The largest slums in the world. The poorest people

Ask any child today what they want to be in the future, and every third child will answer: president. Looking at the luxury that most heads of state live in, there is nothing strange. But not all "guarantors of the Constitution" can boast of mansions on the islands and their own aircraft. Some have chosen a completely different path. And among them the hero of this review is the poorest president in the world.

Palaces, islands and golden toilets - this is how you imagine the life of any president. It is noteworthy that the poorer the country, the richer its head lives. But he took this system and broke it Jose Mujica- ascetic, vegetarian and former president of Uruguay.

José, who is affectionately called El Pepe in his homeland, is not a typical president. When he took office in 2010, the first thing he did was refuse to move to the residence assigned to him. Mujica preferred his old farm, inherited from his father, to a luxurious villa.

A dirt road connects the farm with the capital. Jose, his wife and two dogs live in a small house: an old labrador and a three-legged mongrel named Manuela.

José has always loved gardening and working on the ground. Before the presidency, he and his wife, without employees, grew flowers for sale. What Lucia (wife) continued to do when José became the #1 political star.

In addition to the declared property farm, El Pepe owns an old 1987 Volkswagen Beetle. The cost of the car is 1800 US dollars.

Do you know what the salary of the president of Uruguay is? 12500 thousand dollars. And all five years of presidency Jose gave 90% of this amount to charity. Thus, his monthly income remained at the level of the national average wage, which at that time was $775.

Why, having seized upon great financial opportunities, the former president did not use them? Jose has always adhered to radical left views. For which he was wounded 6 times "at the barricades" and spent 14 years in prison, mostly in a solitary cell. And this could not but affect the outlook of the future political leader.

The former president capaciously fit his philosophy into one statement: “They call me the poorest president, but I don’t feel poor. The poor are those who work only to live in luxury. They want more and more all the time… But if you don’t have enough things… then you have more time for yourself.”

Probably, if more Important People lived according to this principle, the world would be a much better place. In the meantime, in order of contrast, we suggest taking a look,

Of the 21 million people living in Mumbai, 62% (or approximately 13 million people) live in slums throughout the city.

Most slum dwellers subsist on $1 a day or less, spending 10 hours a day working hard in the hot sun, using the local river as a shower or toilet, and sleeping on sidewalks or under bridges at the end of the day.

This is what the real one looks like.

When I was traveling in India and stopped by Mumbai, I spent several hours in the slums, which are considered the largest in Asia and one of the largest in the world. The slums are called Dharavi. You've probably heard of them - that's where the protagonist of the movie "Slumdog Millionaire", Jamal, lived, and that's where most of the film's scenes were filmed.




Walking along Dharavi was the most enlightening experience of my entire trip to India, and perhaps of all my travels. This place is so populated that it seems like a separate city inside Mumbai, with its narrow dirty lanes, open sewers and huge piles of garbage.






Before explaining what a person who first came to Dharavi sees and feels, I will give a few facts:

About 1 million people live on an area of ​​2.5 square kilometers. Dharavi is the most densely populated place on planet Earth.
- The average salary here is from $1 to $2 per day.
- Dharavi is the most productive slum in the world with an annual turnover of almost a billion dollars.
- In Dharavi, there is 1 toilet for about 1,450 people.
- The average life expectancy of a Dharavi resident is less than 60 years.
- The slums are divided into communities according to religion in the ratio: 60% Hindus, 33% Muslims, 6% Christians and 1% others.
- Only men are allowed to work in Dharavi's workshops.


The biggest surprise for me was how incredibly organized life was in Dharavi. Today, this area of ​​Mumbai is a gigantic factory where people work - under difficult conditions - but work. The slums produce goods that are exported throughout India and around the world. You can even order goods from Dharavi online.


The slums are divided into industrial and residential parts.

In the residential part, you can meet Indians from all over the country who came here from rural areas, as well as local residents from the state of Maharashtra. The residential area lacks any infrastructure: no roads, no public toilets. This part of Mumbai was the dirtiest inhabited place I have ever seen in my life. The area is divided along religious lines: Hindus live in one part, Muslims in another, Christians in the third. In the residential part there are several temples and churches.


