Religion and Development: extortion and corruption in churches

Development in Africa has been hindered by a number of factors. These factors include: Poverty, religion, culture, gerontocracy, poor infrastructural development, climate change, political instability among many other factors. This article will focus on religion. I am not critic of religion: in fact, I consider myself a religious person. However, some religious values should be considered outdated especially in the 21st century. For example, we have some churches that do not allow people to go to the hospital. This has fueled the spread of HIV pandemic. I still don't understand how you can watch a person suffer from an illness or even watch a person die simply because the religion forbids you from visiting any medical facility? As if that is not enough, some religions allow polygamy, thus, increasing the rate of poverty and HIV in our communities. Are we still living in the stone age?
To add salt on the wound, wizards are now rebranding into pastors: is this a probability or a fact? Although I believe in miracles, the manner in which some miracles are being performed leave behind much to be desired. There is a lot of corruption and extortion in the name of the Lord within our churches today, which is spreading fast like an infectious disease. In Kenya, we have millions of churches some of them with funny names more than you can imagine. Opening a church is like starting up a gold mine company. Church is a fast growing business: to some extent, if taxed, the country will move an extra mile.

The rate of poverty and unemployment has made people vulnerable to fake pastors. Everyday, people are going to different churches in search of miracles but the pastors are taking advantage of the situation. I ask: where are we heading to? Has this become a man eat man society? Is this what they call survival for the fittest? What does the future hold for the weak or the less fortunate? This is not only affecting development but also it is affecting religion in terms of values. This explains to me why we have an increasing number of Atheists. How do churches expect society to have a positive change when all they do is steal from people? I will give you a story: once upon a time there was a hummingbird which lived in the forest with so many other animals. One day the forest was burning and the Hummingbird was trying the best she could to stop the fire from spreading. However, the hummingbird had a small beak that could not carry enough water to put off the fire. Instead of the elephant helping, he was laughing asking the hummingbird if he thought his beak was big enough to carry enough water to stop the fire but the Hummingbird responded ''stop laughing because you have a big trump but there is nothing you are doing to put off the fire. I know I have a small beak but am doing the best I can''. As a blogger, I know am not as big as I think to change things in Africa but I have opted to be a Hummingbird and do the best I can to change our continent. We need religion, for sure, but then again we must have some limits. God did not create fools neither does he expect us to turn into fools. I don't believe people have to go into churches to have a good relationship with their maker. We have so many people going to church every saturday and sunday but they have done nothing good to be proud of. A church is not a hiding place for sinners but a place to worship. As I said earlier, environment has four elements and religion lies under one of the element which is social environment. I challenge religious leaders to promote values that are positive to development. Religious leaders: please be a good example and people will appreciate the importance of religion.

I have a dream... Dream with me!

The Rift Valley, Kenya

When I am seated thinking of what the future holds for me, I always think about my children and something inside me tells me that I also have to think about their future, since I want them to have more than I had in my childhood. I want my children to see elephants, hippos, rhinos, cheater, leopards, among many other animals that exist. I want a fresh and clean environment for my children, I want them to enjoy forests and nature as I am enjoying today. I want them to have access to clean water and live in a clean environment with no hazardous chemical and materials. However, everyday, the society is taking that dream away from me. Pouching is slowly dominating our way of life and animals are becoming extinct, industrialization and unsustainable development is killing my dream of a clean environment to my children by disposing harmful toxic chemicals and material to the environment. I am now not sure if there is something left of my dream and I see no need to bring children on this earth to suffer for mistakes made by their respective society. As all these environmental degradation activities are taking place either as a result of human activities or technology, we are closing our eyes and pretending all is well. 

Beautiful animals in Masai Mara

Wangari Maathai, the environmental nobel prize winner, is gone but that does not mean that we should throw away all that she worked for during so many years of pain and suffering just to ensure that the environment does not destroy you. Human beings tend to forget easily: have you forgotten that Wangari Maathai was fighting for your future by enhancing environmental sustainability? I am very sad not because I am obsessed with environment but because I know the importance of environment in my life. Everyday, we line up and make a lot of noise about big environmental issues. However, we don't understand that when we add up all the tiny environmental problems, we come up with complex environmental dilemmas. We are all part of the problem so why don't we come together and become part of the solution? I want to dream again and I can't dream alone: I want your help to successfully make my dream come true. Please dream with me: I can't have an environmental sustainability dream alone. Let's fight for the future of our children! Let's fight for our future! Only through environmental justice can we have inter and intra generational equity. 

