Saving Kibera from itself, one toilet at a time

The government must let Kibera residents know in no uncertain terms that the toilets built for their benefit will be used for the intended purpose — not as practice targets for Molotov cocktails.

A computer error in the Integrated Financial Management Information System that failed to pay out Sh826 million to six suppliers at the National Youth Service is no excuse to torch toilets and revert to open-air defecation.

Last year, on World Toilet Day, the Devolution and Planning Cabinet secretary launched the construction of five public toilets by the NYS, the first of 50. By February this year, CS Anne Waiguru told the BBC that the community’s need was greater. She would build 182 toilets on Kibera’s 617 acres to ensure that anyone in the slum could sprint 100 metres in either direction to drop a pile.

Forget the fictions of the 2009 census, which put the population of Kibera at a mere 170,000. The weight of waste leaving Kibera, a mere five kilometres from the Nairobi city centre, suggests that the number of inhabitants is close to a million, but more accurately around 800,000.

With 182 toilet blocks — each with 20 latrines and bathrooms — three Kibera people would each have access to one loo. Unemployment, estimated at over 50 per cent in Kibera, condemns people to eating round the clock and dropping it like it’s hot.

Although bad people are saying none of the first five toilets have been completed, the BBC counted 90 in February this year — without even mentioning those built by the Human Needs Project Organisation with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, or the bio-centres by the Umande Trust.

The honey-suckers that burrow into the bowels of the earth in each plot to carry away their payload are hardly gone a week before they are summoned back. There is no quicker job creation than hiring thousands of youths in the sanitation business.

The legendary hatred for permanent infrastructure in the community, immortalised in the uprooting of the railway line during the 2008 post-election violence, stems from a deep-seated desire to practice idol worship. It is this political religion that has hoodwinked Kibera people into lumping mere mortals into the Holy Trinity, blinding them to beneficial development brought by the NYS.

Past attempts to upgrade Kibera from a slum have instead ringed it in with middle-class estates like Karanja Road, Ayany, Olympic, Fort Jesus, Nyayo Highrise and most recently, Lang'ata. Still, the government cannot relent in building permanent infrastructure to lift people out of poverty.

Residents’ habits of secretly defecating in paper-bags and dumping the load into open drains to clog them is a retrogressive form of resistance meant to drown the 15 villages, spawn cholera and other waterborne diseases, and sabotage the government’s development agenda.

It would be a sinful waste to turn the whole 617 acres of prime real estate land in Kibera into a dunghill with no prospect of ever mining for fertiliser in future. That is why the projects the NYS is undertaking revolve around these major activities — posho mills to feed the people, clinics to treat the sick and toilets to relieve the burdened.

A sweetener was recently added when plans were revealed to introduce free Wi-Fi in Kibera — so people could upload or download stuff without leaving their door.

The NYS has chosen to occupy the idle youth by teaching them to keep their environment clean, encouraging privacy in waste disposal, and, according to its website, promoting a “hygiene culture”, — all for a fee.

Those who have leeched on Kibera’s poverty, turning it into a permanent tourist attraction, are in a panic that they can no longer rely on the flying toilet for marketing. Too bad for them.

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