Kambimoto: Three Years Later
In the summer of 2011, I was able to return to Nairobi, as a team member of Mathare Valley slum-upgrading program. I stopped by the Kambimoto upgrading project that I had documented in the summer of 2008, and found that it has continued to grow, adapt, and change. The Kambimoto project was a result of many years of diligent work by Pamoja Trust working with a small slum in the Mathare Valley, north of Nairobi. The resulting housing was incremental, where each family started with a basic one bedroom, one-story space that could eventually be expanded vertically up to three stories. In 2008, the project was still under construction, although many units had been completed and families had moved in. In 2011, the entire project was still under development due to lack of funds, but many individual units had been expanded and the overall space had been transformed significantly.