The beauty of nature

How do we help to achieve the dream? It's simple: just imagine a world with no environmental problems. Only through that are you going to stop poaching, polluting the air and water, you are going to learn how to recycle and you won't destroy forests. The ocean and seas will be free from oil-spills and other harmful chemicals and material. Development will be done cautiously since not all developments are sustainable. We shall have no hunger, people will stop fighting for scarce resources, and many lives will be saved. See the beauty of having animals around us, don't see them as enemies. Stay away from wildlife protected areas and avoid human-wildlife conflict. Let's learn to appreciate what was created by the maker and creator of the Universe. I challenge you to take an action and enhance environmental sustainability. Man is the only enemy of the future. "If you destroy nature, surely nature will destroy you".

Don't wait until the well is dry. Let's be the solution, not the problem!

Written and compiled by Anthony Ngari.

People of Kibera, wake up!

To enhance sustainable development, we need to understand three major pillars. These pillars include: political pillar, social-economical pillar and environmental pillar. However, understanding millennium development goals is crucial and something every Humanitarian Organization should understand. Many organizations working in Kibera pay no much attention to these factors as they are only attracted by the fame of Kibera since it was dubbed '' the largest slum in the world'' and the slum of ''Constant Gardener.''As an expert in Environmental and community development, I have come to understand that Kibera Slum has over 150,000 international humanitarian aid organizations. A number which is more or less the number of people living in Kibera Slum, leaving me wondering why people are still poor in Kibera slum. The government of Kenya also built better houses with better sewers and drainage system  for the residents of Kibera with an aim of demolishing Kibera slum and curbing the proliferation of slums in Nairobi but what happened? It's simple: the residents of Kibera decided to rent out their nice well-built houses and pocket the money. Many international organizations have directed all their resources and efforts to Kibera but the question is: do they really do a research to understand what is going on around the slum? or they are just attracted by the name Kibera, the biggest slum in the world? In Kenya, and especially in Nairobi, we have over 100 big slums but many NGO's don't pay any attention to those slums, except for the Kibera slum. In the recent past, we have been given different figures explaining the population of kibera slum by different international and local organization all aimed at raising funds. According to the Guardian newspaper (August 2012),  "Google research finds page after page of estimates in or around the same ball-park. The White House reckon it's "just about 1.5 million", while the BBC claims 700,000. Jambo Volunteers say "more than one million." The rather sickly-sounding Global Angels reckon "around 1 million." The Kibera Tours website describes "a population estimated at one million." The Kibera Law Centre gives "almost 1 million." Shining Hope for Communities reckon that Kibera "houses 1.5 million people". The Kibera Foundation talks about "a population of almost a million people," as well as Kibera UK and about a hundred other sites you can find through your friendly neighbourhood search engine." While in fact, says the same journalist: "a census by the Kenyan government found only 170,000 residents, a count probably not much higher than the number of NGOs that have swarmed into the area. It isn't easy counting the transient population of an informal settlement, and of course the government don't have a fantastic record on Kibera – if they did, it wouldn't exist – but their figures fit reasonably well with those produced by others. The Map Kibera Project used sampling to produce an estimate of 235,000-270,000, while KeyObs deployed the cold, hard gaze of a satellite to produce an estimate of around 200,000. These more accurate figures have suffered the fate that tends to befall most inconvenient truths; they have been widely ignored."

Kibera slum

The idea that Kibera holds a million people is completely and utterly absurd. The population myth about Kibera slum is a concept from the western world due to the high number of tourists who visit Kibera every year as if it were a tourist attraction site. As a result, people from Kibera have taken advantage of situation and now nobody wants to go out of the slum due to the benefits gained from tourists. Some of them will even charge you to take pictures and now they have formed gangs of youths who will not spare anyone who disobey the rules of the game. In  public schools, where school fees should not be charged, foreigners are charged in case they are willing to help children to go back to school. They are given a special price dubbed ''MUZUNGU PRICE'' meaning special price for the white people. Personally I have reported a case of corruption in Olympic primary school where a foreign friend was being charged 14,000 a year to take a child to Public school. Few days later, after filing the complaint, my friend was sent away from Kibera slum since she was no longer needed after finding out she was being cheated. In case you are not aware, there are no fees for public primary school in Kenya except for private school. cheating might sounds so sad to you but to them, it's their ''right''. My biggest concern goes to the children living in Kibera slum, since they are now the ones to suffer from the mistakes made by their parents. I believe strongly that every child has a right to have a better life and no child deserves to live in such deplorable conditions. Every child has the right to food, school, better healthcare and security, but this is not the case for Kibera slum. Some of the parents in Kibera slum have chosen drugs and money at the expense of their own children, leaving me wondering what is the future for this country. Children are being raped, others are dropping out of school and some are using drugs but their parents have closed their eyes and turned their back on them. The only thing they think is how to make money to buy drugs from various NGO working in Kibera. USAID and Doctors Without Borders have given free life-saving medicine to children and parents suffering from HIV and AIDS, but what do parents do with those drugs? They sell them to people making cheap liquor in the slum.... Yes! ARVs are used to make cheap liquor in Kenya! As a result, parents leave their own children with no other choice but to helplessly wait for their death... What a big shame that animals are taking care of their offspring better than human beings!

