Hawkers on a Nairobi street. A Nairobi street: Though an oft-abused house help in the city, Kasaya says returning to her village “would be like giving up.” Photo/ANTHONY KAMAU
The standard non-fiction book on poverty usually has these ingredients: A heavy cut of human misery, a liberal sprinkling of official statistics and a dessert involving a call to action.
Such poverty narratives usually provide an insight into slum life, in the literal sense that both reader and author are looking in from the outside.
