October 15, 2013

The Girl in the Yellow Dress

Saturday morning we'd arranged to go to a playground in a village a little way outside of Moshi.  Jill, the missionary that built the playground, picked us up around 9am and we were off.  As we got deeper into the village it began looking familiar to me, and I saw public signs that said 'Njoro' on them, so I asked Jill what the name of this place was.  Sure enough, it was the same slum we had visited just over a year ago.  Come to find out, this village is the poorest in the area, and is where most of the thugs/thieves come from.  The homes are literally stacked so close there's not room to walk between most of them.  They're mostly comprised of mud-bricks with tin roofs, though some of the businesses/shops in the 'central' area were concrete with tile entries.  Jill said that one could walk for two hours in this village, and still not be at the edge.
We pulled up to the playground, which was surrounded by chain-link fence, barbed wire and sealed off with a metal gate.