The Big Story on the Back Streets

Benson Kamau, left, Fred Otieno and Esther Wanjiru walk the dirt paths of Mathare, a Nairobi slum, to gather their neighbors' views on the future of Kenya. (By Stephanie Mccrummen -- Washington Post)

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 members of Slum TV are part of a savvy generation of young, cosmopolitan Kenyans who know of podcasts and YouTube, and are often well-traveled, well-read and well-aware of the artistic possibilities of a hand-held video camera.

They move in a growing milieu of bloggers and writers who are uncomfortable with the ideas and politics of Kenya's old-guard leaders, whom they blame for dragging the country into the recent spell of violence.

"Theirs is a generation steeped in venality, in tribal arithmetic, in a cynical nationalism and their values have infected those thousands of young people who are roaming the countryside in a killing fury," Martin Kimani wrote in a recent essay, "Generation Disaster," in the regional newspaper the East African. "We need to say goodbye to Generation Disaster and ask for a divorce from its dystopian vision even if like a bad guest it insists on staying an extra night."

Although their parents have valued ethnic loyalties and voted in ethnic blocs, people such as Kamau, Wanjiru and Otieno -- who are from different ethnic groups -- are rejecting those sorts of political calculations, especially in view of the destruction of recent months.

"We have seen how these old people lead, and we're seeing that it's wrong," Kamau said. "If we leave this nation to them, we're going to the grave."

And so on Thursday, he and his colleagues bounded down into the valley of a thousand rusted roofs, breezing through the maze of tiny shack enterprises, corn sellers and shoe fixers, junk dealers and tailors, the Ugunja Basaa Club blasting reggae in an alcohol-scented breeze. Their idea was to collect opinions about where Kenya is headed.

They stopped in front of a group of young men clearing out an open sewage canal.

"I'd like to ask," Wanjiru began, "since they formed the grand coalition government, is this a permanent solution to Kenya's problems?"

The men -- some barefoot, some in dusty, torn slacks -- answered that the problem in Kenya is that tribal differences are exploited by wealthy politicians who'd never know what it means to muck out a sewer.

"Could Uhuru come here and do this work?" said Maurice Ochieng, referring to the son of Kenya's first president.

Wanjiru kept the camera rolling as the men expounded like so many professors on Kenyan history and the politics of ethnic identity. Kamau was excited by what he heard.

"This clip will be good to show -- see, this guy is a Kamba, this guy is a Luo, this guy is a Luyah, this guy is a Kikuyu," he said, naming the different ethnic groups represented. "And these people are together. You show this clip and a person who thinks there is a difference between a Kikuyu and a Luo will find he is stupid, and alone."

After several more interviews, they headed back to the offices of Slum TV, a concrete-floored room with one desk, on the edge of Mathare.

The team members spend whatever free time they have there in between the odd jobs they do for money.

Kamau scrapes by on freelance photography; Otieno hauls wood, and sometimes distills and sells the local brew. Wanjiru washes clothes and fixes computers for money.

She is studying computer engineering in college, but she dreams of a different profession. "My father used to say I'd make a good journalist," she said, recalling how she used to deliver newscasts for him. "One day I will be."

Otieno, who is tall, skinny and dreamy, and has in recent years lost his mother, father, sister and brother to the travails of life in Mathare, is determined to become a filmmaker.

On days he can't find work, he often heads out alone with the camera and no particular plan. Last week, he came upon a group of young boys and followed them around for the day.

"They were playing, dancing, drinking, eating," he said, adding that he recorded one boy even as he slept drunk for an hour. "You know it's the life of the slum -- they are not bad boys."

Kamau envisions himself as a filmmaker, too, and as something of a radical. He says that Slum TV is "creating the professionals who will change this nation."

For now, he said, his goal is to show a version of life in Mathare different from the one that politicians and outside journalists often depict -- not necessarily positive, he said, but "balanced."

"We will show the results of the violence," he said. "We will try to reflect on the damage done."