Urban Schools and WaSH Projects

Two of the other partners that MCC works with here in Kenya are Menno Kids Academy and Mukuru Menno Academy.  These are schools associated with the Kenyan Mennonite Church, and located in the informal settlements (“slums”) of Nairobi.  These schools take students from “baby class” (preschool) through standard 8 (8^th grade) that live in the area.  There are three of us MCC service workers that work with these schools: Cristina helps them with finances, Jodi works with education curriculum, and I (Doug) work with their water projects.  I’ll comment on what I do in the schools, working with the water projects.

Nairobi is known for having a large population in the slums, as is the case for most African cities.  An estimated 60% or more of the 5 million people in Nairobi live in the informal settlements, most often in corrugated tin shacks or concrete buildings of the neighboring areas.  The recent collapse of a poorly built building is typical of these areas.  A family of 5-7 people lives in a single room, and each floor of 3 or 4 rooms has a single toilet.  In Mathare, for instance, an average of 18 people share each toilet, and people will get up hours early just so that they can get to use the toilet in the morning.  Earnings are about $50-100 per month.  Nairobi is somewhat unusual in that the informal settlements are scattered throughout the city – this seems to be an effect of the original colonial arrangement (wealthy landowner “estates” surrounded by the low-income worker residences; that pattern has held over with areas of middle and high income neighborhoods interspersed with low-income areas).  A recent study also outlined the crucial role that corruption has played in creating a largely inefficient city, where vested interests hinder the conversion of slums into formal neighborhoods.  Mathare and Mukuru are examples of the scattered location of the slums, they are adjacent to formal residential areas, and industrial and business districts.  These are the places where there are schools that MCC partners with.  Kibera is the best known slum here, often cited as the “largest slum in the world” (perhaps not accurate, but certainly true that a very large number of people live there). 

Land use in Nairobi and locations we live and work (except Kibera, we don’t work there).  Red are informal settlements, blue residential, green industrial, purple institutions. 

My summary observation is that people living in slums live in a world of insecurity.  That insecurity takes various forms, from financial, to health, to homes, to physical violence.  Financially, people live in fear of losing what jobs they have, and are hesitant to challenge the status quo.  Health fears are from HIV, malnutrition, and water-borne diseases (back to that in a moment).  People live with the fear of losing their homes, as most are rented shacks on insecure land, which can be converted at any time to a building site.  And there is physical violence – women as usual are at most risk, and this is a major challenge in promoting sanitation, as women risk violence when they visit community toilets, especially at night. 

MCC works with WaSH (water, sanitation and hygiene) projects in two schools.  The components of that program are:

1) SODIS for clean water.  This is solar disinfection, water in clear plastic bottles placed in the sun will be safe to drink after 6 hours (or 2 days, if it is cloudy).  Each student in the school has two bottles, one is in their classroom they can use for drinking, and the other is on racks in the sun for the next day.  It’s an elegant solution for clean water, and works well in the schools themselves.  There are more challenges in getting the families in the community to use them though, and it isn’t commonly practiced in houses.  Reasons for this seem to include: theft of bottles (which do have some recycling value), lack of space (for instance people that live in multi-story homes have no place to put them in the sun), cost of getting bottles, and fear of poisoning.  Personally, I think there is a psychological hurdle also, SODIS simply hasn’t reached critical mass where people view it as a desirable way to get clean water.  Studies show that adoption of WaSH technologies like this are not just a matter of convincing people it’s good for their health, but more importantly it must be aspirational (for instance, it should be something that appeals to their status in the community).  So promoting these things is complicated (Alex and Evan roll their eyes whenever I resort to saying “it’s complicated” in my explanations! 

(By the way, the common question of whether plastics leach into the water from the bottles does not seem to be a health concern, studies to date suggest this doesn’t occur to any substantial degree). 

2) Hygiene, basically hand-washing.  Hand-washing stations are provided in schools, and students are taught to wash their hands at times we know are critical for preventing disease transmission.  So students all line up (well, “mass up” is perhaps a better description) at the faucets before getting lunch. 

3) Sanitation, which is providing clean toilets.  This has greatly improved the environment around the schools, as we’re told by those that have been there a long time - there are now longer feces obviously present.  Often this was in the form of so-called “flying toilets”, residents defecation in a plastic bag and then sling it out into the river, open space or just the pathways to get rid of it.  This is especially the case at night, when there are security issues with leaving the house.  In the community, there are some options for paying to use a toilet (around 3-5 “bob”, or shillings; that’s 3-5 cents each time, compared with a household income around $50-100 per month).  One of the interesting and somewhat successful models has been Fresh-life toilets, a private company that uses a toilet franchise model, their toilets are readily obvious around the Mukuru area.  They then pick up the waste, which they compost in a facility outside Nairobi and then sell to farmers in Kenya.  This is probably one of the few successful user-pays models for water and sanitation provision, in fact there is somewhat of a debate whether these public health services can be effectively provided with a private sector model, or whether they need to be funded as a public good (akin to many services in developed countries).  There are some indications that the number of flying toilets is in fact less than it was in the past.  Interestingly, there are also suggestions that the new problem is use of cheap disposable diapers, which are then tossed out in the streets.

Organizations like that running Fresh-life illustrate the good things that are happening.  So despite all the insecurity and problems (and much like in refugee camps, I’m told), I find it important to remember that slums are not places devoid of hope.  Although not “nice” in the sense of being clean and beautiful, there’s a certain satisfaction each time in driving or walking into the slums for work, and seeing something or somebody new that is working to improve the situation.  And there is personal satisfaction in connecting with a part of the human condition on earth that represents such a large part of the world’s population, but that we can so easily ignore, either intentionally or not.

So despite our family being resolutely less inclined towards cities, we enjoy the work in this city and find some enjoyment in living in “the green city in the sun” (as Nairobi’s nickname has been).  Things rapidly felt familiar after moving here, but after nearly a year now have moved to feeling more like a home. 

I tend not to take pictures in the slums, but if you want accurate visual images of what it is like, here are a few places to look:

African Slum Journal

BBC story on Mathare

DotEarth post about Mathare, and concerns about election violence