Life in a Slum

When people talk about the slums here, I have a certain picture in my mind, though I have never been in one (unlike Stephen). But my mental pictures are all pretty negative. One of the staff in the finance unit here lives in the large slum closest to where we live. At a meeting the other day, someone mentioned the slums (they used that word) and wondered what she thinks when she hears the place (neighborhood) where she lives described that way. It made me feel rather uncomfortable – like she was being put down – but maybe she doesn’t see it that way.

Things are not getting better in the slums though – the small shops that the people would go to have either been destroyed or aren’t opening. At the ones that do open – and have goods to sell – prices have shot up (often at least doubled). There are food shortages and people can’t pay the prices for the food that is there. I can understand people being angry that the election didn’t turn out fairly; what I really don’t understand is all of the violence. How can killing someone better your own situation? Looting makes more sense – though I don’t think that it is the way to climb out of poverty either. I don’t know what type of pictures you are seeing in the media but here there have been photos of people being hacked to death and the paper reported the other day that 10 people were in the hospital with arrows in them. I can understand why people are scared and leaving their homes.