LONDON – Kibera, on the outskirts of Nairobi, supposedly the world’s largest slum, home to 800,000 souls, is known for its “flying toilets”. With no sewerage system the inhabitants defecate into plastic bags, which are then thrown onto nearby wasteland. How can it be, after billions of dollars of aid to Kenya, hundreds of reports on upgrading squatters’ settlements and the headquartering in Nairobi of the UN agency, Habitat, charged with urban improvement, that no one has built Kibera a sewerage system? Most of the people I approached refused to accompany me to Kibera, known as a den of dirt and iniquity. Habitat didn’t respond to my e-mails. Finally a young man, a teacher of the Koran, agreed to show me the inside track. And so I made my first visit for 25 years. It was always bad. Now despite the signs outside a couple of shops advertising “second hand...
