Trash is Cash

Kibera is Africa’s largest slum, located in the middle of Nairobi, with a population estimated between 300,000 and 1,000,000. You know how, when you see photos of slums, you think everything is made of corrugated metal? Yeah, that’s an illusion. The vast majority of buildings are constructed of mud-on-stick. Corrugated metal is erected on top of the main structure, if possible. If peope can afford it, concrete is applied to the outside of the mud, so passers-by don’t actually realize that’s what it’s made of and decide it’s easy pickings. There are perhaps one or two paved streets. Everything else is dirt, which in the rainy season turns into somewhat of a muddy clusterfuck covered in a layer of trash. Not that there’s any organization to the roads and paths that wind between buildings in the first place. Chickens, goats, and rangy dogs wander the streets, always underfoot.

I feel like, for some reason, media never imparts how industrious slums actually are. There are shops everywhere, selling anything from medicinal plants to fruit to phone credit to traditional wrap-cloths to bootlegged music to omnipresent hair extentions. Occasional pubs pop out between ramshackle buildings. There is a huge informal sector: streets are lined with food vendors, people welding metal gates, and men with hammers laid out on sheets. People wander the streets, arms laden with baskets and washing implements. Everybody is busy.

However, for all that goes on in Kibera, the government flatly refuses to recognize it as a settlement. Which means, among other effects: no real water supply, no sewage system, no trash pick up and no police service. Trash is piled absolutely everywhere: burning alongside the roads, in the gutters, along the train tracks and in huge mountains that stretch, at times, as far as you can see. Speaking of train tracks. They run straight through the middle of the slum. They’re relatively clean; people are paid to come through and remove trash with regularity so that trains don’t jump the track. Which has been known to happen.

Lack of trash, a straight path, and central proximity all contribute to the train tracks’ utilization as a popular walking route in Kibera. Unfortunately, people don’t always hear the train coming. Sometimes it whistles. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes people are simply distracted. So, Tuesday afternoon, as a coworker and I made our way through Kibera, we found people gathered on either side of the tracks. “What’s going on?” “The train hit someone.” Forty minutes later, when we returned, the crowd was still there. “They haven’t brought him out yet?” “No, look. That’s the head, over there by that green plastic bag.” Because, you see, in order for the head to be removed, someone would have to call the police. But the police are corrupt and untrusted, and they don’t really venture into Kibera in the first place. Not that there’s any real way to get a cop car down to the tracks even if they did decide to do something about it. And so the head still sits by the tracks, like a movie prop, and no one knows where the rest of him has ended up.

I’m in another internship, with a program called Carolina for Kibera, one of the largest and most-respected NGOs in the slum. It’s community-based; about a quarter of the employees live in Kibera. CFK runs several main programs:
• A sports program, which runs soccer tournaments, in which all teams are required to have members from multiple tribes.
• A community-based medical clinic and VCT (voluntary counsellng and testing center).
• A reproductive health and womens’ rights cemter.
• Taka ni Pato, an environmental program, which is where I’m placed.

Taka Ni Pato (Trash is Cash) has got some really cool stuff going on. In a place where the population survives on less than $2 a day, people aren’t going to be interested in picking up trash for the sake of picking up trash. So, CFK guides people in utilizing trash to make a profit. Some of the groups I’ve met are:

A mens’ group, who makes jewelry and other items from cow bones that would otherwise end up as trash on the streets. After bones are collected (retrieved from the butcher?) they’re shaped, dyed, and polished before being sold to visitors or at the market.

A womens’ group which makes a lot of different items, including greeting cards. You know how in elementary school you made paper by spreading a pulp across a screen and then flipping it over onto a surface to dry? That’s exactly what these women do, but they make the pulp by breaking down paper that would otherwise have gone to waste. After letting it dry and folding it, they embellish the cards with hand-drawn designs. In addition, the woman who appears to be the leader of the group has put together a school for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. She takes them in, feeds them, puts them up and schools them until they’re old enough to return to relatives or care for themselves.

Another womens’ group, who crochets and sews handbags, hats, and earrings from plastic bags and tape that have been recovered from trash in the area. After collecting the material they clean it and cut it into strips before beginning to craft a final product.

Several youth groups who go door-to-door, collecting trash. From there, they separate out food waste, plastics, and true trash. Food waste is taken to be turned into compost, which will later be sold or used in a garden plot of their own. Plastics are taken to a recycling center, where an industrial shredder is used to turn them into material that can be resold for a profit.

Taka Ni Pato also has a large program in place in primary schools, running environment clubs. Environment clubs in Kibera, however, differ somewhat drastically from those in the states. Instead of focusing on tree hugging and conservation, they focus on the basics: Installing sanitary toilets in the schools. Making sure waste from toilets doesn’t find its way above ground, into the gutters surrounding the schools. Installing a tap next to the toilets. Educating students about food storage, waste disposal, hygiene, sanitation and hand-washing: making hand-washing mandatory after using the toilet and before meals. Because in an area with as many issues as Kibera, saving the rhinos is probably last on anyone’s to-do list.

For all the good that Taka Ni Pato is doing, there are definitely also some issues that have yet to be resolved. Youth groups remove recyclable plastics and food waste from trash. However, true trash is still left behind to be burned. Which continues to contribute to atmospheric degredation and health problems in the area, just like the trash being piled up and burned all over the rest of the slum. This progam does nothing to address the removal of actual trash. Even if there were a way to collect it all in a main area and dispose of it, it probably wouldn’t happen: people have been tossing trash onto the nearest pile as they walk past since they were born. What’s going to make them change their habits now?

The plastic shredding program is good in theory. Unfortunately, it’s based around an industrial shredder. Which takes a lot of power to run, and electricity is expensive. In order for the program to be worth running, a lot more plastic needs to be collected than is currently achieved. So, CFK indefinitely subsidizes the cost of running the shredder so that youth groups are able to make a profit. But really, net total, is anything actually being achieved? I doubt it.

Also, you can educate as many school kids as you want about hygiene, and washing your hands, and using sanitary toilets. But no matter how much knowledge you impart, that won’t change the fact that there’s likely no access to clean water, and more often than not two toilets serve a school of perhaps 600 kids. Without resources, there’s no way to convert knowledge into habit.

In other news, I found frisbee. Well actually, the onmiscient Facebook found it prudent to inform a Beloit alum, who happens to be in Peace Corps Kenya, that I was in the area. Nik, said Beloit alum, is one of the founders of BUFF (Beloit Ultimate Frisbee Family). After some conversation, we also realized we had a class together three years ago. Anyway, he introduced me to Nairobi Ultimate– a ton of expats who get together and play pick-up two times a week on the nicest fields you’ll find in the country (which isn’t saying much). And it pretty much made my month. And then, yesterday, this guy named Matt showed up to play, took one look at my shirt and said, “You go to Beloit?” “Yep.” “I graduated in 2004!” Crazy small world. Where Ultimate connects us all.

Also, one of Nik’s friends got slightly delayed coming into Nairobi. Something about her matatu trying to ford a river… and failing. Gotta love it.

Harry Potter came out on Friday. I bought tickets six hours early. There were five people in the theatre. Go figure.

Also, I’m suburned.