Cholera time bomb waiting to explode

• Home-made food no longer popular as Nairobi residents opt for cheaper food

Nairobi is a cholera nightmare waiting to happen as thousands of residents buy their food off the streets from unregulated vendors and kiosks, a Nation survey shows.

The dietary habits of residents have also changed; many have stopped preparing and cooking their own food and have turned to roadside fare, often prepared under suspicious hygienic conditions.

Last week, the Red Cross warned of a possible cholera outbreak in Nairobi as people who had travelled upcountry over the Easter holidays — some to areas already hit by the disease — start settling back into the city estates.

Water, an important component in maintaining personal hygiene and a major ally in controlling cholera, is being rationed in parts of Nairobi with health authorities having no capacity to provide alternative water in case of an outbreak.

One of the measures that have proved effective in checking the spread of the disease in smaller rural towns is the banning of food hawking and illegal roadside kiosks, but this may not be possible in Nairobi’s estates considering the vast number of informal ready-to-eat food outlets.

Informal food stalls or “mama pima githeri” eateries as they are popularly known, and roadside open air food outlests are now the only affordable places for poor and middle income Nairobi residents.

These are to be found on every street corner, near bus stops, in the neighbourhood, the local market and even next to open sewers. But they have two things in common — affordability and poor or no hygiene.

According to a Nation survey carried out in several city estates, cost is the most important factor on where and when to get a meal.

Githeri, a boiled mixture of maize and beans, usually doled out in tea cups and selling for between Sh10 and Sh15, is the most popular food for dinner.

Madondo, boiled beans and chapati at about Sh20 and mandazi with tea for breakfast for Sh10 are some of the popular choices but the majority opt for one meal a day.

Other foods like chips, vegetables, samosas, sweet potatoes and fruit are mainly considered as luxuries to be had on special occasions or in case of a windfall.

Elsewhere in Viwandani and Kawangware, one can get a meaty meal from a cow’s head or lower part of the leg for Sh10.

At Kamae Village, behind Nairobi West shopping centre, residents live on the undesirable parts from a local pig slaughtering factory traded at Sh10 a meal.

According to Emmah Waigwe, or Mama Jonte to her clients in Dandora, she has been making take-away githeri for seven years and does not know any other source of income. She wondered why we were talking about cholera yet she has not heard a single complaint from her customers for the last seven years.

But the bottom line is to keep the price down, no matter what happens to the economy. When the price of charcoal goes up alternatives such as sawdust, waste paper and firewood are used, oblivious of the health and environmental consequences.