Dandora Kenya - For Pulitzer Center

Here is the background


Located just 8 km from the central business district, Dandora literally spills into the households of nearly 1 million people living in nearby slums. Addressing the historic implications the site has had on the health, dignity, spirit, and landscape of these surrounding communities, this project will uncover the neglected voices of the people whose livelihoods are affected daily by Dandora. Behind devastating statistics of children with respiratory ailments, toxic blood lead levels, skin disorders, and fatal diseases directly attributed to the waste are stories of communities that have grown to depend on the dump site. These include street children who live off the money they make selling food and other items they find in its piles and residents who are paid pennies a day by private cartels to sort and recycle waste.

What makes Dandora different from anywhere else?

In terms of major cities in East Africa, it isn't much different (which makes it significant). Some of the most populous cities in East Africa have been able to neglect coming up with recycling strategies or waste management policies for decades, but Dandora represents the tipping point of no action. The affluent neighborhoods and downtown Nairobi will inevitably be affected (whether it is from polluted drinking water, since waste from Dandora now spills into the Nairobi River, or polluted air from the government telling slum dwellers to burn the toxic waste to make more space, etc.). Rather than being a blocked off site of toxic waste (and the only dumpsite for the most populous city in East Africa), it has literally become a community where people are encouraged to live on the waste of the city. I think that is what is most shocking about this. Despite the fact that several rigorous health studies have been commissioned, and the city council knows of the harm Dandora has caused, the nearly 1 million people who live next to the site are actually being encouraged to dig through the garbage of the city. 

While the country’s leadership has long shown alarming indifference to Dandora – ignoring environmental laws, UN-commissioned health studies, and clarion calls for closure from human rights groups – a contested decommission process is projected to start this month (January). Through a complicated narrative of survival and tragic health/environmental consequences, this project aims to reveal as much about the waste that is left behind as it does about the marginalized populations overshadowed by an industrializing city’s expansion.

For these same reasons it is clearly different from any dumpsite that exists elsewhere. However, we don't want this story to simply be about death and government inaction. Dandora is also different because there are two groups/communities of opinion about it: (1) that it is essential for the survival of the people living there; people from the community actually protested its relocation a few months ago because it provides them with some income that they don't believe the government would replace.  (2) grassroots groups are organizing themselves and demanding a better life; "Stop dumping death on us" is one campaign from Korogocho, one of the communities most affected by the site, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRoLJu68lgU) that we will be visiting and that is trying to empower people in the slums to demand more of themselves and their city council. With Kenya now in the early stages of a new constitution (especially with their new Chief Justice Willy Mutunga who calls Korogocho his home), people are saying that the dumpsite represents a key challenge to the democratic utility of the country. Democracy and their new constitution promised the 1 million people in these slums the hope for an equal voice, but they say that no one has been listenting (including international media outlets). For this reason, Aggrey Otieno (who is part of the Korogocho movement against the dumpsite, and the person we will be interviewing for first) said that the action that Nairobi takes on Dandora this year may be a provocative measure, or proxy, for the state of democracy in the country.