We recently sent a team of Crocs representatives over to Nairobi to give a donation of Crocs™ shoes to those in need. Here’s a quick note from the team:

Day 2- Mukuru Kwa Njenga Slums

After yesterday’s experience at the Marurui slums, we weren’t sure how to feel while driving into the 2nd largest slum area in Kenya. I had never seen a place where people lived like this – it was absolutely heart-wrenching. It’s a place where 500,000 Kenyans have joined together living in homes that are made of scrap corrugated metal or any other hard surface they can find as a building material, no bathroom, no running water, amongst a couple square miles of rubbish in the middle of Nairobi. As we arrived, we were taken around the community to see where help is needed.

It’s hot or “Joto” in Swahili, the sun is scorching and the dust is continuously blowing onto our face and bodies. You have to be careful where to walk because, with each step, you are risking stepping on glass, metal or any other sharp objects. This is with shoes on; one can only imagine walking through this terrain without shoes. Many lack this basic necessity, which is why we are here. These people need help. They need water, food, medicines, and shoes. Their clothes are tattered from wearing the same shirt and pants for days on-end. The issue of not having help becomes a cyclical problem: without de-worming medicines you can’t cure the sickness and kill the parasites which feed off of whatever the children eat; without clean water and shoes, these worms and bacteria will continue to enter the body, and without food obviously people cannot live.

We gathered at the local church, Kings Academy to hand out food and shoes. With NGO (non-government organization) Joy Evangelist and the local ministers of all of the surrounding churches, the neediest of families are chosen for receipt of shoes and food. They chant and sing thanking us in Swahili for the wonderful gifts that they have been given.

We spend a bit of time here, acquiring information, taking it all in, which in this short time is very difficult to do. We are briefed on the main areas of need and the daily situations they have to live with. There is just too much and it is impossible to not be overwhelmed. As you can see from the pictures, it is crowded. Many Africans come from all over thinking that the lifestyle in Nairobi holds promise and the jobs are plentiful and end up in Mukuru because that is all they can afford.