‘There is no other place where I can get money than here.’
Kenyan women selling arts made from garbage
NAKURU, KENYA – ‘Here is where I come every morning to collect plastics from the garbage.’ Lucy Wambui is 50 and with a stick she grubs through the garbage in the Gioto Dumping Site in Nakuru in central Kenya. It is early morning and the stench of the waste already abhors. Lucy stays here with 30 other women forming the Minyore Women’s Group that sustains itself by selling art works made from garbage. ‘It’s not healthy living here, but we have nowhere else to go.’
By Ruud Elmendorp
‘Gioto’ in the local Kikuyu language means garbage, and the dumping site is situated one mile outside the industrial town of Nakuru, the number four city in Kenya. Echoes of morning mist and smoke from fires mix above the garbage that lingers on the foot of the Menengai Hills. The women of Minyore are wading through the waste, looking for polythene bags and plastic soda bottles. Their name is derived from the Kikuyu word for plastic bag. Most of the women ended up here after their husbands left them behind because of drug abuse, alcoholism or having died from Aids.
The ladies collect plastic bags to make baskets and other art works for sale. Lucy Wambui is among the women and she holds a dozen of plastic bags. Some blue, black or printed in the affordable colors of a local supermarket. ‘We don’t like working here,’ she says. ‘But we are not educated and don’t have jobs. That’s the reason why we came here.’
Lucy has been around here for the last eleven years. She is nicknamed Mama Gioto and the chair lady of Minyore Women’s Group. She has three boys and two girls. Like most of the women her house is built on the dumping site, made from wooden sticks, plastics and rusty iron sheets. It has its own compound where Lucy burns firewood to boil water for tea or cook food, if there is. Usually the women pick meals for free from the garbage. ‘If we find meat that is not too rotten we eat it. We also get chips from restaurants. There is nothing we cannot eat when hungry.’
Housing
The site is about ten football fields in size and has been here since the 1990s, and every day the Nakuru municipal council dispatches lorries filled with tons of garbage. A big problem for the people living here is lack of water because of the absence of a drinking water system. The ladies buy it expensive in a settlement above the dumping site and carry jerry cans back to their houses. It’s a burden on top of a life which is already tough. ‘We came here in April 2001,’ tells Lucy. ‘That was me and my son. I had fallen sick and became unable to work and pay the rent. So we got kicked out of the house. My things were thrown out when I was still in the hospital. The Women of Minyore came to know about me and built a house for me on the dumping site. When I left the hospital I went to this house and even found my things were here.’
Baskets
Lucy is seated on one of two sofas inside her shack. They are covered with pink rugs and a family of teddy bears. Against the plastic wall there is a cupboard and a ward robe. Lucy is counting necklaces she made from garbage. ‘When I came here I started thinking what work I could do,’ she says. ‘So I joined the women weaving baskets and making jewelry from plastic.’ Just outside the house a group of women is seated on a hill top weaving. Lucy picks some strands of plastic and joins them. ‘These baskets are very popular,’ she says while weaving. ‘They are used by mothers to go to the market, or on Sunday to carry a Bible to church. There is nowhere you can’t go with them.’ The products the women make vary from baskets, wallets, ladies bags and bracelets. They offer them on the dumping site on certain days in the week. ‘The best is to sell to tourists because then you can get a better price,’ admits Lucy. She is showing an improvised shop next to her house. A group of tourists with white legs shamelessly protruding from their shorts are admiring the products. Most of them are sent by tourist agencies and churches. ‘They come every Wednesday and that’s good for us,’ says Lucy. If she is lucky she can make 20 Euro per day. ‘When there are no tourists it can be much less.’
Malformed
This business enabled Lucy to decorate her house with mats and curtains, raising suspicion that living conditions can be far worse for jobless people. Lucy remarks that the dumping site with its polluted reality remains near. ‘Working here under the burning sun is tiring,’ she tells. ‘We bend too much and that gives pain in the back and headache. Then the smell of this rubbish makes us get a swollen belly.’ Then she adds that the garbage is even leading to malformed children. ‘There are children born here with eye problems. Their eyes are not good, and they can’t see.’
Then suddenly when Lucy is talking she turns silent. Tears appear slowly in her eyes and flow over her cheeks. She tries to hide it with her right hand, but the sound of weeping stays. ‘I am so sad,’ she says sniffing. ‘When I look at my life, how we were frowned upon to the extent that our things were thrown out of the house. It wasn’t that I was unable to pay. It was sickness and nobody likes sickness. Our lives should not have been the way it is now. That makes me feel so sad.’
Shifting
The sad fate of the Women of Minyore was recognized by Mike Browan who grew up on the dumping site himself and managed to become a pastor and a local councilor. He visits the women a few times a week for support and to teach them business skills. ‘The women deserve a better place than this,’ he says. ‘I am talking to the local council. They’ve agreed to give me a piece of land and I think in the next few years we’ll be able to build houses for the women. So they can have good shelter, water and health like other people.’ For the short term Browan is looking at ways of opening the women a shop in town. ‘So the tourists won’t have to come all the way to the dumping site.’ Nakuru because of its proximity to the major tourist Lake Nakuru with its flamingos has a strong influx of visitors worldwide.
