The Garbage

A Nairobian is someone who has been born and brought up in the great city of Nairobi, such a title is coveted among the rural folk and is used by them to refer to their city dwelling cousins. I have carried and borne that title with as much respect as I could possibly muster and shall continue as such for the rest of my natural life.

After that short loyalty pledge to our great city, the truth of the matter is that Nairobi is full of garbage. Not where I live, where I work or even my entertainment spots but where the salt to the earth people of Nairobi live is just full of degrading filth. When I was younger, and that was not too long ago, the best evidence to show that you have indeed visited the city is taking a boat ride through Uhuru Park and having your photo taken at KICC (Kenyatta International Conference Center for those who do not know). The photos are shot to depict the person is actually holding the top of the building. I took a walk down the street where the photographers used to advertise their wares but I was not fortunate enough to see this once sought after photograph being taken. Has the appeal of our great city faded away or are more photo worthy monuments being built in other towns. Maybe I am just panicking, I may have showed up during off peak hours but what I can’t deny is that this just may be true, we have lost our appeal.

I could probably attribute this to two main problems that we have had in the not so recent past that have developed to what they are now. First we have garbage, this is truly a song that has been heard over and over again that I probably am just echoing out but in order to ensure that everything is done right I must sing my verse. Tonnes of garbage are produced by the growing population of the city everyday but what is happening is that the garbage just ends up piling up in all the wrong places. It may not be a good idea to start laying any blame on anyone so I shall just blame who is responsible, everyone. If an individual unwraps one sweet and consumes it then they will have to discard it somehow. Most people just throw it onto the ground without a second thought, a small group put in their pockets and dump it when they get a bin or go home. If the three million people in Nairobi have one sweet and toss it into the streets that become three million wrappers. Say each wrapper is only about 1 gram, and then it becomes 3,000,000 grams which is eventually 3 tonnes of garbage in one day from consuming sweets. Now I used the sweet because that is what most people walking down the street may shrug off as negligible, but there are hundreds if not thousands of other objects that may be unwrapped and used to litter the environment.  The people causing the problem have been addressed how about the people who are supposed to be addressing the problem. It is general knowledge that the city council’s job is to clean the city, if anyone has been driving down the streets at around 2 am like me sometimes knows that the main roads in the city are cleaned at night. This is all well and good but there is a lot that is not being done. I have walked by small street corner bins that are overflowing in the middle of the day and still found them exactly the same way about an hour later. I may be mistaken but cleaning up the city is not being properly managed. I do not wish to beat this drum harder than it already has but if our city was a lot cleaner than it is right now then the rural folk will come from far and wide to have their photos taken here once again.

The second and most worrying thing is human garbage. Sounds like a derogative term but please give me another world that clearly describes the person who walks up behind you and steals your phone. Or the other guy who carjacks you and leaves you nude in the middle of the forest, granted you are alive but remember that he has just robbed you of your own blood ,sweat and tears. Sounded like a burst of some deep emotion but it truly hits home whenever I hear such stories.  Whether on the news, in the papers or from first hand correspondence these stories just grind my gears.  I did a little personal digging and according to a safety ranking published on numbeo.com Nairobi is ranked thirteen least safe and has the thirteenth highest crime index in the world. It would be better to verify those figures yourself but speaking as a resident of this city, I know where not to be at night or even during the day. It’s not even usually blamed on the muggers nowadays if you are robbed. “What the hell were you doing at that place at that time of night?” your friends would say. ”you should thank your lucky stars that you weren’t killed”.  Yeah, in this day and age you should thank the mugger for sparing your life after he is done cleaning you out.

Enough with the background, how does this affect our people? People need to feel safe when they visit Nairobi, and not to just look at the wildlife but tourism now extends to seeing the real Kenya. Dean Cain (The guy who played superman on ‘Lois and Clark’ back in the day) has been here to see the slums and has 50 cent, so I hear. Granted that they both probably came with a sizeable number of bodyguards.  They come to see the housing estates, the towers, roads and some come just to see a real slum for the first time in their lives. This may make someone like me swallow my pride but there are people who come to Kenya to help the people in the slums yet we as their neighbours do nothing. Sorry for the detour there but I am sure you understand my point. If an investor is not safe in our biggest city then the money just won’t come. So now you know the what, let’s find out the why. Apart from the old cliché’ of making money fast there is yet another reason why people steal from others, they are tired.

I am a big fan of Eric wainaina’s music and in his latest album (Love + Protest) Track 3 talks about the hardships a young man had to go through to impress the girl he loves. At the end of it, he resorts to crime and he is gunned down, but he leaves behind a message stating that he had just gotten tired of living on hope alone.  Listening to that song just breaks it all down, mix it with a little Nairobi half life and you have a rough idea about what goes on and what shouldn’t be happening.

My city is filthy but its the only one I have....