A few thoughts of millions

I'm not sure of his name, but he is certainly a very adorable child. This is one of the bajillions of kids we saw in the Mathare slum. Yesterday we spent time at the farm and slept over, and this morning we drove to the Mathare slum and visited the Mcedo school. I only have pictures/time to write a few thoughts about the Mathare slum though. I brought two flash drives with me and they're both filled up with pictures and videos so I hope I still have room for all the more pictures/videos this next week.
We drove into the Mathare slum and at first we saw these triangular shaped things made of rusted tin sheets and I was thinking to myself, "That is not a house..." but really those are considered upper class homes of the slum. We drove further in and I just saw trash with more trash and food trash and trampled trash and buried trash and everything was just dirty; yet in the midst of that you see laughing kids pointing at you, smiling as they go poop right in the middle of an open space, running along side of the van we're in. And then you hear it before you see it, the "AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! RAHHHHHHHHHH!" and then all at once these 2-5 year olds were swarming along the road literally chanting together "HOW ARE YOU? HOW ARE YOU?" and they didn't expect an answer at all, but just kept saying How are you? I'm not sure why but it just made me want to cry as I heard all of these kids chanting and trying to catch your attention. I saw some of the adults outside their houses/"stores" and all of them had such tired expressions. It was like you could see the harsh life imprinted on their faces as you drove by in your van.
We walked around in the Mathare slum for a little while and it was hard to see everything as I was walking. Not only because of the things I was seeing, but because it was difficult to walk. In Seattle as I walk on the side walk I can just look around me and see things (people walking, the sky, what's next to me), but in the slum you're constantly watching out for this stream of poop/trash/sewage/dirt because you don't want to step in it. I tried to look up to see the houses and what people were doing in the slum, but it was hard to catch glimpses between watching where your foot landed.
I could say millions of other things just from these past two days, but at the same time there's things you can't just exactly blog about for it to express how you felt about the situation. I still need time to process everything. As we were leaving, all of the kids ran after our van with such determination and it was unbelievably cute. They were still screaming at you and chanting together "HOW ARE YOU? HOW ARE YOU?" in their Swahili accents. And again I wanted to cry. I don't know yet what about the sight and sound of those children in the slum made me feel such a weight on my heart. Could you ever imagine living your whole life in a slum or on the streets?

The thumbs up is a classic pose among everyone in Kenya.
This is the stream of sewage/poop/garbage/dirt that runs all throughout the slum. Everyone poops in the slum, but sometimes they put it in little black bags before they throw it somewhere. I had seen and heard all about this "little" stream but truly you cannot know until you see it for yourself. Even if you see through these pictures and imagine the smell of it, it's nothing like walking right next to it, hopping from side to side so you won't step in it.