Alarm as children compete for open spaces with cars, sewers and houses

The Roysambu roundabout on Thika Road has two functions. It allows vehicles to join or leave the superhighway above it to connect with the adjacent Kamiti and Kasarani roads without slowing down traffic on the expressway.

And, on Sundays, it doubles up as a park. Being one of the few remaining open spaces in the surrounding estates of Roysambu, Zimmerman, Kahawa West, Githurai 44, Kasarani and Mwiki estates, children flock to the area, accompanied by their parents or househelps.

As the children play, the guardians catch up with local news, all the while keeping an eye on possible danger from the surrounding roads where traffic flows constantly. Food vendors, photographers and face painters are also at hand to cash in on the rush. The situation is repeated every Sunday.

Ms Hellen Mwikali, a househelp in Zimmerman, has been bringing her employer’s two children to the Roysambu roundabout for the past five months. She says it is the only space left where children can play safely.

“Their mother cannot allow them to play outside their home for health and safety reasons. There is a risk of stepping on raw sewage, being hit by bodabodas or getting lost as too many flats are coming up,” she says.

She admits that the roundabout is not any safer, owing to the danger of being hit by a vehicle, but says it is is clean. Also, she can easily keep an eye on the two girls, aged four and six years.

“Plus, it offers me an open space to relax as I’m confined to a two-bedroom apartment most of the week, the only open space being a balcony” she says.

Ms Mwikali’s situation is not unique. On the other side of Nairobi, in Uthiru, the roundabout next to the International Livestock Research Institute also functions as a park on weekends.

As Kenya’s real estate boom continues, especially in urban centres, a capitalist streak is leaving no room for leisure and relaxation, taking up all the open spaces.

State ineptitude, too, has allowed land grabbers to take all the available open spaces that are ideally supposed to operate as public spaces. Haphazard construction, blatant disregard of the law, and lack of legal enforcement are fast turning urban centres into lawless concrete jungles.

The Building Code, for instance, states that a residential building should have space immediately in front of it which extends the whole width of the building and not less than 20ft wide from the next building. It should have access to a street or road.

SPACING REQUIREMENTS

Additionally, “a building designed for residential purposes shall have an open space on one side with a width of 8ft or more measured from the boundary of the nearest plot. The width should extend the entire length and height of the building,” it says.

“If a residential house contains more than one dwelling, it should have a courtyard or open space free from obstruction of not less than 350sq feet and have dimensions of not less than 15ft, while the minimum permitted space between any two buildings is four feet,” it says.

Such spacing requirements are necessary not only for safety but for domestic uses as they act as open spaces for residents. But in high density areas like Umoja, Doonholm, Kasarani, Kayole, Roysambu, Pipeline and Kasarani, highrise apartments sit back to back, with no space between them even for sunlight to come through.

This has left children and parents with little choice but to innovate.

In Nairobi, gaming zones are increasingly sprouting up in many low income urban centres. Children pay about Sh10 for a 10-minute session at a gaming console connected to a TV screen. A new PlayStation 4 video game console — the latest model in the market — costs Sh45,000, which is too costly for low income parents.

Many of those who cannot afford their own consoles, or to pay to play, use incomplete construction sites for recreation, or share spaces with vehicles on nearby roads. But danger is always lurking. Last month, two boys were run over by a bus as they rode a bicycle in Umoja Estate, Nairobi.

In January, a matatu using Kaloleni Estate to escape a traffic gridlock on the busy Jogoo Road hit a boy playing football on an estate road. Mr Ezra Olack, the estate’s chairman, says: “All the playing fields here have been grabbed. We have written many letters to the National Land Commission (NLC) and the county government of Nairobi but the government acts only when something catastrophic happens,” he says.

Last December, a number of Nairobi county officials were suspended after it emerged that a building that collapsed in the area killing seven people had been constructed on grabbed wetland. The Nairobi county government marked some buildings near the area for demolition, saying they were constructed on grabbed land, but no demolition has taken place yet.

Mr Olack, who grew up in the area, says the current generation of children is being denied real recreation. “When I was growing up, kids used to group together and leave their homes to play various games. These made good childhood memories. But it is all disappearing, not so much because of technology but for lack of space.”

So bad is the situation, especially in Nairobi, that a motion was moved in the County Assembly three weeks ago asking headteachers to allow children to use school playgrounds during holidays.

“The society is raising children who become self-centred or introverts, as they are always indoors playing with PlayStations or watching TV,” says Laini Saba Ward representative David Kitavi who is behind the motion.

COUCH POTATOES

The Kenya Paediatric Association says children growing up in urban areas face the risk of developing anti-social behaviour. “Children have high energy levels and cannot stay in one place for long. They need to play”.

Most parents try to keep them busy with television, computers or mobile phones but this is not enough,” says the association’s chairman, Mr David Githanga.

“When they grow older, these children could turn to alcohol, narcotics and illicit sex owing to these anti-social settings,” says Dr Githanga.

The country was shocked last month when police in Murang’a intercepted a matatu ferrying high school students from Nyeri who were smoking bhang and having sex. The students from various schools in the county had hired the matatu to ferry them to Nairobi.

NLC says a delay in passing three crucial Bills is standing in the way of land reforms that would return these public utilities to the people.

“The Community Land Bill, Historical Land Injustices Bill, Physical and Urban Planning Bill, among others, are still pending, delaying land reforms,” NLC chair Muhamad Swazuri says.

“However, in conjunction with county land management offices, we are performing an audit of all public utilities in Kenya that have been grabbed,” he says.