Coexisting in Color

Abstract

In 2015, religious communities in Kibera—a neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya—partnered with a local NGO and Ugandan paint company to paint their churches and mosques yellow. The idea behind the project, called Colour in Faith, was to create non-denominational spaces that were safe from the prospect of 2017 national election violence. Before ballots were cast in August 2017, two mosques and three churches in Kibera had “transitioned” to yellow, producing a new sacred cartography and poetics of religious tolerance. But why yellow? What shared reasoning exists between religious communities in Kibera and NGO directors to select yellow as the color of tolerance? By highlighting the context of religious coexistence and anticipation of election violence, this article demonstrates how and why yellow provided a salient material strategy to filter sacred surplus in Kibera. As the country prepares for the national election in August 2022, I explore how the social life and meaning of these yellow sacred spaces have changed. Not only has the paint chipped and faded, but several of the yellow sacred spaces were bulldozed in 2018. After five years, yellow reads as a chromogenealogy of how sacred spaces in Kibera are made and unmade.