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June 2014 back issue
by Siegfried Modola
Kibarani is a dumpsite on the outskirts of Mombasa. The mountains of rubbish and the smoke can be easily spotted
from the main road a few kilometers from the international airport. Hundreds of people have their homes on the
dumping site, making a living by collecting and selling on for recycling nearly everything that the city throws away.
The constant arrival of trucks carrying rubbish has created a mini economy, driven mostly by migrants from rural areas
that have not been able to find a job in the city.
Basic sanitation facilities such as clean water and toilets are non-existent.
The workers are constantly exposed to toxic smoke from the burning rubbish, causing serious long-term health
problems.
It is a backbreaking way to make a living, working twelve hours shifts; bending over the rubbish, searching under a
blazing tropical sun.
A person can make 150-200 Kenya Shillings a day (about 2.5 USD). A few years ago it was more, but as the country’s
population increases, cities grow and more people are out of work.
Many of the residents that I talked to say that the work and their living conditions are hard, but they decide to stay, as
here, even if little, they make a constant and secure living.
Nearly everything from the tonnes of rubbish dumped every week can be collected, sold and recycled. A “middle man”
will then come to the site to buy the recycling material collected.
Everything is carefully weighted and taken away to be sold at the city’s factories.
Thomas makes a living by collecting and re-making plastic flower bunches. He sells them to other residents of Kibarani
or to motorists on the roads of Mombasa.
The Kibarani rubbish dump has existed for the past fifty years.
Many of the people that come and collect the rubbish go back to their homes as night falls to return in the morning. But
there are hundreds with nowhere to live that have constructed makeshifts homes and live here permanently.
For now they are allowed by the government to stay but eventually, as the city grows and develops, they will most
probably be evicted to create new building grounds.
Most of the children do not go to school. Some are orphans who have found a refuge in the Kibarani dumpsite.
With proper attention given to urban youth, issues surrounding street children immediately arise. As of 2007, street
children in Kenya were estimated at over 300,000, and this number has grown tremendously since the post-election
violence.
“I am quite new to this, I have been here just over a year. I am not as good as others doing this job. I collect fire wood
around the hills or pick coconut shells to sell for fire wood”, explains forty-four years old Alex in the late hours of the
afternoon as he drinks palm wine.
Many of the young kids have dropped out of or simply can’t afford to stay in school, so they come to the site for work.