Kenya slum that has 'gone to the pigs'

Faced by hunger and starvation, slum dwellers in Central Kenya's Nyeri town have turned to pig food to stay alive.

Polard - the trade name for animal feed normally fed to cattle and pigs, is easily available in Nyeri Farm produce shops for Sh1200 per 90-kg bag. In comparison, a bag of maize costs Sh3000, and Sh4000 for a bag of wheat.

Now, the animal feed has become like a staple food in the town’s poverty ravaged slum villages of Muringa, Chania, Mathari and Githuri.

Here, relief food is rare, and when it comes, the numbers of deserving cases simply overwhelm the available rations.

“The last time they brought relief food here was a month ago. I got three tins of maize and two (tins) of beans. They ran out within a week,” 65-year old Zipporah Wangari told the Nation team.

The slum dwellers say that unlike the relief food that runs out very quickly, the animal feed comes in larger quantities, and at a cheaper price.

“One sack feeds six families for more than a week,” says 35-year-old single mother, Jane Wanjiru. Ms Wanjiru, like other women in Muringa slums, does odd jobs in Nyeri town to feed her four children. Every week, the women join hands to buy one sack of pig food.

"We contribute Sh200 each. Then we send someone to the animal feed shop," she says.

At the animal feed shop, no questions are asked. The shop owner, they say, has no idea that the pig food he sells is actually used as human food.

"No one asks questions. He (the shopkeeper) thinks we are buying Polard for our animals," Wanjiru adds.

The women divide the Polard animal feed equally among the contributors.

Baking chapatis

From the Polard, the women begin a delicate process of baking chapatis from what is meant to be exclusively animal feed.

"It is not easy to make dough from the Polard, but we try," says Mama Muthoni.

The mother of two took Nation team through the delicate process of baking Chapati from the animal feed.

“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.