A trip to Korogocho
My final day of filming has involved a journey into Kibera, not only Kenya’s biggest slum, but also Africa’s. It is estimated that 1 million people live in around 2.5 square kilometres. It is also home to civil society organisation Umande Trust.
They agreed to take me to a few water projects in the peoples’ settlements in Nairobi to see what the urban situation is like in terms of access to water. I think it was a good idea to give them a few day’s notice because it gave them a chance to talk to the people they work with before unleashing a mzungu (white person) with a camera on residents. The people’s settlements (more commonly known as informal settlements or slums) were the location of much of Kenya’s post-election violence in late 2007 and 2008. Things appear to be quiet now, but situations can turn volatile surprisingly quickly.
We didn’t stay in Kibera, instead taking a bus across town to Korogocho. This peoples’ settlement is much smaller than Kibera but suffers many of the same problems in accessing water. In all the slums, water rationing is a fact of life. People earn a living from water collection which means the price of a jerry can of water fluctuates wildly. My companions from Umande, Njeri and Grace, told me that at cost price, a 5 litre jerry can should cost just a few shillings. However, water collectors are able to sell them at 30 to 40 Kenyan Shillings.
What’s really crazy about Korogocho is its location. Right next to the city sewage treatment works. But it seems it’s impossible to link up the settlement to the sewage network. There are sewage pipes going right through the middle of the slum! Before the projects that I saw came into existence, the preferred toilet was a flying one: doing your business in a plastic bag and throwing it as far away from you as possible. Umande and development donors have funded some public toilets that cost 2-3 KSh to use and also recycle the waste as biogas. I did ask if everyone can afford to pay to use the toilets, but the community groups that run it say they always let people in, even if they have no money.
I got some really great pics of the projects and the environment and we even walked through the sewage works grounds, so I hope to show how Nairobi’s ‘have-nots’ live cheek by jowel with the ‘haves” wastewater.
