Katwe

Katwe is the slum in Kampala, Uganda where Phiona lives. Katwe is one of the poorest communities in the world where people live in one-room shacks without electricity or plumbing. Katwe is looked down upon by the rest of Kampala and its citizens are considered second-class.

Katwe is often flooded and residents are known to "sleep in hammocks suspended just beneath their roofs to avoid drowning" (17). There is no sanitation service and raw sewage runs through the streets and into people's homes. Human waste from downtown of Kampala is also dumped directly into the slum. In Katwe, there are no street signs, addresses, clocks, or calendars, and life is transient.

Katwe represents the lowest of the low. As author Tim Crothers writes, "To be African is to be an underdog in the world. To be Ugandan is to be an underdog in Africa, To be from Katwe...