My second day began bright and early meeting Pastor Harun at the Hilton Hotel in Nairobi. Today he took me into Kibera, Africa’s second biggest urban slum and home to more than 1 million people living in severe poverty. The Pastor works at a church which has attracted many youths in recent years due to the fallout of the violence that engulfed Kibera after the 2007 Presidential Election.

On my first visit to Kibera over six months ago, I did not get a chance to hear much about the ‘07 violence, when accusations of a rigged election tore the nation apart. At the church I got the chance to speak to young individuals who had been forcibly removed from their homes and had seen their businesses and possessions burned to the ground. On a walk down the train tracks which carve so unforgivingly through the streets, the pastor told me of the horror he faced; being forced to flee Kibera and he even showed me where his old church used to stand - quite harshly in a substantially nicer part of Kibera than the plot on which his current church stands.

One cannot help but be gripped by disbelief when wading through Kibera; on a more gruesome note, I noticed several bones and clumps of hair that littered the tracks and when I asked about them, some of the people accompanying us on the walk told us that they were human bones. To walk right by them and to see them scattered so wide across a train line is a horror that will live with me until my dying day…

Back at the church I learnt about the troubled pasts of many of the young people who attend sermons, including John who suffered from epilepsy; to numb the pain his illness can inflict upon him, by his own admission, he spent a lot of money on cigarettes and alcohol, and even confessed to ‘recreationally’ smoking marijuana. He also says that after the violence he turned to the bottle when “all hope seemed to fade for myself, and for Kenya.”

In Africa, no matter where you go, religion is everywhere! The young people I met today were all beaming with pride as they told me they have abstained from their decadent lifestyles. I was interested to see if more people were choosing the Bible over the bottle and why? The pastor told me of a rehabilitation centre just outside of Nairobi; I was not prepared for what I encountered upon my arrival.

Set up by American pastor Gerry Brown in 2008, the U-Turn For Christ centre lies on a four acre plot of farm land lying adjacent to carpet-like green fields, with towering trees which reached high and blocked out the sun and homes; housing projects selling for over 1 million Kenyan Shillings (about £100,000). It looks like a postcard from paradise, but what lies behind its doors is anything but… Preaching the word of the Bible and unconditional obedience to God, the centre is run more like a military boot camp, a la Full Metal Jacket, with residents being denied television, radio, books (barring the holy ones of course) and contact with the outside world. They also endure discipline on a regular basis, including the digging of ‘discipline pits’; 5-foot by 5-foot long pits in one of the fields surrounding the centre where they are forced to dig every time they step out of line. On top of this, long essays and copying word for word from the Bible are standard practice.

Whilst the centre genuinely has good intentions and ultimately encouraged sobriety, I found its methods rather extreme; when I talked to Robert (a third-time resident at the U-Turn centre), speaking about what he thought of life here, his eyes trembled and he shuffled uncomfortably in his seat as he gingerly revealed, “It takes getting used to, but I am determined to get sober. I am doing this so my family will accept me again and to be pure in the eyes of God.”

All the stories from U-Turn read the same; alcohol and drug abusers being almost forced into sobriety by some heavy religious propaganda. I have learned that in such a religious climate, inebriation has no place and total self-discipline is proudly professed by those ‘born again’. I have also learned that the scars of the violence from 2007 in Kibera are still present and on show on those affected; how they choose to cope with the anguish, whether it’s the bottle or the Bible, will never quell the pain.

Words and photos: James Prosho. Written in his hotel room, listening to The Cure, watching Sarah Palin embarrass herself on Al Jazeera, and cowering from the thunderstorms outside.