“We look at what is good and what is bad. We see what is behind the scenes…The international media only shows the negative side.” - Kenyan SLUM-TV.

The Kenyan post-election violence brought more than Ushahidi - the web tool created to document the violence on the Internet - the uprising also brought to fore the activities of the crew of SLUM-TV, and how they captured the violence and its aftermath through the lens of their camera.

Operating from Mathare, one of the largest slums in Kenya, the SLUM-TV was created to document the lives of the people in the
slum and to ‘reevaluate’ these lives through the camera. The recordings are projected on wall, at night, for the viewing pleasure of the neighborhood.

The Austrian government-funded project was started in 2006 by Sam Hopkins, Lukas Pusch and Alexander Nikolic. Since it’s creation, the SLUM-TV has emerged as a avenue for the slum youths to express themselves and initiate dialogue within their community. This role was documented recently:

During the crisis, Kamau, Otieno and Wanjiru often followed with their camera behind crews from CNN and British Channel 4, who had money to hire bodyguards.

But as the international media trained lenses on burning cars and young men with machetes, the Slum TV crew found other stories they deemed equally important — people from different ethnic groups giving one another food and shelter, young people who refused to take up the machete, and local leaders who brokered peace between neighbors.

They recorded the landscape of destruction left behind — burned-out markets, demolished houses and tented camps of the displaced thousands that still ring the muddy edges of Mathare.

They are gathering the last footage now and will show their coverage in Mathare next month. “We want to give people this information so these things never happen again,” Kamau said. “We want to make sure young people focus on the positive — some people do not even realize their own capabilities.”

The UK Independent news portal helps up SLUM-TV’s “focus on the positive” into a clearer perspective:

While the world has zoomed in on the tribal clashes that erupted following December’s flawed presidential election, the Mathare film-makers have found stories of hope amid the gloom. Luo women hosting Kikuyu families, for example, or feeding centres run by local women in areas where aid agencies are too scared to venture, and a group of men from one tribe saving the life of a man from another.

Although the Mathare slum is reputed to be the largest in Africa, there exist several others across the continent, and perhaps their youths too can learn from the experience of their counterparts in Kenya.

Enjoy one SLUM-TV documentaries:

Image credits: SLUM-TV.