Page 69 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 26

Art & Culture
Plastic Art
Explores
the Issue of
Managing Waste
Wanyama Ogutu, Nairobi Kenya.
to my door every Friday night. He babbled with
prayer, chanting, “Jehoba Niso!” “Jehoba Jile!”. On
Saturday, the one-eyed man never failed to make
noise after taking puffs of Jaba (bhang) and sips of
“chang’aa’ (illicit liquor) “ at the next rusty bar near
Gorofa Ya Juu primary school. On Sunday, a mixture
of churchgoers took over the atmosphere at the same
Gorofa Ya Juu primary school with the noises of the
gods of their tribe. I used to see dreadful small boys
and girls, men and women, searching for garbage
while making a loud, sexy noise of laughter. Some
even constructed a shelter with plastic bags, and they
were living as families. Fighting and chaos never
failed to erupt among themselves, and only police
near Huruma Station could make them settle down.
That is how the plastic art depicted the true-life story
of Nairobi’s low-income dwellers.
The last time I heard a census count from the Kenya
National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), I had secured
a job as a teacher at a low-income school in Buru
Buru. To flee the invasion of rats, I took refuge in
the Githurai area because I also had long to ride on
Mbogi (a local commuter train) snaking to Ruiru.
During that period, I heard that the President of
the Republic of Kenya was releasing the KNBS
2019 census, so I became curious and
stuck my ear to the Kabambe radio
for a whole week. It did not shock me
that Nairobi had approximately three
to four million residents, and Mathare,
my former home, was ranked among
the highest-populated areas with the
most deplorable lifestyle quality. The
high population was contributed to by a
high rate of fertility among low-income
families and rural-urban immigration,
hence extracting a large amount of waste
garbage. Before the ban on plastic bags,
the Kenyan government had announced
that plastic waste was causing an
unhealthy lifestyle. Japan, India, South
Africa, and Nigeria are facing the same
challenges as Nairobi. According to
a BBC Africa edition report, plastic
garbage increases daily with the increase
in population in urban cities in Africa.
One night, I listened to my county
government official on a radio talk
show, and he said that waste garbage in
the city of Nairobi contributes to about
3,000 tons of garbage waste per day.
However, he failed to justify why low-
income areas of Mathare, Kariobangi,
and Dandora in Nairobi were used as
dumping sites.
The United Nations (UN) on climate
change has recognized the issue of
plastic waste disposal as a serious
environmental problem in major cities in
Africa. They have stated that over 100
million metric tons of plastic need to be
dealt with by the year 2040, particularly
ISSUE 26 | APRIL 2024 69