No-one in their right mind would want to live in Shem's house: not beacuse he shares the one room with his parents, his three elder brothers, his younger, disabled brother and two cousins. Or beacuse the tin roof has holes in it that let the rain pour in and the mud floor become sticky. Or for that matter, that to get to it, you have to climb down a steep slope, knee deep in rubbish and waste and then through a labyrinth of alleyways. The reason that you wouldn't want to live in Shem's house is that he lives right outside an improvised open sewer that carries the waste of the thousand huts in Mabatini, a slum within Mathare, to the putrid river a few metres away. Someone has built an improvised loo straddling the channel right by their door and when it really rains, the ditch overflows into thier home.
Despite all this. the six year old has planted a garden. He marked off the tiny plot with sticks and old video-tape and then from seed he has grown beans and onions and, most remarkably, flowers.
The thing about Shem is that despite his abject poverty, he has a family that loves him and allows him the freedom of hope. These plants have yet to flower and I hope for Shem's sake they will.
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