The houses here are small and densely packed with people. I managed to look into one of the houses and see how the locals live: in a small room, seven people were sleeping on the floor, next to each other, almost clinging to each other. None of them had a pillow or mattress. There was no kitchen or toilet in the house.

Life in the industrial part is chaotic, it is very hot, dirty and smells terrible. There are more than 7,000 different businesses and 15,000 one-room workshops that are filled with thousands of people working from dawn to dusk without air conditioning. When I walked through the industrial part, I saw only men. The men were everywhere. When I asked an Indian friend (I alone did not dare to walk here) why I see only men in the workshops, he replied that women were forbidden to work in Dharavi.

The most common goods in Dharavi are ceramics, leather, plastic and iron products. There are several smaller industries that deal with recycling. Moreover, they recycle garbage - everything that we in Russia and in the West are accustomed to throw away. Perhaps some of your rubbish that you threw away yesterday will end up here in Dharavi in ​​a month, and they will make something out of it that they can sell.


I'm not just talking about paper, plastic, leather, aluminum or glass waste. I've seen workers picking out parts from old VHS tapes from the 90s to make something out of them. I have seen workshops that recycle the soap bars that hotel guests leave in their rooms.

After several hours of walking through the slums, I was able to go beyond stereotypes and look at Dharavi not just as the "largest slum in the world", but as an active regulated community with a strong economy. The inhabitants of the slums are very industrious. Despite the difficult conditions, they all call this place their home.

Subscribe to our Telegram channel and be the first to know about the cheapest tickets and offers.


Author.

Slam tourism (traveling through the slums) is gaining more and more popularity. We decided to list the most popular places to visit, in case you want to get especially thrilled during your upcoming vacation.

Brazil

In Portuguese, slums are called favelas - they are home to the poorest part of the population. It is clear that no building plans are being carried out and the very phenomenon of slums denies any architectural planning and calculation. As a result of this, the slums of Brazil resemble a real anthill without end and edge. These are gigantic endless seas of chaotic buildings with narrow streets, poorly developed infrastructure, no sewerage and simply an outrageous level of banditry and crime. An interesting fact is that more than a third of the country's population lives in the so-called favelas. This statistic is appalling and perfectly characterizes the standard of living in Brazil.

All the major cities of Brazil have grown into slums: they are also on the outskirts, Rio de Janeiro, the city of Belen (it is the leader in terms of the area of ​​​​the slums surrounding it). Slam tourism as a phenomenon appeared in Brazil back in the nineties, when it was especially dangerous for visitors to travel: constant attacks and robberies made this type of vacation extremely extreme. Now, on the contrary, the inhabitants of the favelas sell various souvenirs and drugs to tourists. In short, the market for slum travel is evolving.

India

This country has given rise to the largest slums in all of Asia. Indian Mumbai is famous for its slums throughout the world - the capital of crime and poverty. In general, India is a fairly safe country, except for the highest level of unsanitary conditions and a rather specific climate. However, will introduce you to crime and begging if you decide to visit. Hundreds of thousands of people here live below the poverty line: you will be met by dozens of children in tattered clothes who will very persistently beg for alms: pulling your sleeves, tearing out your bag, they will try to take off your watch, shoes and, in general, all your clothes.

The Bombay slums are not only people, they are also a kind of unforgettable surroundings - huge piles of garbage and plastic bags, boxes and some incomprehensible mountains of dirty tattered rags. Excursions to these areas are held quite often: three times a day and may well satisfy the demand of foreign tourists. The price for the tour is ridiculous - only about eight dollars, which is more than a solid amount for the local population. The contrast of Indian slums is especially noticeable against the backdrop of much more prosperous business districts of the capital, where everything is rolled in concrete and glass.

In general, such excursions are a rather unnatural and strange occupation: to pay money to look at the suffering and poverty of other people, while feeling like something more significant. Excursion programs often include watching homeless children and beggars, as if they were not people, but animals in the zoo. It must be said that initially slam tourism was conceived not only to see and communicate with people in poor areas, but also to somehow financially help them.

China

Chinese slums are more civilized and tidy than those in India and Brazil. Slums in China are called hutongs, and here they are usually just a concrete block of ugly skyscrapers, many of which even have air conditioning. The poverty of the local population does not lead to an extreme increase in crime, walking through the Chinese hutongs, of course, you risk getting a few stab wounds or losing your wallet, but the risk is still not as high as in Brazilian favelas or Indian poor areas. Now the Chinese authorities are actively demolishing slum buildings, erecting elite glass high-rise buildings on the site of dilapidated houses.

