Normally, Sunday Mass at Holy Trinity Parish in the Kariobangi slum is an energetic celebration that runs for several hours. But when Comboni Father Paulino Mondo noticed parishioners were starting to faint before Mass ended, he realised it wasn’t exuberance that was making them weak.
It was hunger.
Now, Sunday masses last no longer than an hour and 15 minutes, Fr Mondo said, and the usual socialising after Mass in the shaded churchyard had all but evaporated, as people quickly headed home to conserve energy.
Within Kariobangi, dozens of people are dying every day of hunger, Fr Mondo said. The situation was not only little known outside Kenya but a hidden problem right in Nairobi where food is available but tens of thousands of people lack money to pay for it.
“People have lost their state jobs because they talked about it,” he said.
One recent Sunday, somebody abandoned two toddlers at the church, presumably because they were unable to feed them, he said. The babies were being cared for by a parish health worker while enquiries were made about the parents.
Spiralling food prices, low wages and high unemployment have put basic commodities out of reach of many. Since March, the price of sugar has jumped from about $6 a kilo to $12, Fr Mondo said. And though prices are lower in Nairobi supermarkets, there are only small shops in Kariobangi. Cooking oil that sells for $7 in a supermarket costs $12 in the slum.
Fr Mondo believes part of the problem is the revolution in Libya to overthrow Gadhafi meant Kenya’s main supplier of subsidised gas was cut off. Alternate sources were available but at much higher prices. A litre of gas that cost 86 cents in March now costs $1.20, he said, driving up the cost of goods.
Earlier this year, worldwide attention focused on the famine and drought affecting much of the Horn of Africa, including most of Kenya’s rural areas. International aid groups are helping to feed and support Africans displaced by that emergency, including 460,000 people at the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya. But, in the capital, Fr Mondo and his staff struggle without much outside help to feed people.
“The drought brought attention to Dadaab and Somalia, but not to the slums, where millions of people live,” he said.
“The governments of Africa take from the people, they don’t give,” he said. “So here, the government is ourselves.” He uses income from his daily 4am programme on the Catholic radio station and from writing articles for religious publications to supplement whatever revenue the parish can raise.
The Catholic population in Kariobangi is about 69,000, and about 20,000 attend Mass each week. But assistance from Holy Trinity is provided to anyone who needs it in the densely packed slum, where hunger is pervasive.
Mosques and many evangelical Christian churches scattered around the slum of 500,000 people do not have the capacity to offer food and the social services available at Holy Trinity, Fr Mondo explained.