Kitui Ndogo Sewage Trenches
A sanitation initiative that changed the lives of 6,000 people.
URBAN SLUMS, by nature, are makeshift.
They are semi-permanent encampments built by people who, generally, have migrated from rural areas to cities in search of economic opportunity.
By and large, slum dwellers are poor, uneducated, and possess little modern sensibility. Being unable to secure office jobs or other higher-level forms of employment, they must resort to unskilled casual labor in the form of construction work, washing, hawking, and the like to earn a living.
In Nairobi’s Kitui Ndogo slum — one of its harshest — daily wages hover around $2/day, which qualifies as "extreme poverty," as defined by the World Bank.
Kitui Ndogo Slum, Nairobi, Kenya.
Unable to afford regular housing and in the absence of welfare and government lifelines, these people create their own improvised living setups by illegally squatting on unused land. Literally, they pick an area and build their own homes on it — inexpensive, semi-permanent homes that are fashioned out of mud, timber, and corrugated iron sheets.
Not being connected to any city services, basic amenities such as clean drinking water, toilets, and solid waste disposal systems lack in slum environments. This typically gives rise to a plethora of dangerous health risks, most notably water born illnesses like Cholera, since it becomes virtually impossible to abate and keep clean of infectious bacteria.
Sanitation Challenges in Kitui Ndogo
A polluted alleyway in the Kitui Ndogo Slum.
The Kitui Ndogo slum, located in the notorious Eastleigh district of Nairobi, is one of the city's harshest and most neglected. It is home to an estimated 50,000 residents, who live in some of the most challenged circumstances imaginable.
Kitui Ndogo is largely devoid of toilets, rainwater drainage, and waste disposal systems, which has created prolific and hazardous sanitation issues. Portions of the community resemble landfills and streams of raw sewage, where human waste and stagnant water meet, are common in the maze-like alleyways that adults and children must navigate every day.
“Every minute a child dies from a water-related disease.”
— World Health Organization
Waste piles up in the Kitui Ndogo slum, creating landfill-like conditions.
Mahtabe founder, Christopher Lowman, visited Kitui Ndogo for the first time in 2012 and was informed by the community's leadership of a crisis situation with three major slum alleyways, totaling approximately 1/3 of a mile, being completely overrun with sewage. The lives of an estimated 6,000 residents were being exposed to pathogenic waste material inside and outside of their homes.
This situation was creating conditions for illness and even death.
For example, if you are a child eating only once in a day, as many children of Kitui Ndogo do, you don't have a strong enough immune system to fight off serious infections and, for most families, money is not available for medical treatment if a family member gets sick.
For these reasons, the polluted alleyways were given priority over all the other challenges of the slum because of the grave health risk they posed.
The Intervention
For less than $10,000, a drainage system, could be constructed in the three alleyways, which would funnel the stagnant waste into the nearby Nairobi river. In a sign of partnership, 15 workers from the community volunteered to perform the labor, which enabled to keep the cost to a bare minimum.
A drainage trench prevents waste from building up.
During fundraising, our video proposal caught the attention of three women (Eli, Sonali, and Sehba) from the US and Germany who became inspired by the project and, without being formally asked to do so, got behind the campaign and raised all of the funds in just over three weeks. It was nothing short of miraculous.
Eli, Sonali, and Sehba with the volunteer team of laborers.
The last donation received — made after the project was fully funded — came with the following note, "The donation is made today in honor of my brother-in-law who is undergoing 18 hours of surgery to save his life. So, maybe today, we will save 6000 lives plus 1."
Unfortunately, he, Marcus, did not survive the surgery but, perhaps, this gives you an idea of the degree of care and goodwill that went into this project which, though it can't be measured, definitely had a positive impact on the outcome.
Eli, Sonali, and Sehba then traveled to Nairobi to volunteer and be present for the launch of the first completed trench constructed by the local team.
Turning from Crime
Due to the dire state of poverty most residents of Kitui Ndogo live in, many turn to crime and petty theft to get by.
This was the case for a number of members of the volunteer construction team who, in fact, were chosen for this job in the hope they might change their ways by being involved with something positive and good for their community.
In the weeks following the completion of construction, these young men decided to renounce crime and formed a group called, “G-Jue,” or Generating Know Yourself. They were inspired by how foreigners took such interest in their community, felt the joy that comes from serving, and wanted to continue in that direction.
On their own, they started performing donation-based clean-up efforts in the community and oversaw the cleanliness of the trenches they built by hand.
This transformation was a truly remarkable “ripple effect” of the project and one we will forever remember.
Sustainability
Building the trenches was a major feat and win for the community.
Within a matter of weeks, years old sewage had been cleared out and a drainage system installed to prevent a build up from happening again. However, there was still the issue of the need for regular cleaning of the trenches, on the part of the residents with homes adjacent to them.
Building something like a toilet or a school is relatively easy but inspiring gift recipients to take responsibility for the intervention on their own, is a harder task. In this case, many residents had adapted to the problem of navigating around the sewage and now, they were being asked to watch for trash piling up and sweep any towards the river on a daily basis.
Would they do it?
Chairman Kilonso Abraham emphasizing the need to keep the trenches clean.
To this end, a community meeting lead by Chairman Kilonso Abraham, the appointed leader of Kitui Ndogo and Chryspin Afifu, from a local NGO, was held where both emphasized the need for daily care and maintenance of the sewage trenches.
It was a productive meeting. The residents seemed to gauge how necessary it was to keep the trenches clean and how all of the work — especially that of the volunteers and donors — could be lost if waste were allowed to pile up.
Every four weeks or so the trenches were inspected by Chryspin and his colleague, Jared, as well as Teacher Grace Kavoi, director of the Malezi Centre, to see how they were being cared for.
Thankfully, they found that the residents were keeping the trenches clean, foresaw that there would be no problem in the future, and eventually ceased with the inspections.
This project was a 100% sustainable intervention made possible through a respectful hand-in-hand partnership with the leaders of Kitui Ndogo. It improved the lives of over 6,000 people, will improve lives in the future, and made a meaningful impact on everybody involved, especially the three international volunteers (Eli, Sonali, and Sehba) who made it all possible.
In addition, the project was further studied by a Master's Global Health student at New York University and highlighted as an example of holistic and sustainable development in her research.