Children suffering in Kibera...

To cut the long story short, international and local organizations should really think of a better strategy of helping people in Kibera slum. Teach them how to fish but not giving them fish, only the children should be given food in their respective school in form of feeding programs, since they are innocent, as well as to encourage them go to school. Parents, on the other hand, should not be given money as many organizations have been doing. Instead teach them how to make money and how to be responsible for their children. Capacity building will be of greater importance to them, since giving food only will make them lazy and might result to Africa only depending on donors, while what we need most is to be well informed. I believe some of the action from these people are out of pure ignorance. As an environmentalist and community development expert, I can assure you that unless children get education, we improve living standards, curb poverty and hunger in a professional manner, we will never have any sort of sustainability may it be environmental or in terms of development. Money from the donor is not aimed for individual pocketing but for the community. I wish the few rotten-minded people of Kibera, who are making it difficult for the good people living in Kibera and the NGOs who are trying to help them, can realize this while it's still early to save the country from shame in the near future. 

Kibera you already have enough funds of donors: please make good use of it and develop yourselves! We have slums like Kitui Ndogo in Majengo slum and they only have one NGO working there called ADDHU... Yet those people are ready to receive and make good use of the help given to them. To some extent, they work together with ADDHU and even help in paying the teacher's and cook's salaries. They are responsible! They care about the future of their children! Being poor is not an excuse to be lazy or careless, especially to your own children. Parents in Kitui Ndogo wake up every morning, wash their kids, dress them and send them to school without expecting anything in return. Then they go to work, so that their kids can at least get some dinner when they get home from school... Kibera, do you have to be paid to take your own children to school? Without the help from you, Kibera, poverty will continue striking, children will continue being raped, they will drop out of school, drugs lords will continue getting richer from you and the country will never develop.

Kitui Ndogo slum: the same problems but a different attitude

ADDHU's school feeding program: parents made responsible by being made to contribute for cook's and teachers salary

THINK STRAIGHT AND ACT STRAIGHT

Message written by Anthony Ngari, a responsible, concerned and proud citizen of the Republic of Kenya.

 A smile of hope: children will smile if only their parents do what is right!

The Nairobi River water pollution

THE NAIROBI RIVER

This river flows through the Kenya capital city. The Nairobi river is the main river in the Nairobi river basin. For a very long time, Nairobi river has faced a number of issues related to pollution as a result of human activity. This river has simply become a dumping site thus, making it difficult even for the people living near the river. However, there many projects that have been initiated in efforts to rehabilitate this river but none has proved successful. A change in this river depend on our willingness to conserve our environment. The government should also come up with proper policies that will help in protection of the Nairobi river. In the past years , policies have been formulated but none has been enacted. This is an issue of poor management and leadership in our environmental management organizations. However, this is not the right time to shift blames its time to act and do what we forgot to do in the past and ensure sustainability of our environment. I suggest that the government start with the "big fish" in this game of water and river pollution in general, i mean the industries along the river basin. As a result of industrialization in our country, water pollution in Nairobi river has continues to worsen. Many industries are now dumping the waste materials in to this river. This pose a great danger to the people, animals, and the fauna. polluter pay principle might not be a solution to this problem but a driver to the problem. The big question is what does the future hold for our environment? 

What are we doing to the future of our children? Why don't we save the environment?

Everyday, we line up and make a lot of noise about big environmental problems like incinerators, waste dumps, acid rain, global warming and pollution. But we don't understand that when we add up all the tiny environmental problems each of us creates, we end up with those big environmental dilemmas. Humans are content to blame someone else, like government or corporations, for the messes we create, and yet we each continue doing the same things, day in and day out, that have created the problems. Sure, corporations create pollution. If they do, don't buy their products. If you have to buy their products (gasoline for example), keep it to a minimum. Sure, municipal waste incinerators pollute the air. Stop throwing trash away. Minimize your production of waste. Recycle. Buy food in bulk and avoid packaging waste. Simplify. Turn off your TV. Grow your own food. Make compost. Plant a garden. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem. If you don't, who will?

 The images of the river 1, 2, 3 taken by Carolina Vasconcellos