ReWriting Hope
Kaka is his name. Actually, its Isaac Mwasa but no one calls him that. His frame is slight, boyish almost. Its only when you start doing the math that you realize he must be a lot older than he initially comes across.
He’s quietly intense, speaks with purpose and measure. He’s not trying to convince you of anything. He’s secure in himself, just sharing his story. For him the story begins and ends in Mathare. Look for Mathare on Google maps and you won’t see much – no pop ups or pins indicating services or restaurants, just lots of brown roofs. Roofs housing over 90,000 of the city’s residents. How do we know? We can only say we owe this information to Kaka and his team who have spent months working towards digitally mapping Mathare. Structure by structure they have layered water, sanitation, schools, health facilities, churches and security on their digital maps. Their little team holds more real time information on the reality of the teeming masses of Mathare than Nairobi’s County government.
And they are putting it to good use.
Kaka’s story started in the late nineties years ago when he was just a young guy playing football with a group that was an offshoot of Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA). His truth – friends lost to violence, drugs and hardship in the narrow trash ridden streets of Mathare. It disturbed him deeply. Deeply enough for him to chart a different future for himself.
Kaka’s future unfolded from an unlikely challenge. The concept of a public space in Mathare was unheard of. Open land was quickly grabbed or quickly became a dump site overflowing with plastic or broken bottles, or used as a defecation site. Kaka and his comrades knew of one location that was clearly public but had become a dump site. They wanted it back. In 2000 they started campaigning for the council to clean up the site. No one listened – until election season. Eager for votes, an aspiring Councillor promised to cleanup the site if they would vote for him. A few weeks later a bulldozer moved in and cleared the site of the trash that had lain there festering for years. This procedure allowed for the beginning of a new strategy. In a land where votes were usually traded for a fifty bob or the promise of a bag of sugar, Kaka and his crew had found a trad-able commodity. One that worked for them.
In time the crew fenced off the small plot of land and began dreaming of a community centre that would be a safe haven for Mathare’s youth. By the next election cycle they had put together architectural drawings and secured county approval for a building. When votes were sought by the an aspiring Member of Parliament, they presented their plan… and got funds to build their centre. The youth crew pitched in with hands and backs to carry cement, steel and mix concrete. Within a year the community centre was erected.
Today it serves multiple purposes – every lunch time street families are served a meal by a local community based organization, volunteer teachers offer computer lessons sporadically, in the evening ma-youth pay 50 shillings to watch top football clubs battle it out. Its become a beacon of tranquility and hope for so many. Kaka changed his future through the Mathare Environmental Conservation Youth Group. The centre remains the base for the group who continue to provide for-profit services in the community. They started by collecting garbage in the community, for Ksh 150 a week they’d pickup trash from each household and then deliver it to a dump site. Armed with the information garnered through their mapping project they advocate for action from the county government. In the last four years the group has had four dump sites cleared that the county government wasn’t even aware existed.
Kaka is an unassuming hero. As he weaves his way through the narrow paths of Mlango Kubwa children run up to him and elderly people wave. Its clear to see how deeply the people of this area appreciate him. After all he’s one of them and through tenacity, ingenuity and foresight he’s making their lives better each day, weaving a different story for Mathare youngsters. He is a true nation builder, the epitome of #PaukwaPositive.
