Study
Abroad
Lessons from a decade
of working in a Kenyan slum
Twelve years later, Rye Barcott ’01 remains active with Carolina for Kibera; 60 Kenyans work for it. INSIDE: The making of a documentary film on Carolina for Kibera ■ page 49
Rye Barcott ’01 traveled to Kibera, the largest slum in East Africa, as a senior on a Burch Fellowship
in 2000, intending
to research the lives
of the young people
there. Where other
visitors might have
stood at its entrance
and seen only the
crushing realities of
poverty — the
open sump running
through a landscape
with a breathtaking number of mud
homes, where small wooden coffins
remind one of the smallest casualties
of political and economical neglect —
Barcott chose to see possibility.
“It’s alive,” he said of Kibera in a 2004
Review profile. “I mean, it’s the most alive
you can feel.”
In the 11 years since Barcott co-
founded the nonprofit Carolina for Kibera
with Kenyans Tabitha Festo (who died in
2004) and Salim Mohamed, the organiza-
