Getting on board ActionAid's anti-poverty campaign

Weakened by age, 90-year-old Mary Wanjiku Munene sat in her one-room house in the sprawling Kibera slum in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi - a room she shares with her seven grandchildren who were orphaned by AIDS. "Our home is falling apart," she said. "This child [pointing to her great grand daughter] is handicapped. At the special school they say we have to pay for her to be admitted. Sometimes we have no food and we just drink water and go to bed. Please help a poor woman like me," she added. Munene was speaking to a group of reporters and representatives of the UK charity, ActionAid, on Wednesday. The charity has launched a campaign to gather the voices and views of Africa's poor. The views are expected to be presented to the leaders of the group of seven western industrialised countries and Russia during the 6-7 July Group of Eight (G8) summit in Gleneagles, Scotland. ActionAid's social campaigners hope to lobby the leaders to support fairer terms of trade for developing nations, debt cancellation, increased aid, support for better health care projects, including providing treatment for those in poor societies infected with HIV/AIDS, better education opportunities for the poor and the improvement of agriculture. "We have enough problems," Munene said. "Let those who have the ability help us." HELP US - SLUM DWELLERS The chairman of a community-based organisation in Kibera, Onesmus Nyamai, emphasised that the slum dwellers were not irredeemable, and were able to initiate projects to improve their lives, but had limited capacity due to their extreme poverty.

Part of the Kibera slum in Nairobi.

"We have initiated water projects, built pit latrines and started a nursery school that is benefiting 400 children, mainly orphans," Nyamai said. "Why can't those [countries] owed money by our governments reduce or cancel the debts so that our governments can have more money to support us," he added. "These issues should be discussed at the international level. This is not politics, we are only asking for some help." Josephine Kamene, a single mother of six who uses clay and plastic beads to make jewellery, said she dreamed of being able to access micro-credit services to expand her business and hoped that one day, she might be able to export her wares. "My message to the G8 leaders is that I just want a little help," Kamene said. "I have a trade and I am ready to train others, but the cost of capital is high. Right now all I can afford is food and even that is a problem sometimes." Kamene’s small hut also accommodates her sister, Priscilla Kathina, who travelled from her rural home in the southern District of Kitui to seek treatment in Nairobi when she contracted tuberculosis. "I hope one day I will be able to take my children out of the slums where they are exposed to the danger of frequent fires, thuggery and prostitution. I would really like to improve my life," Kamene said.

Elderly slum dweller Mary Wanjiku Munene voices her problems.

GET ON BOARD - ACTIONAID ActionAid is using a bus as the symbol of its campaign, and intends to use this roving representative to mobilise developing countries to challenge the G8 leaders to support, rather than undermine, the efforts by Africa's poor to overcome poverty, injustice and social exclusion. The crusade has been dubbed the "Get On Board” campaign. "The bus is a symbol of the most excluded people in Africa and it is carrying what the poor are saying to the G8 countries," Asenath Omwega, ActionAid's regional director for Africa, told reporters in Kiberia. The bus left South Africa on 1 April on an epic voyage to Scotland, traversing Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania. The bus will travel to Uganda after touring western Kenya. On 15 May, it will be driven to the Kenyan port of Mombasa, from where it will be shipped to Marseille, France, for the onward journey to Britain via Italy, and finally to Gleneagles on 6 July, the G8 summit’s opening day. "During its journey in parts of Africa the [bus] team has met with unbelievable stories - of tragedy, as well as passion and real hope," ActionAid said. "The bus carries some of their powerful messages to the world's as well as their own political leaders."