I recently traveled to Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya – the largest and most well-known slum in Africa, home to over a million people most of whom live on less than a dollar a day – to meet Mr. Hassan Abdul Salim, the coach of the ‘Kibera Olympic Boxing Team’.
Tag Archive for Nairobi
Nairobi – Part 4 – Dancing Queen?
As a follow-up to the last post about the free party in Kibera, it’s another video post, also shot at the same free party.
This time it’s those pesky kids again.
Enjoy.
Nairobi – Part 2 – Kibera Kids
Kibera is the largest and probably most famous slum in Africa.
Over a million people living mostly on less than $1 U.S. a day.
During my Kenya trip I spent a lot of time there, partly for work and partly to hang out with some friends I’d made.
One of the things that stuck me about the place was how happy the children seemed, despite their circumstances.
Please don’t misunderstand me, I’m firmly in the “Lord of the flies” camp when it comes to my opinion on children, but I will grudgingly admit to their occasional cuteness.
The children of Kibera warmed my heart in ways I will deny ever admitting, so before I ruin my hard faced image even more I will simply present a gallery of ‘cute little slum dwelling poor African children™’, go and pour myself a Gin and Tonic and mourn the loss of the Empire ;-)
Nairobi – Part 1 – Some of them are drinking wine
“Lavosti and Oren, Impromtu jam, Nairobi April 2010”
A few days after arriving in Nairobi, the house where I was staying, legendary for its parties, was host to the birthday party for a very lovely man called Sam Hopkins (Founder of SlumTV).
He turned out to be a ‘diamond geezer’ and was one of the people who made my Kenya trip so memorable.
The outside patio at the party turned into a jamming area with many musicians from many countries,
(Israel, Kenya, Italy and Germany to name but 4)
Yours truly played his thighs as bongos for so long that my thighs looked like this in the morning:-
But I digress, When I heard the guy in the video, Lavosti from the hip-hop collective Ukooflani, start blowing into his hands and this amazing trumpet like sound issuing forth, I stopped slapping my thighs and ran and got my camera…..
The video above is all I managed to capture before the song ended , more beer arrived and the jam moved on.
Lavosti is backed on guitar by Oren from the band Jahcoozi (there will more of them in later blog posts).
I couldn’t believe he was making that amazing noise with just his hands, and boy could he sing too.
He tried to show me how to do it, but I was embarassingly bad and probably a little too far gone to try by then.
I hope you are as amazed by this little slice of musical genius as I was.