Hunger and desperation in Nairobi’s informal settlements
The impact of coronavirus on Kenya’s urban poor
Story by Martin Karimi
Huruma, which means pity, compassion or mercy, is one of the low-income estates east of the capital city, Nairobi. An estimated 2.5 million live in the poorest informal settlements in Nairobi County. Mathare on one side, Korogocho on the other and in between, a myriad of small ‘villages’ going by unique names such as Ghetto or Meta Meta which means sparkle.
Human traffic is high. The streets are lined with all types of small businesses — groceries, cereals, second-hand clothes, and roadside kitchens selling boiled eggs, chapatti and beans.
Here, the better-off live in high rise flats but the majority live in tin houses made of scrap crammed together into small spaces that form the villages.
Modest living
Maria (not her real name) lives in Huruma with her two children, a boy aged 13 and a girl aged 11. Both children have not seen the inside of a classroom for the last two years.
When you step inside Maria’s home, you immediately understand why.
She and her children live in a room measuring about 3 by 1.5 metres. It is not bigger than the space that a balcony in an apartment in a middle-class estate in Nairobi would take. She has fitted a single-size rusty metal bed, a small table blackened by years of use and a storage shelf where she keeps her most valuable belongings — raised from the ground just in case it rains. That is where a blue washing bucket sits. It is where Maria stores all her food.
Maria’s home is next to a four-storeyed block of apartments. This is the less congested area. Her children can play at a corner along a wide street, right outside their house. It is a safe area compared to the narrow streets that are the maze of most ‘villages’ here.
Today, the kids are playing by making a mock meal. The girl is boiling water to ‘make’ ugali (maize meal) and the boy is pretending to cook green vegetables. They have tiny cooking pots and wood burning stoves. Their play area is also where the estate’s trash is dumped for burning — from where they got all their ‘ingredients’ to play with. They are in a race to complete the meal before their mother calls them back into the house. They barely notice the uninvited dinner guest.
Help in the nick of time
Maria’s welcome is the warmest. She is in a jovial mood. This was not the case three weeks ago.
Maria is one of the 279,000 people in the informal settlements of Nairobi that the World Food Programme (WFP) together with the Government of Kenya is providing cash to ease the burden of putting food on the table, thanks to funding from the United States Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, Finland and Poland.
She received her cash transfer just in the nick of time.
“I had tried everything — searching for work, even begging for food,” she says, “but nothing was working. On the day that the cash registered in my phone, we were going to sleep hungry — again. I had nothing.”
Families such as Maria’s have been forced into debts and skipping meals.
“I was overjoyed when I received the M-Pesa [mobile money service] text message — at first I couldn’t believe it,” says Maria. “Many people have come around promising to help us but the help never comes.”
Maria had a debt of 1,000 shillings (about US$ 10) at a shop where she had taken food on credit. Her landlord was threatening to throw them out for non-payment and she had nothing in her ‘food bucket’ when the cash from WFP hit her phone.
“I bought flour [maize meal], some cooking oil, beans and sugar; I paid my debt at the shop and paid the house rent,” explains Maria. “I’m now left with 240 shillings [US$ 2.4]. I’m saving this for kerosene for the cooking stove.”
Reaching the most vulnerable
Veera (not her real name) is 34 and is raising six children — alone. Her husband died three years ago. He went out in search for work and never returned.
“When he [husband] was here, we would help each other in providing for the children. He would go searching for work in construction sites and I too would look for domestic chores,” says Veera. “Now I’m all alone. It is tough.”
Veera’s eldest child is a girl aged 14 years. She is her mother’s helper, cooking and taking care of the siblings whenever Veera is out looking for work.
Veera rises early everyday leaving her house to try her luck at cleaning jobs in Umoja estate, about 10 km away.
“Since I cannot afford the bus fare, I leave the house at 6.30 and I walk all the way to arrive by 8:30,” says Veera. “Some days I get work, some days I don’t. I have to come back home and tell my children that I got nothing today.”
At most, Veera makes 300 Kenyan shillings (under US$ 3) washing clothes and cleaning houses. These jobs are normally a hit or miss. But many women like Veera have cultivated contacts in the densely populated flats in Eastlands.
“If I don’t find work, I always ask the [prospective client] to call me whenever they need someone to wash for them,” she says.
But lately, Veera’s phone is not ringing.
“They don’t want us in their houses anymore,” she says. “They say we will bring corona[virus].”
Since the coronavirus pandemic hit the country, work has been hard to find. People who would normally pay for washing services from people like Veera are either social distancing or are economically affected by the pandemic. This means they too have to cut costs to survive the pandemic. And that means no work for Veera.
“I take my children with me to the Catholic mission when I completely run out of food. They sometimes give us some food or porridge — at least the kids can have something to eat.”
Two of Veera’s youngest children are malnourished. She knows that she should feed them foods that are high in nutrients, such as eggs and milk, but most of the time, all she can afford is maize flour for porridge. The youngest is a two-year old girl.
