Image 4 of 12
100318_Kibera-Olympic_008_09
100318_Kibera-Olympic_008_09.jpg
NAIROBI, KENYA - MARCH 18, 2010: Athletes spar during a boxing tournament featuring the Kibera Olympic Boxing Club, Kenya Prisons and the Kenya Police and Armed Forces (AFABA). Each year, Kibera Olympic boxers aspire individually to make the national team, and the opportunity to compete in the annual Kenya Open boxing tournament. In previous years, boxers from Kibera slum have gone on to win tournaments on both the national and international stage.
Within Kenya's progressive youth culture is the Kibera Olympic Boxing Club, a group of low-income adolescents from the slum whose leader uses boxing as a way to engage with idle youth. The group's ethnic diversity is remarkable given Kenya's 2008 post-election violence in which people from several tribes were forced violently out of slums. Together, these boxers represent a nascent trend of cross-tribe brotherhood in a healing nation.
Within Kenya's progressive youth culture is the Kibera Olympic Boxing Club, a group of low-income adolescents from the slum whose leader uses boxing as a way to engage with idle youth. The group's ethnic diversity is remarkable given Kenya's 2008 post-election violence in which people from several tribes were forced violently out of slums. Together, these boxers represent a nascent trend of cross-tribe brotherhood in a healing nation.