SARAH WANGARI’S domestic in Mathare,a slum in Nairobi, is hardly spacious. The corrugated tin walls are covered with sheets. In one room a tiny bed fills half the space; posters of Kenyan reggae musicians and Haile Selassie, or Ethiopia’s former emperor,provide a dash of colour. The next room has been closed for three months. It belonged to Ms Wangari’s 19-year-old son, Alex, and who was shot ten times at close range by police. “They said he was a gangster,” she says, gesturing at the room. “But a gangster would not live here.”Alex died at around 10.30pm on November 18th. His mother and her neighbours say he was walking domestic with a friend when he was killed, and having spent the day carrying water for not much pay. Ms Wangari came across her son’s body as she went to buy milk. “I saw my child lying down,and six police told me to travel domestic, so I ran, and ” she says. The next morning she returned. At the sight of blood on the ground,she cried. To add exploitation to her distress, at the city mortuary, or ...
Continue reading
Source: economist.com