10th August, 2011
Agnes Ndanu
Nairobi’s Dagoretti District is home to numerous immigrants from various parts of Kenya who settle here in search of employment and livelihood opportunities. Most of them live in low-income informal settlements and rely on casual labour and small-scale businesses to make a living.
Agnes Ndanu hails from Makueni District in eastern Kenya and was living in Nairobi’s Kibera slum until she and her family were kicked out of their house during the post-election violence that rocked Kenya in 2007/2008.
During that time, hundreds of families lost their homes and livelihoods and ended up at camps for internally displaced people. Some of them have since returned to their homes to start over, while others are still living in the camps, some too afraid to return and others, for lack of a home to go back to.
Agnes, fondly known as Mama Sande, and her family of seven children lost their home, livelihood and all their earthly possessions and went to seek shelter at the nearby Jamhuri Showground that hosted internally displaced persons until 2008.
During the chaos, Agnes was separated from her husband of Ugandan origin and neither she, nor her children, have set eyes on him since. When the Jamhuri camp closed, Agnes and her family moved to another camp in Waithaka division of Dagoretti, where AMREF had installed water tanks while AMREF partners provided food and portable latrines. Her son, Sande, was enrolled into the AMREF Dagoretti Child in Need Project, which works at rescuing, rehabilitating, re-integrating and re-socialising children from the streets and other difficult circumstances back to their society, families and schools.
Armed with Sh10,000 (US$140) that internally displaced persons received from the Kenyan Government towards their resettlement, Agnes began a new life with her children in Dagoretti. She found a rental house at Sh700 (US$10) per month and paid school fees arrears for her son in high school. The family had only had a few clothing items that they had received from well-wishers while at the IDP camp and a thin mattress that they all slept on, so Agnes used the remaining amount to furnish their new one-roomed house with a bed and to buy a few utensils. With her husband gone and no money to revive the fabric selling business she operated in Kibera, Agnes turned to casual labour in order to provide for her children.
Agnes does laundry for her neighbours about three times a week and makes Sh150 (US$2) from each wash. She also occasionally tills land for another Sh150-200. However, increased food insecurity in the country coupled with increased household poverty as a result of rising inflation (now at 15.3 per cent), means that many families in Dagoretti, which depend on casual labour for income, are greatly affected. Agnes’s family has spent several nights on empty stomachs.
“My children and I have not eaten fruit in such a long time,” she says sadly. “We have not bought any new clothes since we left the camp; the clothes we wear are those we were given at the IDP camp. We just can’t afford these things.”
In 2007, while still in Kibera, Agnes discovered that one of her daughters who was then nine, has HIV. Agnes speculates that the girl might have been infected from sharing a shaving machine at the local barbershop as no one else in the family is infected.
Her daughter’s health poses a unique challenge for the family as the 12-year-old is required to adhere to a strict balanced diet to boost her immune system. She is currently on multivitamins and septrin, an antibacterial treatment, which she receives from a nearby health centre. Agnes is grateful that her daughter has not had any serious health complications so far.
“I would not know where to start if she was to become seriously ill. I try my best to give her the right foods but that is not always possible,” Agnes is herself asthmatic and can barely afford to buy her medication regularly. She was fortunate to receive help from a group of Catholic Sisters who helped her get medicine from a nearby hospital that will push her through the next few months.
A rapid analysis of food prices in different parts of Nairobi by the AMREF Dagoretti Child in Need Project in June 2011 revealed a marked price increase in fuels such as kerosene, charcoal and firewood, the main sources of energy for the urban poor.
Says Agnes: “From the Sh150 shillings I make, I use Sh70 to buy maize flour for ugali, Sh20 to buy sukumawiki (kale) Sh10 for a little cooking oil to fry the vegetables, another Sh10 shillings for some kerosene to light our house at night and save the remaining amount for rent at the end of the month.”
“The food is only enough for our evening meal. In the morning, we drink strong tea (tea without milk) and go about the day’s activities. Sande is fortunate because he gets a lunch time meal at the AMREF Centre. Sometimes he takes his siblings along so they can get something to eat too, but on most days, we go without lunch.”
