Global News by Region: Kenya
NAIROBI, KENYA – It is nearly noon on a Sunday in Lavington, a wealthy Nairobi suburb with palatial homes. Many families approach the Nakumatt Junction mall for brunch after Sunday worship services.
Traffic is heavy approaching the mall, which is unusual for a Sunday. Some inconvenienced motorists turn back. Others opt to use alternative entrances to the mall, investigating if they are less congested.
NAIROBI, KENYA – Underneath the scorching heat, Cynthia Shikuku, 27, walks as fast as her legs can carry her from Kikuyu town, an informal suburb west of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. Shikuku, a live-in domestic worker, needs to beat the setting of the Sunday sun. Her employer requires her to return from her weekend leave by 7 p.m.
This is her eighth month working for a family of three. She says she is a happy nanny, housekeeper, cleaner and cook for the family, which treats her well.
KILIFI, KENYA – The sun slowly peeps through the clearing clouds in the bold, blue sky. The enveloping humidity generously gives out bear hugs to residents here, leaving brows doused in sweat. A salty breeze flaps the branches of the palm trees lightly, teasing the sweaty multitude in the coastal town of Kilifi.
NAIROBI, KENYA – Hellena Wanjiku, 29, lives in Wanyee, an area west of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, with her sister and brother-in-law. She works as a hairdresser and manages one of the couple’s salons. But she says that recent power cuts have hurt business.
“Electricity is central to the thriving of my business – heating water, powering the radio, which is for entertaining my clients, hair drying and styling,” Wanjiku says with a loud sigh.
NAIROBI, KENYA – Consolato Mucheke, 18, says he has never come as close to death as he did last Monday on a rainy morning in a slum of Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
He had just finished breakfast and was hanging around his home in the Sinai slums when he saw his friends and neighbors rushing to the river with containers.
NAIROBI, KENYA – Sofia Atieno is just 16, but she is already the mother of a 1-year-old son, Erastus Owino.
Atieno, an orphan, lives in Mathare, a sprawling slum of Nairobi, the capital, where she takes care of her son and her younger brother, Thomas Omondi, 13. She says her mother died when she was 7, and her father died in 2009, both after short illnesses.