Landfill Lifestyle

Yesterday we visited the landfill here in Nakuru and delivered some food to a few of the families living there. This horrific scene was composed of shoeless children wandering among the environmental, biological and chemical waste that is dumped here. 

Following the clashes of 1992 the government gave this plot of land to the Internally Displaced Persons (I.D.P.) who lost everything during the clashes. Most of these people were from the Kikuyu tribe and had witnessed their lives burn to ashes before being relocated to this site. Later, the government decided that this land would suffice as an acceptable place to bring all of the garbage (and here in Kenya they also incinerate the trash at the site). 

Now, these people who had already lost all of their belongings and had watched their family members be brutally hacked to death must also share the land that was provided for them with the garbage, pigs and other scavenging wildlife. It was so shocking to watch the people search through the piles of trash to find rotten fruits that had already been walked on by rodents only to feed it to their children or eat it themselves. As the dump trucks arrived, crowds began to form.... in hopes of finding the best and most fresh of the garbage.

 I began to think about all of the things that I have complained about in the past concerning my meals..... "Salad again!" or "This table is wobbly we should move." or "What is taking so long for us to be served our dinner?"

Lucy is the leading lady at the site. We visited her home to bring her some food and talk with her about her life at the dump. She told us that there are many rich Kenyan people who live near by and none of them have ever helped her. She said, "The Africans tell us to eat with the pigs back at the dump where we belong" and she said, "Only the mazungus have given us food or bought our bags to help us." It is sad but, with an exception of people like Tony (who was raised at this site), not many of the Kenyan people are even aware that their are people living at the dump. And according to Lucy the Kenyans who know that they are there treat them like the scavenging animals that they are forced to coexist with. 

It's amazing to see people once again making something out of what I see as nothing. The women who live at the dump site work together to crochet handbags out of strips of grocery bags and they make jewelry out of paper beads utilizing shreds of newspaper and magazines. The women work together to support the community and these crafts are their only way to generate income. I don't think that I would last one day living at this landfill and I doubt that my immune system could stand the massive amounts of toxic chemicals being burned into the air. Many of the people living here have constant bronchial infections due to the burning of trash and many of them can't get these illnesses to go away because of the constant bacteria that they are forced to breath. 

After I returned to the house I attempted to research this place on the Internet and have found basically nothing that had any facts about the location of the landfill in Kenya being shared with the I.D.P.s of the clashes of 1992. It is shocking to see that these people who had suffered incredibly horrific traumatic events during the clashes are now living to suffer further. It's even more unbelievable that there isn't even one website to inform the rest of the world that this type of inhumane way of life is in existence.