Senior Project Research Paper

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Kacie Mroczko
Ms. Bennett
British Literature
16 September 2011
Daily Life and Culture in Africa
Eighty-five percent of the people in Africa live off of less than $1 a day. Forty-six
percent (as of 2005) of the people in Kenya, Africa, are considered poor, with an unemployment
rate of 9.8%. Kenya is home to the second largest slum in the world, Kibera. There are
approximately 800,000 to one million people living within the 630 acres of the Kibera slums.
With the odds against the survival of the majority of its people, the challenge of making it
through a typical day in Kenya is literally a life and death matter.
In 2003, it was estimated that there were over 1,200,000 people living in Kenya with
HIV/AIDS; approximately 150,000 people died that year of HIV/AIDS (Kates and Leggoe). Out
of all of the adults with AIDS in Kenya, sixty-five percent are women. There are an estimated
650,000 AIDS orphans living in Kenya. “Kenya’s HIV prevalence peaked during 2000 and,
according to the latest figures, has dramatically reduced to around 6.3 percent. This decline is
thought to be partially due to an increase in education and awareness, and high death rates”
(Avert). “HIV is the human immunodeficiency virus. It is the virus that can lead to acquired
immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS” (CDC). As of right now, there is no cure for HIV. There
is treatment for HIV that would have to be taken daily for the rest of someone’s life. Although
treatment is becoming more available to the people of Kenya, most cannot afford it. “About

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seventy percent of Kenya's HIV-positive people live in rural areas,” says Kenya's National AIDS
Strategic Plan (Mumo). HIV/AIDS are not the only diseases that many people in Kenya have,
another disease is Malaria. Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite that is spread to humans by
the bite of an infected mosquito (“Malaria”). “Malaria is a serious and sometimes fatal disease
which is widespread in many tropical and subtropical countries. It is caught by being bitten by an
infected mosquito that is carrying the malaria parasites in its saliva” (Travel Doctor). Over one
million people die every year from malaria. “Worldwide, there are 300 to 500 million cases of
malaria and more than one million deaths from malaria each year. More than ninety percent of
all malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, a vast area south of the Sahara Desert, and
seventy-five percent of deaths occur in children” (“Malaria”). Although malaria is a fairly fatal
disease, it can be completely cured. The problem is that most Kenyans cannot manage to pay for
medication to treat the disease.
Approximately fifty percent of the population in Kenya is below the poverty line.
“Almost fifty percent of the population lives on under $1 a day - the highest rate of extreme
poverty in the world” (ADollarADay). There are many different jobs that most Kenyans have.
Most Kenyans make something, such as clothes like knits, and then sell it. Common jobs consist
of farming, cooking, doing art, cab service, owning shops, contracting, banking, and giving
tours. The majority of the people have to go without food or water for more than a day because
they cannot afford it or can get to a river or place with water and food. In July 2011, a mission
team from Liberty Hill United Methodist Church in Canton, Georgia, went to Nairobi, Kenya,
Africa for thirteen days. They got the opportunity to experience firsthand the poverty in Kenya.
They went to the Kibera slum for a day and met and talked to several people about their
situations. They went to a school within the slum where there were three women who gave up

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their opportunities to make money to teach several of the children in the slum instead. The team
brought three slices of bread and a juice box to every child. The majority of the children in the
school had not had anything to eat or drink since the morning before. They were so excited to get
the food; they were starving.
After the team went to the school, they went and met a family of three in a twelve-foot by
twelve-foot “shack”. There was a single mother that has HIV. She has two sons who are high
school (Form 1-4 as they call it) age. They pay a rent of 1800 shillings a month (roughly $18
US). They rent their “shack” from the rich people in Nairobi. They not only sleep in their
“shack”, but they also do all of their cooking in it as well. It is a one room shack built of sticks
and tin. The people of the slum do not even have enough money to afford bathrooms. They go to
the bathroom in the “streams” within the borders of the slums. The living conditions in Kibera
are very poor. The team went to a place that is about four and a half hours north of Nairobi (the
capital of Kenya) called Kisumu. Kisumu is very green and lush. There is not much traffic there,
let alone any roads. When the team was in Kisumu, they went to two different villages to help
build homes and build relationships with the people in the villages. The team would watch the
villagers cook and interact with each other. The team was so amazed at how the villagers’ culture
and way of life is so different than they were used to. The villagers have no refrigeration and
they do everything with their hands and do not clean anything. The way they were just ripping
through the freshly cut meat covered in flies was certainly not something that the team members
were used to. In the second village, they met Caroline. Her husband had died a year before from
malaria and is buried right outside of her home. She lives in a ten-foot by ten-foot mud hut with
her six children. They all manage to sleep in such a small living quarters on the dirt floor.

