‘There is no other place where I can get money than here.’

Rio+20 posing threat to urban livelihoods

NAKURU, KENYA – With a few days left to the Rio+20 conference world leaders and policy makers are gearing up for a better and greener world. Among the topics are sustainable cities and namely reduction of garbage production. According to OECD figures the world's yearly waste production amounts to 4 to 5 billion tons. Leading to pollution and health related problems. The challenge is that meanwhile garbage has become the livelihood of millions of people world wide. Less garbage will take away their last resort to earn daily bread. For example for the Women of Minyore who are living on a garbage dumping in Kenya.

By Ruud Elmendorp

‘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 lives 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.’

‘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 visitors with white legs protruding from their shorts is admiring the products. Most of them are sent by travel 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.’

Rio+20 is aiming defining new strategies for reduction of garbage production and disposal. One relief for the Women of Minyore is the urbanization in Africa which is the fastest growing the world, meaning that waste production will continue for many years to come.