“Sometimes I’m forced to give her [youngest child] water and send her to bed because I have nothing else. What can I do?”
Is more help coming?
When Veera received cash from WFP, it was late in the evening.
“I bought some flour and sukuma wiki [kale]. We would have slept hungry that night.”
Veera then bought paraffin for her stove, flour and boiled beans, because the smallest child has a liking for beans. But why already boiled beans?
In the informal urban settlements, cooking energy is a priority. In fact mothers prefer to always have some kerosene in their houses because this is the single thing that can determine or ruin your luck for a meal.
Boiling beans takes time and it is best done on a charcoal jiko (cooking stove). However, charcoal is more expensive than kerosene. While a litre of kerosene is now retailing at 65 shillings (65 US cents), a tin of charcoal, usually measured in two-kilogramme containers, costs close to 100 shillings (about US$ 1).
While two litres of kerosene can last a week, a two-kilogramme tin of charcoal only lasts at most three days — so Veera is better off buying ready boiled beans on the streets.
“I’m extremely grateful for the cash — it has really helped us,” says Veera. “Should we expect some more cash — so that we keep checking our phones?”
Increasing burden with coronavirus
Caroline Nanzai has worked as a nutritionist in Huruma for eight years, attached to the Eastern Deanery AIDS Relief Program (EDARP). These last few months have been the most desperate she has witnessed.
“Our clients were already struggling before the coronavirus pandemic,” she says. “Now they are facing even tougher times.”
Most people living in informal settlements work manual jobs, either in industries or other people’s houses. With the closure of work places, industries and businesses, many have been struggling to make an income.
“We have so many needy people today as compared to months before, and we don’t have the capacity to help each and every one of them,” says Caroline. ”It is heart-breaking when you have to choose one family over another — but we also know that the resources available can only go to so many people.”
What can one do with 4,000 shillings (US$ 40)?
The assistance from WFP is pegged to the cost of the minimum food basket — and WFP is giving half of that — which translates to 1,000 shillings per person for a family of four.
Each family is therefore receiving 4,000 shillings (US$ 40),but many of them usually live on less for a month.
“Here, people earn about 200 to 300 shillings [US$ 2 to 3] a day from menial jobs; if one works every day for a whole month — which they do not — that income adds to about 6,000 shillings,” explains Steve Kegoli, the nutrition manager at EDARP, the programme that runs the health clinic in Huruma. “A transfer of 4,000 shillings is adequate to comfortably meet the needs of a family for a whole month.”
Covering most pressing needs for a wider population
Estimates from UN population projections show that 24 percent of East Africa’s population lived in urban areas in 2019. In Kenya, the informal sector is estimated to account for 83.6 percent of total employment providing urban informal settlement dwellers with most daily wages. A survey by Urban Early Warning Early Action Consortium in Kibera Slums in April 2020 showed that only one in every five households had at least one stable income earner with very low disposable income, reflecting the high level of vulnerability of the majority of slum dwellers.
Transferring cash instead of food commodities is helping families meet their most pressing needs.
“With cash transfers, people have a choice of what to buy,” explains Jessica Mbochi, the Nutrition Coordinator at the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS). “What is the use of having a bag of beans or rice when you’ve been thrown out of your house?”
NMS is responsible for the treatment of malnutrition across the entire county working through 123 health centres. But the Service has not had the nutrient-rich foods to give to malnourished mothers, people with HIV or the elderly.
“This partnership with WFP has enabled us to increase the scope of our service because we are now reaching not just the children under 5, but also pregnant and breastfeeding mothers, and even the elderly,” explains Jessica.
This initiative is also very timely.
“We have seen spikes in the rates of malnutrition which can be associated with poor diets as a result of lost livelihoods or reduced incomes,” says Jessica. “If the moderate cases of malnutrition are not treated in time, they turn into severe cases — which can lead to death.”
WFP is working with NMS in rolling out the cash transfers with the aim of reaching 70,500 families whose ability to earn an income has been adversely affected by the coronavirus containment measures.
Families will receive cash for a period of three months. In addition, for the first time, WFP will distribute highly fortified nutrition products through the NMS-run health centres — targeting those suffering from malnutrition in Nairobi’s informal settlements.
“This programme is extremely timely,” says Jessica, “and we hope that this cooperation between the World Food Programme and the Nairobi Metropolitan Services can continue to thrive, even after the pandemic is over.”
The hardships of Veera and Maria and their families are not confined to Nairobi but are echoed in the informal settlements in cities across East Africa, where millions of people living daily hand to mouth on what they could earn through casual work lost these fragile lifelines when coronavirus arrived and was followed by restrictions to contain it. These restrictions have disproportionately impacted the poorest already on the brink of destitution.
The cash transfers and nutrition support in Nairobi’s informal settlements have been made possible thanks to the generous support from the Governments of the United States, Finland, Poland and Sweden and the strong partnership with the Nairobi Metropolitan Services.
