Disaster offered a snapshot of all you need to know about slum life

William Oeri | NATION
Residents mourn their loved ones killed in a fire that swept through Sinai slum in Nairobi’s Industrial Area on September 12, 2011. Most of the victims were scooping petrol from a trench that carries dirty water from a Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) depot. Police said 75 people were killed and more than 100 others injured, but Nairobi Town Clerk Philip Kisia and others said the dead were more than 100.

What you need to know:

  • The descriptions of a government that locals know only for its absence illustrated how preventable tragedy was

Stephen Njau cannot remember which came first; the sight or the sound of death. What he recalls with crystal clarity is his reaction. He ran and ran and ran.

“It was like a movie,” he says. “I saw the manhole covers shoot into the air very high and then come crashing down on the mabati houses. Then I heard the explosion. It was like a bomb. Not just one. Several. My next stop was in Mutindwa (about five kilometres way).”

The disaster in the heart of Sinai slum at a time when many in that urban village would have been heading to work offered a snapshot of everything you need to know about slum life in Kenya.

A few extra coins

Desperation. So many saw in the oil that came gushing from the sewer line an opportunity to earn a few extra coins in an area where residents live from one day’s paycheck to the next (if that comes). Sewage.

How morbid that the oil spill came through the sewer system; an emblem of the poor services offered in the capital’s informal settlements. Those that were caught in the epicentre of the blast had been scooping oil while mired knee-deep in excrement, possibly the most eloquent marker of their condition there could be.

Finally came death. This was a disaster that had no shortage of bitter, twisted ironies.

The name Sinai — after the fabled mountain from which mainstream religions say the commandments were handed down — was derived from a mountain that religious scholars speculate was volcanic.

The scriptures report it was once enveloped in a cloud, it quaked and filled with smoke, lightning flashed forth, the roar of thunder mingled with the blasts of a trumpet and fire was seen at the summit of the mountain.

Just substitute the mountain with a valley of death, and you have a perfect description of the heart of on Monday’s tragedy.

Slum dwellers in Kenya are an anonymous entity at the best of times — the millions of Nairobians that pour out of the city’s underbelly to repair its cars, sweep its streets, construct its skyscrapers, and guard its mansions.

Died in perfect anonymity

Those that were hit by the force of the blast died in perfect anonymity. Their bodies were so heavily burnt that only DNA technology could ever distinguish one from the other.

There was the tall body lying flat on its belly. There were the six bodies coiled around each other like an ancient Greek painting. Two pigs lay among them after the blast apparently destroyed the small scale farm of one of the local residents.

What was the story behind the two bodies, burnt to a perfect pitch of black, with shafts of white appearing on a few parts of their bodies where the flame cut through to the bone? Why were their bodies almost identically positioned, flat on their backs with their hands half raised as if in prayer?

Such were the topics the hundreds of lucky slum dwellers who survived the blaze and arranged themselves in several columns across the embankments of the Ngong River to watch the rescue operation debated through the day.

Is that little skeleton a baby, one asked? No, came the retort, it must be a cat. A more pertinent question for the officials would have been: Why, more than eight hours after the blast occurred were the bodies still lying uncovered in the slimy mud.

Why had they not been moved away, or at least shielded from the prying eyes of onlookers and the breeze that was pouring down through the day?

One official offered the staggering response that they were waiting for clearance to “certify that they were dead” before covering them. Another said City Hall was waiting for body bags.

The correct answer was, of course, that the authorities saw little problem with these discontents of the city suffering indignity in death, as they had in life.

A parade of senior government officials, sirens ablaze, soon arrived at the scene. All appeared shocked by the grim evidence of the disaster. The real question is whether they will be moved into addressing the awful conditions in which the city’s poor live or whether they will wait around for the next call alerting them to tragedy.

Sinai slum, like many other such slums, exists in an alternative universe where the writ of government does not extend.

As Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka and other dignitaries waded through the slimy mud that led to the focal point of the blast, they had to stoop to avoid exposed wires that cross every other row of tin shacks.

One unfamiliar with the territory would think they were clothes lines. It turns out they are illegal electricity connections operated by the inner-city gangs whose word is law in that area.

“You can see how we live here,” said John Njaramba, 30. “There are no access roads, no services, nothing.”

“Here it is every man for himself,” said 23-year-old Washington Ouma, a casual labourer at Industrial Area, describing the security situation in the settlement.

The repeated descriptions of a government that locals know only for its absence illustrated just how preventable yesterday’s tragedy was.

Locals offered differing accounts of the aftermath, but they were all agreed on what had come before — the oil spill had gone on for several hours and locals had collected fuel unmolested from the sewerage system all night.

Dashed to empty jerrican

A youth who offered only the name George said he had filled several 10 litre containers with oil and had dashed off to empty his jerrican when the blast went off.

He said spillages like that were frequent and local speculation was that they occurred when the Kenya Pipeline Company was cleaning their tanks. They all agreed if any officials had been in the area they would have called in the police sooner.

George said no one had ever stepped in to curb their oil scooping activities in the past. All that changed when something ignited the fire that turned Sinai village into the latest corner of Nairobi’s slums to attract the attention of officialdom, if only for a day.