OPINION: Growing Up in Eastlands Was Amazing! But Then Greed Took It All

By Shisanya Majanja,  

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 28- She transported me back in time, the dirty garbage truck rattling ahead of me, most obviously running to dump its smelly cargo at the Dandora dump site in Nairobi.

The truck, without canopy had three teenage boys sitting atop its mountain of garbage and sifting through it for valuables as it sped away depositing mounds of trash on the road.

I grew up in Nairobi’s Eastlands area in the first two decades after Kenya attained self-governance status from our former colonial masters, the British.

At that time Eastlands comprised only of Kariakor, Starehe, Ziwani, Gorofani, Bahati, Bachelor’s Quarters, Ngara, Shauri Moyo, Eastleigh, Kaloleni, Makongeni, Mbotela, Maringo, Ofafa  Kunguni, Ofafa Jericho,  Jericho Lumumba,Embakasi Village, Jerusalem, Kariobangi, Kasabuni,  Korogocho, Ngomongo and Mathare. The last four settlements were all informal.

In other words, the estates like Buruburu, Outering, Dandora, Umoja, Inner core, Tena, Jacaranda, Pipeline, Huruma, Uhuru Estate, Rabai, Pioneer and Donholm did not exist then.

From where Buruburu stands today to Kangundo on one side, and maybe Salama on the other, there was one very large tract of land on which sisal grew.

Before the Dandora dumpsite was unfortunately selected to host all the garbage from Nairobi households, our trash used to be dumped at Mukuru between South B and Industrial Area.

The narrative of Kwa Njenga and Kwa Reuben is a relatively new one that came into use as the former dumpsite came to house a large part of Nairobi’s growing slum population.

There was also a slum that sprung up along the Southern fence of Moi Air base, then simply known as Eastleigh Air base. This slum was known as Cotton City or Makotoni and later, Kya Mbiyu (Mbiyu’s place), pronounced Kiambio.

Cotton City served the Sots of Eastlands with an illicit gin called chang’aa. This drink could as well be found in Kibera, where it is said to have originated from; its preparation process having been brought into the country by the Sudanese Nubian community who were settled in Kibera after the second World War.

It was then called Nubian gin. We were ever entertained from our doorsteps in Jericho, by the chang’aa drunks running away from raids mounted by policemen on horseback. It was a sight to behold.

Back to our garbage truck that was hurtling dangerously ahead of me, I couldn’t help but remember with nostalgia the kind of trucks that collected our garbage.

They were huge covered trucks that were able to compact garbage on the move.

There was no depositing of garbage on the roads in their wake. What happened to the trucks is anybody’s guess. How we got to this place where we engage private garbage collectors while at the same time having on our Council payroll such staff as Council Street Cleaners, Gardeners and the like is beyond imagination.

I remember very well how the Nairobi City Council allotted each and every household in Eastlands, a beautiful tin bin for garbage, provided the allotee had a water account from the council.

These bins would then be emptied into the covered garbage trucks on a daily basis. Eastlands was a clean place to live in as we even had Council staff with sharp pointed rods collecting stray paper trash by piercing.

The houses were neat rows regularly painted by the Council. The Council also planted trees and flowers (mostly, bougainvillea) around and within the housing estates.

Trenches and drains conveniently placed, poured all our excess water into the Nairobi River. As you can imagine, there was no clogging.

One may argue that our population growth has played a big part in the deterioration of systems this side of the city but then with population growth we have professionals who are supposed to bring about new ways of handling the problems that come with it.

We did not build the eye-sores that are the illegal extensions to our Council houses like is the situation now. We have turned these estates into one very large uncontrolled slum dwelling.

We fenced off the areas in front of our houses with second hand, rusty corrugated iron sheets, maybe at first to gauge the Council’s reaction. When the Council continued in its slumber, we built rooms for subletting within the fences with some of us making illegal connections to the existing sewer lines and the others, daring enough, digging pit latrines for the new tenants.

 Mr. Jonah Chitira, who lives in one of the estates in Eastlands, says that some Council tenants do not bother at all about their sublet tenants’ ablutions that they do not make any effort to construct any kind of toilets for their new milk cows and as a result, the disgusting habit of ‘flying toilets’ persists. The Council (now the County Government) sleeps on.

It is easy to blame the tenants for such greed and tampering with the Council property and the environment as a whole but I believe the Council needs to strictly police these areas and make sure that its tenants adhere to the tenancy agreements.

Like I mentioned before, the Council planted trees and flowers within these estates. Our estates could favourably and easily compete with Parklands in terms of green areas.

The people of Eastlands however felled these trees whenever they had funeral meetings, to light bonfires for their vigils. The flowers were uprooted for reasons I cannot fathom. Again, had the council acted by prosecuting the culprits, Eastlands would most probably not have lost its glory.

The roads were regularly swept and street lights fully functional. Our culture borrowed heavily on the White man’s. Up till now Living rooms in Eastlands are furnished in an almost uniform manner. A Sofa set, Coffee table, a handful of stools, and a clock on the wall, fighting for space with framed family photos.

In the initial years just after independence, we had milk bottles dropped on our door steps. A minivan from Pearl Dry Cleaners collected and returned our dirty suits after laundry. Wasn’t that the future?

I could now breathe in fresher air as our truck had sped in a direction different from the one, I was taking, my reminiscing with it.

I would imagine, change happens for the better but for the Nairobi County Government, change means regressing. At least the County Government has an edge over the Kenya Police Service, which neither moves ahead nor backwards.