Warren Elofson’s interest in the cattle business stems from years of first-hand experience ranching and farming in western Canada. His interest in Africa originated in the summer of 2018 when he hired a young man named Jonah Weyessa to help him shingle a roof on a “cabin” in Windermere, British Columbia, Canada. As they worked, Weyessa told him all about his life growing up in Kibera, Kenya, one of the world’s dirtiest and most dangerous city slums. Elofson was most intrigued by the fact that his young workmate remembered his experiences in Kibera with considerable fondness. “Yes,” he said when asked, “we were poor, but we lived in a community where people of different religions and cultures pulled together. I played in the streets with other kids and when one of our parents couldn’t be around or didn’t have food one day other parents stepped in and helped out.” “But weren’t you scared,” Elofson naively asked, “you know, wasn’t it dangerous there?” “No, it wasn’t” came the reply, “not at all, because in our little part of the community there were always two or three adults watching out for us. I felt safer there than I did later on in the first North American city we stayed in. 

Using a combination of personal experience and stories passed down to him, Jonah works with Warren to help textualize the realities of living in Nairobi’s poverty-stricken region, Kibera, one of the world’s dirtiest and most dangerous city slums in Slum City Africa: “A Very Bad Place With Good Teachings”.