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An idyllic landscape, a waterfall cascading into the river below.
But if you look a little closer, not all is well.
The Nairobi River is a sewage pipeline in the capital of Kenya.
Its water turns from clear to black as it passes informal settlements and industrial centers.
With a scarcity of clean water, one of Africa’s fastest growing cities struggles to balance job creation and environmental needs, putting a strain on its population of over 4 million. I feel
Isa Musa is a resident of the Dandra slums and remembers when this waterway was very different.
“When we were young, we used to cross the river to this other land, go play there, and then cross back to the same river. It’s hard for someone to cross this river.” he says.
He blames local industry for polluting the river.
The problem starts upstream, where informal settlements like Korogocho plug part of the sewer into the river.
According to the 2019 Census, the slum has over 35,000 adults.
Violet Afga, who lives in Korogoko Town, depends on this water for her daily income.
She uses it to wash plastic bags and sell them to merchants who make reusable baskets.
But at the same time, her family uses it for less hygienic purposes.
“I don’t have a toilet. My daughters are too young to go to the forest alone. So I usually tell them to put their poop in a bag and throw it in the river,” she says. .
Most informal settlements where informal workers and their families live are not connected to sewers and have open trenches for residents to pour dirty water into rivers.
This influence is also felt by the farmers here.
Downstream of the growing pollution problem, the Athi River region is the source of many of the vegetables sold in Nairobi’s markets.
Morris Mutunga grows kale, spinach and amaranth on his five-acre farm and has seen crops such as kidney beans wither when irrigated with contaminated water.
“Farming has been challenging. The main challenge is water. Sometimes the water is good, other times it is not. “When the rain stops, the water becomes salty and chemical.
Pollution on the Nairobi River is not only killing vegetation, it is also affecting the livelihoods of families living in the lower suburbs of the burgeoning Athi River.
The river and its tributaries pass through Kibera, known as Africa’s largest slum, and dozens of factories producing textiles, liquor and building materials. All have been accused by environmentalists of discharging raw sewage and other pollutants into water bodies.
Anne Nduta uses dark water from the river to wash her baby’s clothes by hand.
Another option is to buy water, but 20 liters of well water costs 20 shillings ($0.16) and 4 bottles of nduta are needed to wash the baby’s clothes every three days.
“When it rains, this water runs off with a lot of trash, and sometimes the trash makes it impossible to use the water, and we have to wait for the water to be cleaned. We rely on this water because it’s not good, but when it’s very dirty you have to buy water and it’s expensive,” she says.
However, recovery may be underway.
The new government has formed a commission tasked with cleaning up and restoring the Nairobi River Basin. No deadline has been announced yet, and no budget. The committee has not yet met.
In Kibera, where more than 185,000 adults live in mud houses, a community-based organization called Mazingira Yetu (Swahili for our environment) is working with the government agency Athi Water to build 19 modern We’re trying to address this problem by building a toilet block that looks like a toilet.
We also make fertilizer.
The compost is sold to those who have gardens, and some is used to grow the seedlings sold by the organization. Proceeds from the Mazingiza Yetu project will be distributed to the young people working in the organization.
“All the rivers in Nairobi, one of the biggest sources of pollution, are solid waste, and solutions have not yet been found. We just need to reproduce it,” said Sam Ndindi, director of the Mazingira Yetu Foundation.
“Besides that, another problem we have found facing our rivers is poor sanitation, especially in informal settlements. All the waste from these toilets, these pit toilets end up in the river because there are very few. I did.”
The National Environmental Management Agency has been accused by some of Kenya’s MPs of laziness in allowing the industry to pollute the river.
At a parliamentary committee hearing in 2021, an environmental group was accused of failing to take action against a distillery that residents said was emitting waste in the Athi River region.
NEMA boss David Ongare has acknowledged that few groups have been prosecuted in recent times, but it changes the government’s approach of encouraging cooperation rather than combativeness that could lead to resistance. It is said that it is because
“Governments cannot work with just one set of tools. ’” he says.
“In this way, we level the ground so that one person or entity becomes a consultative effort rather than talking to another person or entity. Or people who have proven defiant, and then we’ve taken a lot of enforcement actions, and we’ve also had a fair amount of prosecutions.”
NEMA bosses hope the central government’s program to build affordable housing means more people will enjoy good hygiene.
Cleaning rivers is critical to the health of people living near their banks and to the food security of the nation as a whole.
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