[IDS]One of the things that strikes one most clearly in working in the slums in Kenya is that, as in many developing countries, the state is barely present in most people's lives. For the women my colleague Emily Kahega Igonya and I encountered in Nairobi's slums last week, the government was inactive while they were sold by their sisters or brothers-in-law, tricked into unpaid work with false promises of education, and kicked out of their parental homes as orphans.
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