Mexico

The largest slums in the world have grown around the Mexican capital - the city of Mexico City. They number about four million inhabitants, which is equal to the population of a small country. In terms of their structure, Mexican disadvantaged areas are very much like the Brazilian favelas - an exorbitant level of crime, a low quality of life, drug addiction and prostitution.

Such a deplorable situation with the standard of living and slums in the third world countries occurred for the reason that the abrupt and unnatural urbanization did not give the inhabitants of the provinces a chance to properly socialize and find their place. The result of this was the construction of villages in cities, which in essence are slums. The process of slum growth is gaining momentum every year. The areas of slums accompanying large cities, similar from space to cancerous tumors, are constantly increasing, as is the number of people living in them.

Alexey Loktionov

Houses made of cardboard, plywood, metal and boards. This is what the vast areas of the poor in Brazil look like, forming a dense ring around the cities. It is estimated that every second resident of Rio de Janeiro lives there. The inhabitants of these places often live off street trading. They sell everything they can, often drugs or their own body. Tourist excursions to such places are usually supervised. Few people have the courage to explore the poor "at their own risk."

2. Manila, Philippines

More than 20% of Manila's residents live in slums, and this number is increasing every year. There is no need to look for such areas for a long time - most of Manila is such. And the most terrible are the quarters of the Navas district, where desperate people, not finding a better place, settled in the cemetery. Everywhere rot, garbage and fragments of corpses. You need to walk carefully so as not to end up in the gutter. The smell and atmosphere are terrible.

3. Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya

The fame of the slums, located almost in the very center of the Kenyan capital, has long spread far beyond the borders of the country. An excursion to Kibera is the second tourist attraction, after the African safari, for which Kenya is famous. Hundreds of tourists come here and many celebrities known for their magazine covers. Do they understand the risks? According to statistics, more than 800 thousand people live in Kibera, of which 20% are HIV-infected. These are the largest slums in Africa.

4. Sultanbeyli in Istanbul, Turkey

In the middle of the 20th century, in the suburbs of Istanbul, it was decided to build a settlement for Turkish emigrants, which, over time, was transformed into a huge area for the poor. According to statistics, more than 250 thousand people live in Sultanbeyli today. The expansion of the slums may have been helped by Turkish legislation, according to which, if a house was built in one night, it can remain in its place even if a building permit has not been obtained.

5. Osaka, Japan

Japan appears to us as a modern country, and everything that happens there is viewed from this point of view. However, even here there is a place that has become a cause for shame for the local authorities. This is Kamagasaki, the largest illegal settlement in the Land of the Rising Sun. The poorest residents of Osaka live in this area. No one knows exactly how many there are, because most people live here without registration. It is not so easy to get here - many years ago the name of this place was removed from the maps. Since 1996, this place has been officially known as Airin.

6. Dharavi in ​​Mumbai, India

More than 1 million people live in these largest slums in Asia. They are located in an area the size of London's Hyde Park. The world learned about this place after the appearance of the film "Slumdog Millionaire", which also failed to convey the true picture. It is frightening that such a huge settlement of the poor in Mumbai is located on the outskirts of the financial capital of India, next to the world of the rich. And only a wall separates them.

7. Petare in Caracas, Venezuela

Caracas is considered the most dangerous city in Latin America, and, at the same time, its largest slums. Here, every day, many homeless people try to survive, huddling in hastily glued "burrows" made of cardboard and rags. The situation is worst in the Petare area. For years, it was a world of underage murderers and thieves living in garbage heaps. Organized gangs have now invaded the area. Every day, at least a dozen inhabitants of Petare alone die there.

Modern megacities are crowded with people, many of whom are forced to put up with poor ecology, cramped living space, remoteness from their place of work and an unfavorable social situation.
However, if the journey to the office takes more than two hours, and there are no treadmills and parks near your house, you should not be so upset, after all, you are lucky - there are many places in the world where living is not only inconvenient, but very dangerous. Here are some areas whose conditions are completely unsuitable for normal life.
1. Cité Soleil District, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
The "City of the Sun" (this is how the name of the district is translated) is located on the outskirts of the capital of Haiti, the city of Port-au-Prince. Most of the buildings are slums and huts, in Cité Soleil poverty reigns and crime flourishes. The streets are drowning in mountains of sewage and garbage, there is no sewerage here, so the area has long become a hotbed of dangerous diseases and viruses - the average life expectancy here does not exceed 50 years.


