Kenya slum that has 'gone to the pigs'

“First, you need a little wheat flour, at least a spoonful per Chapati, it helps keep the dough together,” she explains.

Mix one packet of the normal wheat flour to a debe (a 20kg tin) of Polard, she says, and you get a week’s supply of Chapati.

“They are not as easy to bake as when you use wheat flour alone, but we try,” explains Ms Ann Wangeci, a single mother four.

To make it easier, the women simply spread the dough on an oiled hot baking pan. The result is something between a Chapati and crumbling brownish biscuit. This they serve with black tea, or just plain.

Stomach pains

But this dish, they say, comes at a price. Their children have complained of stomach aches after taking the meal. Adults say the meal gives them bloated tummies all day.

“It makes the tummy bloat. The children say their tummies ache, but what are we to do?” Ms Wangeci poses

The slum dwellers are full of praise for the government's Kazi Kwa Vijana (Work for the Youth) initiative. Since its inception, the little money they get from the projects enable them get the cash to buy the Polard. For the last one week though, the projects have disappeared

“We hope it is not gone forever, we need jobs even more than relief food,” said 35-year-old John Mwangi.

But not everyone is strong enough to work. Like 65-year-old Zipporah Wangari, who lives with her two orphaned grandsons in a single wooden shanty. The sickly ageing window does not even have the energy to push and shove for relief food, leave alone contribute to the Polard buying project.
"They share some of the Polard with me. We eat when we get some, when we don’t, we stay without food,” she told the Nation.