Danger of ignoring growing waste

It is hard to believe that much of our national news has been dominated by the garbage slide and loss of life in recent weeks. It was heartbreaking as the story unfolded. It reminded me of the Dandora dump site in Nairobi, which started in the late 1970s when the quarry mine became the Dandora Municipal Dump. It started small, with the National Airport Service using it. As time went by, other companies started to dump there too, then the city. 

By 2013, the Dandora dumpsite it was argued, covered about 30 acres of land and was receiving 2,000 tonnes of garbage daily. I have not bothered to find out its current status.  Still, imagine a dumpsite stretching up to 30 acres. 
The producers of the Dandora E Case video noted that initially, Dandora was to have six phases for what was planned with even public lights installed. Then more waste was brought and the original plan fell apart. The contractor could not continue with the construction. But the dumping went on. 

Considered East Africa’s largest dumpsite, Dandora has been the subject of media coverage, even without a garbage slide. The catastrophe that it portends, remains plain for all to see. As the Nairobi population grew, so did it. By 2001, the dumpsite had become a den for thieves. 

I remember sitting in a classroom in Dandora, trying to write notes but not thinking. I was watching through the corner of my eyes, the mountain of garbage just across, and trying so hard to concentrate on this class and also not throw up. The stench from the dump was so strong, that my heart was pounding. 

I was a student of ethnographic research at the time, the idea is that you must have a sense of the lived experience of the people you research. I do not remember much, of what the teacher in this Primary Five class was saying. Some people worry about the quality of air because of dust and small things, but these people were breathing in rubbish stench. I felt dehydrated from nowhere and got a migraine. 

I still do not know how the lesson ended or how I survived that class. All I know is that I lived on dry tea for nearly two days. I felt ill and angry. How did the government of Kenya allow this to happen? Where was the city council when the garbage was piling up covering such a vast area laced with residences? Where was security when a whole gang started to manage the dumpsite area and even taxing the people who made a living off the dumpsite?

Eventually, the Nairobi City Council wanted to relocate the Dandora dumpsite, worried that they were staring disaster in the face. There was a protest and plan to stop the city authorities in their tracks, to ensure that the proposal did not see the light of day. Why would anyone oppose proposals to avert such a looming disaster?

Because the reality is that most of the various forms of garbage we deal with, when institutionalised, eventually benefit some groups with power. When you think about it, the reason we struggle to deal with all kinds of rot in our society, whether it is in politics or organisations, repeatedly, is that ultimately, there are interests and those in whose interests the status quo makes sense divert efforts to sort things out. Even chaos benefits some people, and so does war and conflict. The response has to be well-measured.

In the case of the Dandora dumpsite, while that situation resulted in serious environmental and health consequences for many, it also became a source of livelihood for many- including influential people.

Many of the issues in Kiteezi might not be different from those of Dandora. As we plan to relocate Kiteezi, we must ask ourselves, the most difficult questions about our commitment to address the problem and stick with it from various angles. This is no time to be handling garbage as if we were in the Middle Age. 

That lives were lost in Kiteezi is awful. Over a decade ago, we faced the notion of mudslides, killing people in Bududa. At the time, it seemed bizarre to be discussing mudslides, and that people were actually killed, and government response towards that disaster was near disaster itself. Now it’s a garbage slide we are discussing. 

When issues start to slide and we ignore them, they can eventually become significant problems with no way to reverse them. We have been sliding on many things over the years. If you look with interest, you will see many that have been on a pile-up and slowly sliding, yet, we dismiss them. The physicists remind us that what goes up will come down.

Ms Maractho (PhD) is an academic.                       [email protected]