Eighty former criminals and young men from one of Nairobi’s most dangerous neighbourhoods patrol its dark streets unauthorized, providing protection to a neighborhood largely left behind by police.
Want to hear what Kenyans think about President Barack Obama leaving office (he’s a fellow Kenyan)? What they think about the upcoming U.S. election? Check out my Facebook for #NYTimes live from Nairobi.
Kenyans have never been big cheese eaters and neither are they known as experts in the cheese making business. However, a growing restaurant culture and interest in global cuisine has led to increasingly diversified tastes. Browns, a Kenyan cheese company, is using milk from local farmers to make cheeses that are sold locally and exported across East Africa and beyond.
Mostafa Kanjou escaped from Homs, Syria with his wife and two young daughters. They received asylum to come to the United States in September 2015. Now in Pomona, California, the Kanjous are building a new life. But they still miss the family that they had to leave behind.
Of the estimated 1.2 million Syrian refugees in Jordan, around 20% live in refugee camps set up by the government. I visited one of these state-sponsored camps, and some of the unofficial camps in northern Jordan, to better understand how these refugees survive each day.
Fadi Hamdan was on his way to Friday prayers in his hometown in southern Syria when a shell landed next to him. He was taken to a hospital in Jordan for emergency surgery. His father waited by his bedside, praying for his son’s recovery.
An estimated 1.2 million Syrians have fled to the neighboring country of Jordan, where they are looking to rebuild their lives. Most of these Syrians live outside of the refugee camps that have dominated the media, in cities and villages across Jordan. Although the Jordanian government has done a great deal to accommodate the needs of the refugees, they are not allowed to work without permits, which are awarded sparingly. Many refugees living in Jordan cite the inability to work as one of their greatest challenges.
The violence in Syria has left waves of sick and injured on the doorsteps of bordering countries. The Jordanian government is struggling to keep up with the massive demand for healthcare services. One organization has found a way to help.
Vigilante security groups in the Kenyan slums are one piece in a patchwork of informal survival strategies woven together by residents to improve their safety in places where muggings, break-ins and robberies are a routine part of life. The prevalence of private security providers, ranging from social networks and opportunistic enforcers to tireless local guardians, highlight the government’s failure to fulfill one of its core functions.
The campaign to track down poachers and protect endangered species in Africa’s embattled reserves is tapping into the technology used in the virtual world of online poker and other computer games. A U.S.-funded initiative is applying artificial intelligence and game theory algorithms to predict the movement of poachers, helping rangers who are testing the new technology in Uganda to find illegal hunters and their animal traps.