Disasters and Poverty

On Sunday night the Mathare River burst its banks. In the flash flood the water rose over a metre and people woke to find their houses filling with water. There was mass panic as mothers tried to bash holes in their roofs and throw their children to safety. In the pitch black no one could see what was happening. One mother and her one year old child were killed as they were swept away. Three people are still missing. One of our sponsored children, Collins lived by these banks. One wall of his house was washed away, and everything but the bed frame was taken with it.


Collins has not had the best start to life. He was born in 2006, to parents with the chronic infectious disease that is so prevalent in Mathare. His mother followed medical advice and neither he nor his elder sisters or baby brother have been infected. His mother and father struggled to look after their children. Although they both worked; their low and unpredictable salaries as casual labourers was rarely enough to make ends meet. Things got even worse in December 2010 when Collins’s father was killed when a car mounted the pavement and knocked him down as he walked home from work.

There was no compensation, no pension, no help at all for his mother. Within months they were evicted and had to move to a tiny hut, precariously close to the banks of the Mathare River.

Things were getting better, sponsorship for Collins from Tushinde meant he was in school with a uniform and his mother received £3 a week towards the family’s food bills. Collins’s mother had got her sewing machine working again and she was able to do a bit of extra tailoring work in the evenings. When we visited her earlier this year, with a present for Collins from his sponsor, there seemed to be a bit of happiness in the tiny home (see photo above).

It just seems so unjust that tragedy generates tragedy; that destitute people are caught in a downward spiral. If the state cannot provide a safety net and the community is already stretched, then whole families are lost to the most unimaginable poverty.

I would like to think that as Collins is supported by us, that we can help this family. Although our primary aims as Tushinde is to help with nutrition and education, we cannot turn our backs on this family in their hour of need. They have nothing; no clothes, no food, nothing to cook on or with, and no furniture. Tonight they will sleep with loaned blankets, under the rainclouds, in the grounds of the local police station.

If you feel you can help or feel happy to forward this message to others who might be able to help, then please do so and ask anyone who wants to help to use our just giving page www.justgiving.com/tushinde and write the reference ‘Collins’. Hopefully we will be able to re-house the family and get them back on track again with all the furniture, clothes and utensils they need. If we get more than enough, we will put the money aside and make sure we help any other families who have similar housing crises.

Mama Collins in her house, the mud line on the drapes is the high water line.