Smelly dumpsite? This is home for me

A city dweller packs garbage into a large polythene bag. Places it outside the gate. Collectors come for it. How does the journey of this garbage bag go from here?

A visit to a busy dumpsite in Nairobi’s Mihang’o area, in the outskirts of Kayole estate, illustrates the story of thousands of people in the city who unwrap the polythene bags at dumpsites.

For this group, the arrival of a new load of garbage, however stinky it might be to the ordinary nose, creates a wave of excitement. And those loads come here on trucks or carts every day. They present a chance for them to get themselves some food, clothes, and whatever else a city dweller might have found useless. At the very least, it offers them something they can sell to recyclers.

Ms Lucy “WaGachie” Njeri is one of them. She has been unpacking contents of those trash bags since 2010, selecting organic matter to be sold to pig farmers and plastic, cartons and glass bottles to be sold to recyclers while the rest is discarded. Somewhere along our interview, she thanks city dwellers who take time to wrap food carefully before throwing it into the collectors’ polythene bag.

“Hawa watu naona wanatujali juu wanatupa chakula vizuri; wanaweka vizuri. Yule ataipata, apate kitu mzuri (These people care about us and give up food. They pack it properly. Whoever gets the food finds it in a good state),” she says.

Mr Brian Samka, alias Soja, is another dumpsite beneficiary. After dropping out of school in Form Three in 2006, he tried working in construction sites but found the favouritism there to be too much for his liking. The dumpsite has been his life since.  When we ask him what a dumpsite worker’s lunch break looks like, he refers to the contents of the bags they receive.

“In these loads of garbage you might find bread. If one lorry of garbage comes now, you’ll see us picking them. It will bring ugali or some soda which maybe a mdosi didn’t finish. You say that’s from God and you eat it. Sometimes it’s some chicken, or some sausages. You just eat,” he says.

“Sisi ni machokoraa wa Mungu (We are God’s street children),” he adds, drawing applause from a mob that is forming around the interviewers and the interviewee.

Only that they are not street people in every sense of the word. They are parents who are relying on the dumpsite to make money to feed their families, pay rent and educate their children.

They sell the sorted contents on a daily basis and from our conversations with them, it sounds like a determined person can comfortably make Sh300 in a day. Ms Njeri, a widow, is a mother of six. Mr Samka is a father of three who are in class Two, Five and Seven.

One of the most touching stories here is that of Everline Anyango. Every day for the past 15 years, she has been leaving her house in Matopeni at around 5am. Six o’clock usually finds her at the site.

A nightmare

The place is a nightmare. Its different stenches hit the nose at different wavelengths. Its numerous marauding dogs running about, fighting and scavenging. It is various sharp objects at unpredictable places that may inflict a wound to the unwary. It is the smell of the black waters of the heavily polluted river running nearby, its viscous liquid looking like a reluctant transporter of the city’s haphazardly discarded waste products.

When we arrive at the dumpsite, women are filling up a cart with ugali and other organic waste. This will be drawn by a disinterested donkey at one end of the cart and taken to feed some pigs.

There is also a lorry looking like it has had its fill of plastic bottles. Some young men can be seen weighing some bottles packed into sacks before loading them into the truck. These will go to a recycling firm, we are told.

The roaming dogs are of different sizes, shapes and temperament. It is a sight to behold when they stumble upon some ribs of a carcass that looks like a young goat’s. Rather than fight over it, they let one savour the carcass, and it looks like there is an established pecking order.

During the interviews, a dog or two rub themselves fondly on the legs of some people here, showing the bond that has grown between the hounds and the humans. Scavenging birds are also in plenty, each hard at work to get something to eat.

It is in those conditions that Ms Anyango gets money that enables her feed the nine children under her care at the moment.

“It educates my children, pays my rent, provides my food and clothing. Let me say it caters for my livelihood,” she says, noting that she can hardly survive if someone were to stop her from visiting the dumpsite.

“I come here to look for polythene papers, bones, ugali and plastic,” says Ms Anyango. “We gather all of them, and come evening, you pour them down and start weighing, to see how much you’ve got for the day.”

Isn’t it too risky?

“There are dangers, but we’re used to those. A broken bottle might cut you. That’s the biggest danger,” she answers.

Her children are in school but on weekends, they come to the dumpsite to lend a hand.

Demands for bribes

One unfortunate pointer that the dumpsite is a money-making venture is the fact that police often press the people there to pay bribes, arresting them if they do not “cooperate.”

Mr Samka is getting sick of this trend.

“That is someone on a payroll. For us, we come here to labour hard. I have extracted my ugali, my soup, and you come here asking for a favour. Out of the Sh300 I have made, you want Sh100 or Sh200. At the end of the month, you have a salary. What do I come out with?” he poses. “Let someone talk to them so they know how to co-exist with us.”

We are referred to this dumpsite often called Cobrac, which is at the edge of a deep valley created by the mining of stones, given its safety record. The famous Dandora dumpsite, an informer tells us, is a lawless jungle too risky for journalists. Anyone who ventures in there can be robbed blind. The Mihang’o one, which is technically a holding site for some of the garbage that ends up in Dandora, is a safer alternative.

The site offers an earning opportunity for around 100 youths, according to their chairman Stephen Wamae.

“This garbage comes from this area; Kayole and Mihang’o. We were told this is the collecting point where it could be thrown then a tractor takes it to Dandora,” Mr Wamae says.

To earn from garbage, someone has to work hard and that has contributed to reduced crime in the area, adds Mr Wamae.

“In the past, we couldn’t stay two weeks before hearing that a young man had been gunned down. But now it’s been almost a year and we haven’t heard of any young man killed. It is because youths leave this area tired. When a young man leaves here tired and has his Sh500, there is no need to go make other people suffer,” he offers.

Mr Wamae, a father of five, has been in the dumpsite business for close to two decades. He says women can get as much as Sh800 for one cartful of organic waste for pig farmers.

“There are many pig farmers in Mihang’o and Matopeni. They usually come for the refuse food,” he says.

And whenever the sun sets in Mihang’o, a group of tired men and women weigh their collections, count their money and sometimes count their blessings for the free things they have received from the dumpsite. Then they go home to their families, ready to return the next day for another 12 hours or more of scrounging through the city residents’ refuse, refusing to be deterred by the risks they expose themselves to.

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