March 18, 2010
When Dandora becomes a Park, Vultures will stop being Scavengers
BY WALTER WAMBOTE
When people talk of scavenging, images of hyenas and vultures grappling over a carcass come to my mind. But as from last year, we saw scenes on our TV screens more than two hundred families in Coast Province camping at a dumping site. They were inhabitants of Kinango and Kaloleni who had camped at Mwakirunge dumping site foraging for a morsel to chew on. The trash trucks that we hate to meet on the road due to its foul smell became a longing and a mouth watering appetite to these poor residents.
Closer home is the famous Dandora dumping site, the only place in Nairobi where people pass with their noses concealed due to the fowl odor while others enjoy a meal on the heap piles. Health advisors have expressed concern over the health hazard caused by the dumping site like bad smell and spread of diseases, but my eyes are glued to the starving emaciated children who have known no other dining place in their lives.
A study done by UNEP in 2007 indicates that over half of the children tested around the site, had concentration of lead in their blood more than the international required levels and most of them would not live to be 50. UNEP should do another survey on how many of those children tested for lead would have been alive if it was not for the excesses of the dumping site.
The Dandora Dump site is over 30 years old. It has become a reality in the lives of the inhabitants of Dandora. People have acquired jobs that make them afford a living as they recycle useless material dumped. Children have grown to maturity, by the same food others deem as waste. Others have played around the dumping sites for long enough to even control certain areas of wastelands as their own pastures.
The Dumping site has grown in its size and its age, and so has Dandora grown smaller at the expansion of the dumping site. So much has the presence of the dumping site influenced the surrounding that it has influenced our perception, thinking and appreciation of that humble neighborhood of Dandora and its inhabitants? We can not separate them from the effects of the never ending heap of rotting and decomposing trash, filth, junk which fills Dandora with a chocking stench that the wind scatters around Nairobi.
In total there are more than 0.9M people depending on the dumping site for survival. Common sense bids me to think that you damp trash at an unwanted place. Hence the 4.5M Nairobi inhabitants dumps 2000 tonnes of rubbish daily on a 30 acre piece of land. The dumpers help themselves by making clean places elsewhere at the cost of Dandora. Yet when the inhabitants of Dandora, discovered the art of recycling, the dumpsite became a health hazard that should be moved for the sake of the people of Dandora.
After they move the dumpsite what next? Will they feed the scavengers and employ the jobless? Will Dandora remain Dandora without a dumping site? Who is more important to the people of Dandora, the NGOs or the dumpsite?
WORD COUNT 435
Katana Baya said,
March 29, 2010 at 12:44 pm
This constitutes an enviromental injustice done to the inhabitants of Dandora.The site is squeezing the life of Dandorians slowly and softly but consistently.In the end no one will be saved.
Despite the fact that the site supports several families through scavenging for food and other re-salable items, the costs for having the site are far much more than the benefits.
The site should be relocated to another place devoid of biological diversity and proper procedures followed befere any dumping is done such as sorting.