Beatrice Kerubo
Also known as Mama Anthony, Beatrice Kerubo, a mother of four, lost her eldest son Anthony in a drowning accident last October as he and his friends took a detour on their way home from the AMREF Centre and went swimming at an abandoned quarry. Still coming to terms with the loss, Beatrice is also struggling to feed her family, after her husband abandoned them in April this year.
“He left without any word and I understand he is now living in Mombasa. He will not talk to me, so I have no idea why he left us all alone. How am I to fend for these children all by myself?”
Beatrice was working at a juice-making factory in Kikuyu when she got the news that her husband had left. When she went home to look after her children, who had been left all alone, her employer immediately found someone else to fill her role.
Life without her husband has not been easy. Every day, she goes out to seek casual jobs but has not been successful. She attributes this to the fact that she does not have her national identity card, a requirement by Kenyan law for any form of employment. Her husband took her identity card and all her attempts to get it back have been futile. Beatrice now has to report the card as missing at the local police station before she begins the process of getting a replacement, which could take months.
Beatrice has not worked since April and has two months’ rent arrears. Her landlord is threatening to evict her from the one-roomed house in which she and the children live.
“My eldest daughter has had to leave high school because I can no longer afford to pay her school fees,” she says tearfully.
The proportion of people feeling the increase in the cost of living has doubled in the last four months from 33% to 66%, with some parents abandoning their children as they go to search for employment. As a result of the drought, education is no longer a priority for the families and the children often drop out as a result of their parents’ inability to afford school-related expenses such as buying of desks, uniforms and books.
Beatrice now relies on AMREF and on her neighbours to assist her feed her children when they can. She is now contemplating going back to her rural home in Kisii, where she hopes to start farming and find work as the cost of living in Nairobi is unaffordable.
Caroline Karimi
Caroline Karimi and her husband, Charles Wanjama, have seven children aged between 1 and 17. Charles works as a security guard and makes about Sh4,000 (US$55) a month, while Caroline is a casual labourer and brings home about Sh200 on the days she is fortunate to find some work.
The family consumes 2kg of maize flour daily, which costs them Sh140, and vegetables worth Sh30. They use about Shs300 shillings every month on kerosene to light their two-roomed house in Kaburi area of Dagoretti and a further Sh1,200 (US$16) on rent.
Three of their children used to skip school and go out into junk yards and rubbish pits to collect scrap metal for sale, which their parents forbade to no avail. The children would use the money they made to feed themselves as the food at home was not enough for all of them.
The children are now recruited into AMREF’s Dagoretti Child in Need Project and have since been re-integrated into the formal schooling system, much to their parents’ delight.
“My son Ben has changed. He does not go collecting scrap metal after class but instead comes straight home,” Caroline says with a smile.
Caroline lost a child in 2006 after a period of ill health. The child suffered from marasmus, a form of severe protein-energy malnutrition, but succumbed to pneumonia. She is glad that none of her other children have had any health complications since then, but with the family’s current dietary challenges, this situation could change soon.
During the ongoing drought and in the face of soaring inflation and food shortages, AMREF has developed an implementation plan of short- and medium-term interventions to assist the most affected populations within its project areas, including informal urban settlements. In Dagoretti, AMREF is scaling up its family support package, which also includes support to people living with HIV. A deworming and Vitamin A supplementation programme has been launched at the Children’s Centre, as well as in 10 primary schools and at the Waithaka and Riruta Health Centres, complemented with regular monitoring and reporting of the children’s nutritional status.
In the medium term, AMREF, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, plans to strengthen urban agriculture through the introduction of a green house at the Children’s Centre with the two-fold purpose of providing food for the children and serving as a sustainable home-based nutrition model farm for replication, on a smaller scale, within the community.
These interventions will benefit more than 14,000 children in primary schools through improved nutrition and access to safe water and sanitation facilities, 5,000 community members through kitchen gardening and 2,000 extremely in need families with food baskets, leading to improved nutritional status of the children and a sustainable source of food at the centre and in schools, thus mitigating the immediate effects of the drought crisis.