The police try not to show up in Cite Soleil, so drug dealers and kidnappers run everything there. According to representatives of the Red Cross, the slums of the "City of the Sun" are the quintessence of all Haitian problems: rampant unemployment, low level of education, lack of public organizations and services, unsanitary conditions, rampant crime and armed violence - all this can be found in almost every corner of the archipelago , however, it is in one of the districts of the capital that it manifests itself most clearly.
In an attempt to restore order in the slums, the UN in 2004 decided to introduce a limited military contingent into the Cité Soleil territory, the peacekeepers managed to largely defuse the situation, but some problems remained. For some time, the UN maintained control over the area, but after the devastating earthquake of 2010, riots flared up with renewed vigor. Three thousand suicide bombers managed to escape on the sly from a prison located near Cité Soleil, and at present, gangs of armed scumbags still inspire fear in the peaceful local population.
2. Favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil


Rio, which is located on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, is incredibly beautiful. Thousands of tourists come here to admire the statue of Christ the Redeemer, take part in colorful carnivals and sunbathe on the beaches of Copacabana. However, the city has another face, almost unfamiliar to idle tourists who love the Brazilian sun and cool mojitos: on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, there are vast favelas - disadvantaged areas, consisting mainly of squalid shacks and huts.


The notorious favela of Rocinha has long been a staging post for drug dealers who bring cocaine to Europe, and the close cooperation between corrupt government and the underworld has led to gang leaders here feeling at ease, living in abundance and even luxury.

Erismar Rodriguez Moreira
Until recently, one of the most notorious and famous drug lords in Rio was Erismar Rodriguez Moreira, nicknamed Bem-Te-Vi (Bem-Te-Vi is an insectivorous bird found in Brazil). His accomplices committed many brutal murders, and Moreira's group was also known for the fact that its members had a passion for gold-plated firearms. In 2005, the intelligence services carried out a carefully designed operation to detain members of the gang, but as a result of the ensuing shootout, Moreira was killed.
In the run-up to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the city's authorities are working hard to improve the environment in the favelas, and some positive changes have already taken place.
3. Detroit, Michigan, USA


Detroit, once the center of the automobile industry in the United States, is going through hard times. It once bore the proud nickname of the "City of Motors", but now the streets and factories have fallen into disrepair: due to the reduction in production since 2000, about 25% of the population has left Detroit, many are selling their homes for pennies and leaving in search of a better life. . Stray dogs breed in abandoned dwellings - this is one of the main problems of Detroit. Tens of thousands of dogs, most of which are pit bulls, roam the streets, threatening all living things.


On July 19, 2013, the Detroit administration declared bankruptcy of the city and $19 billion in debt. services. According to the FBI and the US Department of Justice, three areas of Detroit are on the list of the most criminal areas in the country.
4. Ciudad Juarez, Mexico


The city, located in the northern part of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, has become a battleground between drug cartels and various criminal gangs in recent decades. In 2009, Ciudad Juarez came out on top in terms of the number of murders per capita - the level reached 130 violent deaths per 100,000 people. And this is only official statistics - in fact, the number of those killed is somewhat higher, since a significant part of them are buried in common graves, and people are listed as missing.
Life in the city is especially dangerous for women: rape is quite common here, and in the last 20 years alone, hundreds of women have died in such incidents.
5. Medellin, Colombia


In the 1980s, during the time of the cartels of Pablo Escobar and his squads, Medellin was the most violent city in the world - human life here was a mere bargaining chip in the transactions of local "businessmen". In 1993, Escobar was killed with police resistance, and the crime rate decreased slightly: if in 1991 there were about 6,500 murders, then in 2009, 2,899 people became victims of bandits.

