordable and basic housing in order to eradicate the slums.