School
Lucy dried her tears, and is showing what keeps her happy. Next to the dumping site there is a school building, and in a class room there is 4 year old Musalia, Lucy’s grandson. The boy is playing with bottle tops. ‘From the money we make with the baskets we educate our children.’ The boy is smiling benevolently to his grandmother. He’s in class one, making it likely that Lucy will have to stay here for many years to come. She gives him a kiss, and walks back to the dumping site to work. ‘There is no other place where I can get money than here.’
Even this is a result of the connection of East Africa to the wider world through marine fiber optic cables.
Then yesterday in Jamhuri in Nairobi I saw them connecting fiber to the house.
The information highway is already there before a decent tarmac road. That’s interesting because well considered using the internet you depend less on roads since you can do more things from the house.
This is the Jamhuri Estate in Nairobi. An informal settlement just behind the internationally known slum Kibera. (forgive the bad quality of my mobile camera)
Coca Cola here is having a nice localized ad campaign.
Mandazi is plural for the word ‘ndazi’, which is a kind of pastry of Indian origin. It’s wildly popular in Kenya and in fact the whole of East Africa. You can buy one for less 10 cents, and they’re actually quite nice. Usually they’re taken together with the Kenyan milky tea, called chai.
Never took coke with ndazi, but I might give it a try.
Ingredients:
• 1 Egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup Sugar
• 1/2 cup Milk
• 2 tbsp Butter, melted
• 2 cups White Flour
• 2 tsp Baking Powder
• Oil to fry
How to make Mandazi:
• Mix all the ingredients together, except oil, to form soft but non-sticky dough.
• Roll the dough on a lightly floured board until it is about 1/4 inch think.
• Cut into triangles and fry in hot oil until both sides are golden brown.
• Remove mandazi from oil and drain their excess oil on paper towels.
• Mandazi are ready to serve.
Some things on this evolving planet are to stay. For example the good old rubber stamp which was invented in the 19th century.
Despite all the electronic and virtual gadgets nowadays, nothing replaced the plop on any legal document. That sound that either signals big relief or deep disappointment, or even anger.
Meaning there is business in making in your own stamps, to avoid confrontations.
Here on Suna Road in Nairobi Kenya, this artist is offering his stamp skills.
You can find them all over town, seating on little stools on the side walk, and as soon the city council comes they run off like wildebeests.
Most wanted of course are forges of visa stamps. From my own experience I know that at Immigrations in Kenya the civil servants have to collect and register their entry stamps from the vault. Even the ink pads, because forging ink to the right color is very difficult.
Many countries introduced stickers for their visa, but in vain. They still have to be stamped at the border.
‘Some ten visitors come here per day.’ She says it with a big smile coming from under her white hat. ‘They are usually relatives of the people here.’ She continues under the boiling sun for some shade to the memorial building.
This is the Commonwealth Second World War Cemetery on Ngong Road in Nairobi – Kenya.
Over 4,000 soldiers East and South Africa are buried. They fought a heavy proxy war from 1940 against the Axis forces of Italy in East Africa. The Italians were with 250,000 armed forces but were pushed back in the end.
It’s one of the moments you realize how deep the Second World War affected Africa, and you rarely read about it.
The place is very well maintained, and because of the long walk from the main road it’s like entering an enclave. Like leaving the hustle and bustle of Kenya for a while.
Also it’s one of the places which make you think African societies take better care of the death than the living.
Official Kenya census reports 170,070 inhabitants for Kibera, Kenya’s most famous slum estate located in the capital Nairobi.
That’s unbelievable. For years we were told that Kibera hosts about 800,00 to 1 million inhabitants. All living in dire circumstances, no power, hardly any water, and bad hygienic situation. Almost like a national reserve for the poor.
For that reason it is a tradition for high ranking state guests to visit Kibera. Then senator Obama did it in 2006, and even ICC prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo did it early this year. They all say something has to be done to save the people.
Their call has worked. In Kibera now there are in between 6,000 to 10,000 organizations helping the poor. Next to that some 2,000 government agencies.
That’s one organization for every 15 inhabitants.
How on earth these people still live in the same circumstances they did 15 years ago?
With all the money pumped in they should have been millionaires.
The main reason for that is that these organizations don’t come with an idea. They do much wanted and appreciated relief work, but don’t tackle the root problem. Also too many of them are implemented by international students coming to do their gap years, benefiting them with a real African experience that shows up great on a resume.
Take bus 32 through Kibera. On a 10 minutes drive you will see all the signboards of these organizations. Lasting much longer than the projects they represented.
Let the all too creative people from Kibera look for their own daily life solutions, and they can. Set up their own NGOs with their own ideas. Then maybe if need be to accept management support. Because that’s world wide, most wonderful initiatives and companies die because of poor management.
