“A child must play, you can never stop a child from playing, a child must play.”
When we hear the word “slum” the image that comes to mind is of very poor people who dwell in misery. And while this is the case in many of the poorest places around the world, several visits to Kibera have shown me that this impression is not always true.
Located seven kilometres from the city centre Kibera is not only the largest urban slum in Nairobi, but it's the largest in Africa. Official figures suggest it is home to around 270,000 people, while other sources suggest the total Kibera population may be from 500,000 to well over 1,000,000.
Whenever we arrive at the Soweto Baptist Primary and High School in Kibera we are always greeted with smiles and the children chanting “How are you?” (the first English phrase they learn).
While life in Kibera is hard and often depressing, its people are resilient and there is never a shortage of fun. Children use whatever space they have to play games such as football. Even when there is no ball, discarded rubbish is turned into makeshift equipment.
Garbage is a normal sight in Kibera and has become part of the landscape. Layers upon layers of old plastic bags and clothes can be seen on the side of river banks.
The first time we visited the school in 2017, the ground could not be seen due to mountains of plastic garbage. After every heavy rainfall garbage flows down the river that runs through Kibera. Returning last year, we were surprised that we could actually see the ground. This is due, in part, to a plastic bag ban implemented by the Kenyan government in late 2018. Also, groups like Soweto Baptist Primary and High School have painstakingly built walls to line riverbanks to stop it from clogging up with garbage, sewage and mud after heavy rains.
“The ban on plastic bags is a great start, but we can do more”
This was the message we received from residents in Kibera. "The water still runs black but at least it flows," was the positive comment we heard. Kibera residents see garbage and sewage as the main sanitation problem in Kibera, unaware of the other factors affecting the water that runs through their town and sometimes through their homes. Everything from farms, local businesses and industry dump used water into the river that runs through Kibera.
Below is a short film Olivia Rempel and I made highlighting some of these issues. It was produced as part of GRID-Arendal's Wastewater Management and Sanitation Provision in Africa Project, a partnership between the African Development Bank (AfDB), UN Environment’s Global Programme of Action for the Protection of Marine Environments from Land-based Activities (GPA).
Olivia Rempel is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. In the summer of 2018 she received the Human Rights Centre Fellowship from the University of California Berkeley, and through that fellowship has been working with GRID-Arendal to help document the challenges associated with wastewater in Africa.
Read How banning plastic prevents flooding by Olivia Rempel.
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