Families feel abandoned as they scavenge for food

• Children have turned to scavenging, while girls and women are trading sex for food.
• Men from the camp and from outside preying on girls because of their vulnerability
• Most families can only afford a cup of light porridge a day.
• Danger of contracting diseases at the camp as a result of overflowing toilets

Children have turned to scavenging, while girls and women are trading sex for food.

That is what is left of the Nakuru Showground camp for the displaced, after Kenya Red Cross Society withdrew from where it had been feeding more than 14,000 uprooted people.

The council, it would seem, took the cue and stopped collecting garbage.

Scenes of children aged between six and 10 years looking for food remains and organic waste greet you at the two main gates of the camp where more than 9,000 people are still camping.

They are dirty, barefoot and hungry. They use their little bare hands to rummage through the dirt, oblivious to the risk of contracting diseases.

They carry the filth home in small bags and give it to their parents who spread it outside the torn, faded tents to dry.

Their parents use them to collect organic waste which they dry and sell to pig farmers from the neighbouring London, Kiamunyi and Hilton estates at meagre amounts. A kilogramme sells for Sh5, with the most expensive seller giving it out for Sh10.

A survey by the Nation revealed that some parents have no choice after donors vanished more than a month ago. A volunteer who was working in the Children’s Department when the Red Cross was still offering services at the camp said hunger and poverty among the internally displaced was the main reason children were collecting garbage. The garbage brings a meal a day.

The volunteer said other children were being sent to Menengai Forest to collect firewood for parents to sell within the camp and in estates. “Menengai Forest is a dangerous place to send children because of the crater,” he said.

A victim of eviction from Kamuyu Farm home in Burnt Forest, Ms Leah Njeri, said it was true children were collecting waste while girls had become prostitutes, if only to buy sanitary towels.

“When a situation is as grave as it is here at the camp, the most vulnerable people are women and children; that is why you find many bad things happening to them,” she said.

Ms Njeri said men within the camp and from outside were preying on girls and exploiting them since the men knew the girls were vulnerable.

She told of her fear that there would be new cases of HIV and other venereal diseases, since the girls were engaging in unprotected sex.

Ms Njeri added that the camp was congested and most parents lived in small tents with their children. “You might want to engage in sex for the sake of your children. But what do you do when only a thin piece of canvas separates your side of the tent from your neighbour’s?” she asked.

Most families can only afford a cup of light porridge a day.