Rosemary Achia, 53, has two daughters. One has a job washing clothes in Nairobi and the other works in a hotel, so all seven grandchildren live with her.

“I am a little old for this,” she says. “I have been 11 years a widow. He was a good man but God gives and God takes away.”

Now she takes in washing, knits pullovers, and sells tomatoes.

“When you are alone, you have to do everything. You cannot choose.”

As she talks, twitching at the yarn dollies on the armchair that she crochets at a church women’s craft group, Velma, 12, Mary, 11, and 10-year-old Owen are poking through the plastic sheeting on the roof, looking for the small dead body of a rat we can all smell but not find.

Along with Millicent, 26, Ashly, nine, and Junior, two, they live in two cell-sized rooms, swept and clean. “My biggest worry is my daughters will find new husbands and forget these children. I can just about feed them, but it is a challenge. I am afraid for these children growing up in this slum. Last week two were drowned because of the water, the river came into the house. The mother went after the baby when it was swept out. It’s sad, very sad. If anything happened to my children like that I would too follow them.

“They tell us they are going to build proper houses here and knock down our homes soon. So I am preparing to take them all back to the country. I am saving, and I hope by December we can go.” Rosemary needs £60 to buy them all a ride on a lorry back to her village. But, like many in Kibera, she hasn’t been back to the rural area where she was born since 1974 and has only word of mouth to rely on for what might await her there.

“I came here because of hunger. I’m still here.”

Collins holds his baby daughter, Raquelle, who is 11 months old, as he stands with her mother, Sharon, 23, next to the Nygong river that flows through the centre of Kibera. The couple are not married, but have been together for four years and live with Collins’ aunt. His parents died when he was very young. “Life is hard in Kibera, there is no work and every day we must go out and find a way of feeding our baby.”

Mary Anyang, 49, has been mending and sewing school uniforms for several generations of Kibera children in a narrow, doorless space between two shops on a busy lane. She came to the slum from western Kisumu as a young bride in “search of greener pastures”. Her eyes are not so good now but her daughter-in-law, Janet Anyang, helps her. Her son Elisha, a construction worker, has just turned up after work to look after Brighton for a while so that the women can work.

“I cannot remember how long I have been sewing or when I learned it, but business is good and my family are all here. My son has a job in construction, my daughters both are here. Work is constant: I cannot keep up and my back can get very sore, but we are a good family, no trouble – and children will always need uniforms.”

Construction worker Michael Wandera Kwoba sits on a damp sofa with his daughter, Elizabeth Akumu Kwoba. He isn’t sure how old she is. His wife suffered a mental breakdown in the slum and left Kwoba and their six children. He isn’t sure where she is. The other five children were sent to live with his mother in a rural area. He says he is an alcoholic.

“I drink for something to occupy my life. I wake up around 6am for work and come back around 8pm and then I find [Elizabeth] in the neighbour’s house. She misses her mother, obviously, but also her brothers and sisters. But God willing I can keep affording the school fees for this one; sometimes it’s difficult.”

The day after this photo was taken he relinquished responsibility for his daughter, accepting that his drinking made him unable to look after her. Her teachers found Elizabeth a place in a small residential school for girls run by a local woman.

Cody Achieng wanted to be a singer, and a few years ago spent all her savings on making a music video that she cannot afford to show anyone because she has no data credit on her phone. She has a strong, soulful voice but for now she runs a stall, with piles of mixed secondhand socks on a tarpaulin.

At 13, she was forcibly married off to an abusive man by her father. Now she is 29 and has four children. None of the fathers have anything to do with the family, and it is noticeable that her neighbours don’t treat her with the customary friendliness or warmth.

Achieng’s husband abandoned her after she was badly burned by a cooking stove accident. Destitute, she was taken in by a man who raped her and pimped her.

“I try to do the best for the children, my eldest son goes to school,” she says with pride, “but it is hard to find the rent [£30] every month.”

Several years ago, Achieng met a foreign charity worker visiting Kibera who promised she would write to her and help her with her ambitions. She still hopes that woman might return.

Jacqueline and James Onyango with their first baby Wesley at their home in Kibera. Jacqueline was badly burned down her arm and leg when the stove collapsed on her a few months ago.

Sitting happily gossiping and laughing between two elderly friends, Mary Nasia is a widow with no children or relatives. “I have been here for 10 years, since my husband died and I had no way to support myself in our old home.

“But I have friends here and I sell my beans every day and I have no one to please but myself. I am 63 and Kibera is my family. I am very happy here. Each day comes as a blessing to me and people like my beans.”

Fred Openo, his wife Beatrice Ouma and their children pose for a photograph outside their home.

The couple work together, buying ground nuts from market traders in Nairobi early in the morning and bringing them back into Kibera to sell in small packets or plastic bottles. With this money they are trying to save up so they can afford to send their children to school when they are older.

Celestine, 19, holds her son Raven at a health clinic in Kibera. She is a single mother living temporarily with an aunt in Kibera, but she says “it’s difficult” because she doesn’t bring in any money and there are two mouths to feed. Her own mother threw her out of the family home when she fell pregnant. Teenage pregnancy is still a stigma in Kibera for unmarried young women. It is very hard for girls and women to access family planning services, both in terms of availability and because of the taboo around sex outside marriage.

Roseline Amondi is known in her area of Kibera as “Mama Fish” for the fresh tilapia and Nile perch she sells. She owns one of the very few fridges in the slum and is always being asked to store things for neighbours. She is also a port of call for lost children. “Many children in Kibera get lost, they wander away and can’t find their way home. There’s so many people that do not know each other that it is very easy for a child to be lost and be unsafe. People will bring children to me because they know the child will be safe here. Sometimes I have many!” she laughs.

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Of her eight children, four are birth children and four are orphans that she is raising as her own. Amondi has a reputation for wisdom and is often called on to be both marriage and family guidance counsellor in her community.

“I got married at 18, when I was still a child. It was not a good idea and he was not a good man. It takes a long time to have the courage to leave a bad situation when you are such a young girl. Many girls rush in to marriage at 13, 17 – it’s too young. I tell the young people, go to school, wait. My daughter was a teenage mum but I did not throw her out, I would not do that to my child, they should be allowed to make mistakes. I try to tell other mothers and fathers in Kibera, value your child. Love that child.”