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Kenyan culture and daily life is so different than life in America, but in many ways very
similar. Daily life is similar in the fact that the Kenyan people are just trying to get by day-by-
day, just trying to survive. They are constantly trying to come up with ways to make money so
they can buy food to provide for their families. The living conditions in Kenya are very different
than they are in America. They are not quite able to keep things very sanitary. A typical Kenyan
dish “generally consists of a heavy, thick food, such as rice, with beans or a meat sauce”
(Zhdanova-Redman). The Kenyan people are very much into a “deep sense of kinship”
(Zhdanova-Redman). “In tradition, the tribes are established based on the geographical region
and common culture. Each group or village has its own political and social organizations
(Zhdanova-Redman). Kenya does not have a set state religion. The greater part of Africans are
Roman Catholic, Anglican, or Protestant.
These religious connections came from early missionary activities of colonial times.
Along with those religious forms, the traditional beliefs of African population are very
strong in a traditional society. Animals (cattle, sheep, and goats), natural objects and
phenomena (rain, thunder, lightning, wind, even rocks and mountains) are often
associated with God and considered to be sacred. Some people have names for God that
mean sky, heaven, or the above (Zhdanova-Redman).
The major tribes in Kenya consist of Turkana, Kikuyu, Masaai, and Embu. Turkana men
(warriors) and women both wear traditional dress and ornaments in order to increase their charm
towards one another. The Turkana people live near Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya. There are
about 200,000 Turkana, making them the second largest nomadic group in Kenya, (Enter
Kenya). Kenya has a wide variety of tribes and cultures. There are over seventy different ethnic
tribal groups. Cultures and traditions are articulated in their lives, as in their ceremonial dresses,

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songs, dances, art, and the way they live their lives. The Masaai believe that education is not
important for the herdsman to search for grass for their cattle. The majority of Kenyans have to
walk several miles a day just to get water. Sometimes they have to go days without food or
water.
The difficulty of the daily life in Kenya is literally a life or death situation; from the
difficulties of the different diseases to not being able to or affording food or water. The people
that live in Kenya have to search for food and water just to survive. Daily life for people in
Kenya is a struggle. Kenyan culture is very different than American culture in many ways, but
very similar in many as well. There are many ethnic tribal groups in Kenya, all with distinct
traditions and ways of life. There are several prevalent diseases, but the most common ones are
HIV and AIDS, and Malaria. HIV and AIDS are incurable; Malaria can be cured by various
treatment options. 1.2 million people in Kenya have HIV or AIDS and between 300 and 500
million people have malaria. The bulk of the individuals with one of those diseases are so poor
they cannot afford treatment for their disease. The majority of the world’s poorest countries are
in Africa; of which Kenya is among them. They are poor because they cannot get jobs that pay
well enough to fully support them. Many Kenyans have to pay rent, in the slums, to the rich
people of Kenya. The Kenyan people are mentally, emotionally, and physically very strong as a
whole. They are able to survive on exceptionally low income and little to no water and food.
They are incredible people that are struggling each and every day to just get by enough to
survive.

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Works Cited
“Basic Information about HIV and AIDS.” Centers of Disease Control and Prevention. N.p., n.d.
Web. 6 Oct. 2011. <http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/basic/>.
“HIV/AIDS Policy Fact Sheet.” The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Oct.
2011. <http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/7356.pdf>.
“HIV and AIDS in Kenya.” Avert. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2011. <http://www.avert.org/hiv-aids-
kenya.htm>.
“Kenya People and Cultures.” Enter Kenya. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.
<http://www.enterkenya.com/culture.html>.
Kenya People and Culture. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2011. <http://www.enterkenya.com/
culture.html>.
Malaria. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2011. <http://www.humanillnesses.com/Infectious-Diseases-
He-My/Malaria.html#ixzz1Y3WTZ8or>.
“Poverty Around the World.” A Dollar a Day. N.p., 2006. Web. 7 Sept. 2011.
<http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00282/over_world.htm>.
Travel Doctor. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Sept. 2011. <http://www.traveldoctor.co.uk/malaria.htm>.
Zhdanova-Redman, Ekaterina. “Kenya - Traditions and Daily Life.” edHelper. N.p.,
2011. Web. 6 Sept. 2011.
<http://edhelper.com/ReadingComprehension_Geography_78_1.html>.