"NAIROBI - Beatrice Oriyo laughed out loud when asked if there was a playground where her three children could play near her home in Kibera, Nairobi's biggest informal settlement.

"There's nothing like that here," the 34-year-old Oriyo told Context by phone from the one-roomed corrugated iron home that she rents for 6,000 Kenyan Shillings ($43.18) a month.

"We don't even have our own toilet - we have to pay each time to use the public toilets. We bathe in the same room that is our kitchen, living room and bedroom. The idea of a playground here is like a joke," she said.

More than one billion people globally reside in overcrowded urban slums such as Kibera, where they live a precarious existence, struggling to access basic amenities such as adequate housing, water, sanitation, power and waste collection, said the United Nations' agency for urban development, UN-Habitat."

Nita Bhalla reports for Thomson Reuters Foundation June 8, 2023. [2]