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Providence had it that she would be married to the love of her youth…not really her first love…..but her love anyway….that’s another story for another day, ….get four children in relatively slow succession and live in a single roomed house at the border of Huruma and Mathare. The administrators called this area Ngei 1 but the locals referred to it generally as Huruma.

Mathare River was less than 500metres down this sloping terrain. The river flowed in the valley popularly referred to as Mathare valley. Most of the year, the rivers’ waters were a sluggish pale green or blackish snake.  This was because many of the households along the river had their effluent emptying into the river. Small kids openly defecated into the river. Adults used pay-latrines (5 shillings for each use or a negotiated monthly fee) that opened into the river, or defecated into nylon bags and threw the packages into the river. Open sewers from the houses in Huruma that had a sewer system drained into the river. Half the buildings in Huruma had a sewer system that was blocked and overflowing throughout the year. Sewer stench was so common here that the residents actually didn’t notice it and thought any stranger making a fuss about it was just acting up or being a pain in the ***.  Direct effluent flowed into the river….kitchen waste was thrown into the river…anything that was considered waste in any home went into the river….whatever was unwanted within or without the human body found its place in the river.

The only time the river’s waters were anything other than green-black was during the two rainy seasons around April and December. The waters during these two seasons turned dark brown and that is the cleanest the river would get. The sluggish snake metamorphosized into a turbulent mammoth carrying all the waste that was stuck into it downstream towards Kariobangi. Later it joined the Nairobi River that flowed into the Nairobi Dam and then made its way back as treated water to the taps of those Nairobi residents who had the privilege of tapped water. These rainy seasons were tough times for most residents of the valley. The shacks rarely had roofing that could withstand anything beyond a light shower. The rusted corrugated iron sheets with holes all over meant that most houses had to be rearranged at night to set the bed in an area with the least leakage. Buckets would be arranged all over the house to capture the seepage from the roof, valuables were transferred to higher heights and covered with plastic bags…the roof seemed like a perforated mesh….sleep escaped most adults as they crossed their fingers and silently prayed that the river would not break its banks into their shacks.  Red eyes were common in the morning.

Depending on how rusted and dirty one’s roof was the collection could be used in the morning for some of the household cleaning. Challenges were often turn into blessings here. The working populace emerged from their houses dressed up and ready to walk to the factories, mostly in Nairobi’s industrial area….some at the EPZ factories at Ruaraka…..the men were conspicuously ghetto guys but the ladies were not so easy to tell apart especially to one with an untrained eye. For many generations women in these places have always found ways to disguise their conditions…thanks to make up and the availability of cheap mtumba (secondhand) clothing.

She lives in a plot that is a considerable distance from the river so she slept well without the fears of flooding. She happens to be among those working at the EPZ factories at Ruaraka and this morning is no different from many others as she prepared herself and her children for the day ahead.

(tutaendelea na tamthilia hii wiki ijayo. Bonyeza “like ” ama ‘share’ ukipenda kuwasambazia wengine)