Mathare Valley is one of the largest slums surrounding Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, and its population is estimated around 250.000 to 300.000 inhabitants. The valley used to be a stone quarry, which is still visible in the morphology of the area, owned by Indian businessmen during colonial times and it was sold to several real estate-cooperatives around 1964. Hundreds of people had already settled there as illegal squatters on the verge of independence in 1963 when several exhausted sites of the quarry closed down. They migrated from rural areas either in search of employment in the nearby city centre or as displaced people after being chased away from the ‘white’ settler farms. Mathare Valley is three kilometres away from Nairobi city centre and is located in the Eastlands area. The Eastlands area is notorious for its high crime rate and low-income families and within Eastlands Mathare Valley stands out particularly. Mathare Valley is more than other slum communities in the Eastlands area a concentration of crime, poverty and deprivation. It is at the same time a centre of activity, energy and creativity. The absolute extremes and the rawness that characterise Mathare are very much overwhelming when you first visit this slum as an outsider.
