Mukuru, Riara, 29 October 2016 – Raw sewage bubbles up along the open sewers that line the narrow walkways of the Mukuru-Riara slum. Hills of garbage pile high in vacant lots surrounded by flies in the hot, humid air which is often polluted by industrial smoke.
“The more near we are to this garbage and dirt, the more sick we are,” says slum dweller Linneah Lijodie, clearing garbage of the porch outside a modest one-room home. to escape the humid heat. “This clean up initiative is a rallying call to build responsible and responsive residents who clean up their neighbourhood and spread the importance of hygiene to promote good health,” said Lijodie.
Lijodie, 23 belongs to a 40-member strong, volunteer empowerment group under the banner of the Tujuane Tujengane ( Lets know each other to build each other) initiative, which is helping the Mukuru Community to develop community structures for dialogue and engagement with stakeholders and city authorities to deliver services to the urban poor and address pressing community needs.
After a three month training and capacity building of the volunteer empowerment group, the team is set to graduate in November, with the hope that the skills and knowledge they have acquired will go a long way in transforming their community.
“Before the Tujuane Tujengane it was really bad, no one seemed to care about what happens in the settlement as long as am within my small space says Erick Kenyanya , a volunteer mobiliser in the Tujuane Tujengane campaign. “Outside the houses it is very dirty, and the access roads were very dirty.”
Riara settlement relies on “ambulances” who remove faecal matter from “dry latrines” in containers carried on two wheel carts.
“It’s quite an inhuman thing, and it’s really quite unhygienic also, because they would then end up in the river,” said Collins Oloo, Nairobi South (Imara Daima) Sub-County administrator. “My office is open to the people of Mukuru, I operate in an open door policy and therefore, come and let’s talk to find solutions to problems ailing our community.”
In addition, the county in coordination with the village elders on a regular basis the county will assign trucks to be carrying garbage from the settlement and disposing it to the Dandora dumpsite.
“I would observe that some community members really don’t care about their environment and perhaps I would say that it’s the priority of a community to ensure that that the environment they leave is clean and hygienic, but not to fight over who needs to do it, it starts with us.”Said Mr.Ocholla the area Chief.
Promoting proper hygiene is part of the agenda being promoted by the Tujuane Tujengane initiative, whose members are trained with support provided by The SDI Kenyan Alliance, all within the context of an integrated project aimed at building a protective environment for slum dwellers.
Doris Moseti has been a member of the group since it was formed in July this year. “We all sit together, discuss our problems and find solutions,” she says.
The group has mapped households in the community and developed an action plan, identifying each problem, the reason behind it, the potential solution, roles and responsibilities and the progress made. Formal meetings are held weekly. So far the initiative has mobilised more than 5,000 community members and created 23 savings groups in the last three months in Riara settlement alone, and is expected to cascade down to other informal settlement communities.
The group met with the city authorities in Imara Daima to request the open drains be cleaned through a partnership engagement.
The women’s group promotes simple, cost-effective messages to residents like the importance of proper hand washing. Hand washing with soap, particularly after contact with excreta, can reduce diarrhoeal diseases by over 40 per cent and respiratory infections by 30 per cent. Diarrhea and respiratory infections are the number one cause for child deaths in Kenya. Hand washing with soap is among the most effective and inexpensive ways to prevent diarrhoeal diseases and cholera.