The brown revolution

摘要

The main street of Huruma is a hive of activity. Market traders are selling everything from live chickens to trainers to herbal medicine from the front of rickety shacks. The street is unpaved, muddy and lined with compacted rubbish. Huruma is an unplanned settlement built on council land in the outskirts of Nairobi. Behind this market street are five slums, housing about 6,500 people at densities of up to 2,300 per hectare. There is only one toilet block and but a few water outlets. In the narrow gaps between the shacks, where people walk and children play, open earth canals provide sewerage. Of Nairobi's population of 2.5m, about 60% live in conditions like this―or worse. Africa's largest slum outside the suburbs of Johannesburg is in Nairobi. It is called Kibera, and is home to some three-quarters of a million people.