In Nairobi about 67% of the population lives in slums… Need another stat to give you a one second shock? They only occupy 5-10% of the country’s land… talk about getting up close and personal.

And just to add the glistening, red cherry on top - most of these slums don’t have proper sanatisation; no throne to read a mag on while you plop away, and no clean, running tap water to wash away the skids and aftermath. Instead they have something called flying toilets, as in doing your business in a plastic bag and flinging it out the make-shift, shack window. There’s a joke that goes: the reason why Mwai Kibaki (President of Kenya) swings from side to side is because he’s dodging flying toilets… Something to chuckle about when you’re taking your next dump.

I got the chance to visit Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, holding one million Kenyans. The vastness of the township only hit me once I reached a hill point and couldn’t see the end to millions of tin roofs spaced less than a meter apart.

It’s crazy and appalling to think - because Kibera is seen by the government as an informal settlement, the politicians and authorities apparently hold no responsibility for it, so for many years it has had no sewage or water system. This means that the poorest part of Nairobi’s society has had to pay for water.

And there’s little done to assist those trying to make life easier (or should I say, cleaner) for the Kibera people. Maji na Ufanisi (Water and Development) is a Kenyan NGO that for the past ten years has been helping informal settlements to set up sanitisation blocks, that provide clean water, toilets and showers. But because their price for water is so cheap compared to private water-sellers (the NGO offering an annual membership fee of 350 Kenyan shillings - less than £3 - to use the toilets and showers), some go out of their way to vandalise the pipes. Why? Well, once again it’s the corrupt values of those misusing power in the developing societies, causing damage from within to exploit and squeeze every last penny from their fellow citizens who need help the most.

So yes, people do pay to shit, to wash their hair, to have the humane feeling of using a toilet as opposed to crapping into plastic bag – and those that don’t pay up the cash, will only pay with repercussions of poor health and disease. The hope is that NGO’s like Maji na Ufansisi will be supported in following years with their work unhindered, so that children may have a place to play that isn’t reeking of excrement, and that people can have privacy and pride when they need to do their business in the bathroom – a decent, simple (for us) human right.