"As soon as I reached the brow of the hill one rainy day in November 1990, I could see the slum of Carton City lying below in the lush river valley of Nairobi, Kenya. Although my eyes could not yet tell the condition of the slum, my nostrils could. I could easily smell the stench of burned and charred buildings. A great fire had most certainly occurred recently in Carton City.
David Ashiko, the director of the Urban Advance in Kenya, and I began down the winding path, and as we approached Carton City, we could begin to see the extent of the damage. Scores of homes lay roofless and with scorched walls, many burnt to the ground. When we arrived in the slum, the people gathered around us, eager to tell their story to anyone who would listen.
Carton City, the people told Ashiko and me, was an old slum - one of the first in the city of Nairobi. It was created soon after Kenya had won freedom from the British. Dating back generations, it was constructed on government land in the floodplain of the Nairobi River, close to the military airport. Its inhabitants, primarily poor and uneducated freedom fighters in Kenya's struggle for independence, had simply squatted on that government land, seeking to scratch a living from its rich alluvial soil. It was named Carton City because so many of the people lived in cardboard cartons with sheet-metal roofs.
The government had tolerated the existence of Carton City for decades. But recently it had decided the slum had to go. Only the night before, the police had entered Carton City during an intense tropical storm. They roused all the people from their beds and made the families gather their belongings and stand in the pouring rain. Then, waving batons and firing pistols in the air, the police forced the father of each family to set fire to his own house. The people stood there helplessly in the pouring rain, watching their simple homes burn to the ground. For many it was the bitter end. They were defeated, broken, homeless, the men exposed before their families for the helpless victims they were. The people of Carton City had no place to go and were unwanted where they were.
I returned to Carton City sixteen months later. What now greeted me was a significantly transformed community. Solid two- and three-room mud-brick houses filled the slum instead of cardboard shacks. The dirt streets were swept clan, with no litter anywhere except in designated pits some distance from the homes. Behind each home was a pit latrine so that each family had its own toilet, and community showers had been installed throughout the complex. There was both a piggery and a fowl farm in operation, and a large vegetable garden provided food for all in the slum and for sale. Carton City had radically changed. What had happened?
When I asked, I received a very simple answer: 'Clement Adongo came to be with us!' Adongo was one of a team of four organizers led by David Ashiko. When Ashiko accompanied me into Carton City in November 1990, we both agreed that this was a slum in which the Urban Advance organizing effort should begin. Ashiko, an accomplished organizer, worked there part time until he employed and trained Adongo. And then Adongo began working in Carton City full time.
Adongo started by entering into the lives of the people of Carton City. He spent innumerable hours conducting individual meetings with them - asking questions, listening to their stories and learning about their lives. He heard that many of the men had fought for freedom from Britain, that there were no jobs after independence and that the people had come to squat in Carton City, hoping for day labor at the nearby military base. He learned that many of the women had resorted to begging, stealing or prostitution to support their families. He listened to their pain and frustration and their sense of abandonment and even betrayal by the government they had helped bring to power. And Adongo allowed his heart to be broken by the things that were breaking the hearts of 'his' people. 
Once he had built trusting relationships with a majority of the residents of Carton City, Adongo began gathering them together into house meetings. In those small groups, they told their stories, shared each other's pain and then began to talk about how they could make Carton City a better place to live. Almost immediately the people began to identify what they had to do. Before they could act powerfully in the Kenyan political context, they had to begin building economic power. They started small. They created three income-generating projects, and with the production and selling of clothes, baskets, charcoal and furniture, a stream of income began flowing into Carton City. The only member of the community who could read and write besides Adongo went into a bank for the first time in her life; there she opened an interest-bearing account for the monies the community was generating. The people decided to build the latrines and community showers and then created the two farms and vegetable garden.
Then a new deputy chief was appointed for the district of Nairobi in which Carton City lay. And he visited Carton City. Taking note of the people's improved standard of living, he decided he wanted some of it. Soon he informed the residents of Carton City that they had to pay a new tax. But the people soon discovered that there was no new tax. This was simply a way for the deputy chief to steal from the people. So the citizens of Carton City refused to pay.
One night the police entered the slum again. Under the orders of the deputy chief, they set fire to selected houses. But this time the people didn't meekly stand by and watch their homes burn. Instead of cowering in fear, the residents of Carton City rose up in anger. The community descended en masse upon the government, and there demanded and got an audience with the chief, the immediate superior of the deputy chief. They issued a formal complaint against the man and demanded retribution. But the chief refused to cooperate. So the community leaders went to the district commissioner, threatening to reveal the whole scandal to the newspapers. Immediately the district commissioner removed the deputy chief from his post and paid for the destroyed homes. And the people tasted significant victory for the first time against Nairobi's government.
But the people didn't leave it there. Adongo got the people to reflect on what they had learned from this incident and on what their next steps in dealing with the government should be. They decided to take two crucial steps. First, they would build permanent homes for each other. By Kenyan law, the building of a permanent home on unclaimed land 'stakes a claim' to that land for the homebuilder. Second, they notified the government that the slum would monitor every meeting of the District Development Committee (the local legislative body) to hold the government accountable in its dealings with Carton City. A Carton City representative has attended every meeting since. And the people have taken a number of actions to be sure their voice is heard.
The community then created its own construction firm and began building permanent homes for each other. These homes are substantial by Kenyan standards - two and three rooms, constructed of permanent brick and appointed with glass windows and wooden doors. One by one the people replaced their cardboard huts with these new homes.
The story of Carton City is a clear example of what community organizing is meant to do as it teaches people how to use power. The success of the people of Carton City is a clear manifestation of the Iron Rule of organizing: "Never do for others what they can do for themselves". Because that is exactly what the people of Carton City had done!" -Robert Linthicum
