Home to 90,000 people living in approximately 3 square miles.   Of the 200+ slums in Nairobi, Mathare Valley is one of the oldest and worst.  The degree of poverty is unimaginable.  Entire families live in tiny, one-room, rusty tin and mud shacks.  Beds are a rare sight, and clean ones are non-existent.  Electricity is illegal and there is no running water.  The public toilets (sewage pits in the ground) are shared by hundreds of people, but most use the streets, alleys and ditches between the shanties.  The average family lives on less than a couple dollars a day.  Crime and HIV/AIDS are common.  Many parents die of AIDS and leave their multiple children to either fend for themselves or at the hands of extended families or neighbors who don't want, care, or love them.  It is from this drastic picture of poverty and abandonment that the Sanctuary of Hope children were plucked. The pictures below are only a few examples of daily living in the slums of Nairobi.