Pablo Escobar
In addition to banal murders and robberies, other common "vacancies" at the local "labor exchange" are blackmail and kidnappings, which, however, do not differ too much from the first and second methods. As a rule, the scheme is quite simple: a group of armed people simply surrounds the tourist and offers to go to the ATM to withdraw the ransom from the credit card, otherwise threatening to take the victim away in an unknown direction.
Recently, due to the enmity between the two criminal gangs, the situation in the city has deteriorated significantly.
6. Brownsville area, Brooklyn, USA


Brooklyn, like the rest of New York City, has its underprivileged neighborhoods, but Brownsville stands out from the rest. Most of it consists of apartment buildings where people with low incomes live. Due to the tense social environment in Brownsville, the crime rate is much higher than the average for the city.


Most of the crime in the area is related to the drug trade. Sure, Brownville is a lot quieter now than it was in the 1980s and 1990s, but many trucking companies still only send their vehicles here with armed guards. Poverty and lack of work have led to the fact that some young people are forced to literally punch their way to success with their fists, it is no coincidence that many famous boxers grew up in Brownsville, including Mike Tyson.
7. La Perla District, San Juan, Puerto Rico


The outskirts of the city of San Juan, now known as La Perla, were once inhabited mostly by butchers, with slaughterhouses and butcher shops on every corner. Now the slums have been chosen by the South American mafia, which uses them as a transshipment base when sending contraband and drugs to the United States.
Despite the extreme poverty of the locals, La Perla is quite beautiful with its beaches, colorful houses and wonderful nature. In recent years, Puerto Rico's drug cartels have come under the scrutiny of law enforcement and intelligence agencies - every year there are hundreds of arrests of people involved in the drug business.
8. Fergana Valley, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan


After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many fraternal republics had a hard time: production and the economy as a whole fell into decay, and in addition, many social contradictions aggravated. In some regions, tension has reached an extremely high level, such as in the Fergana Valley, which is located in three former socialist republics at once - Tajik, Uzbek and Kyrgyz.
The depression between the two mountain ranges became a real cauldron in which several nationalities "boiled", and each of them, after the collapse of the USSR, actively defended their rights, including not in the most legal ways. The radical Islamic beliefs of some groups of the population and the sharp decline in living standards only added fuel to the fire: thousands of refugees fled from Fergana, unable to find their place in the changed political and social circumstances.
Even 20 years later, the Fergana Valley remains a battlefield between ethnic groups and the authorities. For example, on May 13, 2005, according to official figures, 187 people died in clashes between law enforcement agencies and protesters against trials of members of criminal gangs. However, other sources report more than a thousand killed - presumably, many bodies were buried secretly to hide the true extent of the tragedy.
9. Kibera District, Nairobi, Kenya


Nairobi was founded by the British as the headquarters of the railway, and soon the city became one of the centers of the African continent and remains so to this day. Despite the large number of Europeans and tourists in Nairobi, in some areas it is better for whites, like local residents, not to appear, one of these criminal ghettos is Kibera.


The administration of Nairobi prefers not to interfere in the life of the inhabitants of the area, as a result of which Kibera has become a haven for various thugs and scammers, for example, electricity is not available to everyone, because attackers use most of it for their own purposes. There is no water supply and sewerage system, most of the water is contaminated with typhoid and cholera bacteria, and the toilets are pits that serve as latrines for hundreds of residents.
About half of the able-bodied inhabitants of Kibera are unemployed, many women try to earn a living by prostitution, they are not stopped even by the growing number of sexual crimes from year to year.
10. Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, China


Kowloon served the Chinese as a military fort for many years, and at the end of the 19th century, when the British rented Hong Kong, the settlement became largely autonomous, the residents were actually granted the right to self-government. During the period of the Japanese occupation of China, the population of the walled city increased significantly, and as of 1987, it was approximately 33,000 people, despite the fact that they all lived on an area of ​​about 0.026 km².


For many years, Kowloon was the real headquarters of the Triad, the most powerful Chinese crime syndicate, but the authorities turned a blind eye to this, because not only Chinese mafiosi, but also corrupt officials received considerable benefits from the existence of brothels, casinos and opium dens.


In the early 1990s, China finally decided to tackle this problem in earnest: the inhabitants of Kowloon were relocated to more prosperous areas, the slums were razed to the ground, preserving only a few historical buildings, and in 1995, a park of the same name was opened on the site of Kowloon.