TOXIC FLOW

The river starts getting sick after about five minutes of flowing, as it comes under attack from first human activities on its banks – chemical-filled surface runoff from greenhouse farming and car-wash bays.

A mixture of deadly toxins is also waiting along the line as it meanders towards the city centre.

As it flows downhill, the deposits come in thick and fast, getting bigger and more toxic.

A cocktail of raw, untreated sewage from everywhere, including some lavish estates in Nairobi, contaminates the water as it hurries downstream.

It grudgingly welcomes more waste flowing from two of the most populous slums in the country; Kibera and Mathare.

More than 4,000 slum dwellers have encroached on its path and exploit its water for domestic and pollution-heavy commercial purposes, transforming the stream into a large open sewer.

It is a dumpsite for dozens of industries dotting the city under the sun, which haul into it fresh pollutants every day.

At dawn, mechanics assemble at the famous Grogan garage in the city centre to eke out a living. They use the same river to wash away their waste – oil, paint, chemicals and motor vehicle spare parts. Further, downstream, traders at the busy Gikomba market giggle as they empty their waste into what is left of the river. They do not attempt to hide it. Like the rest of other river polluters, they rush back to their stations.

No one opposes these actions. Almost everyone is doing it. Those who find the open dumping of waste uncomfortable do not raise a finger. Authorities that should be keeping the environment safe either are overwhelmed or have stopped caring.

Just before it crosses the bridge past Gikomba market, a building next to the river is openly discharging its waste into the river.

It is not the only one. Many estates and informal settlements along the river have their sewage pipes spewing all manner of waste into the river. They are doing it day and night, with gay abandon.

Nairobi River’s tributaries and distributaries do not help dilute or wash away the spell of death cast on it upstream. For the Nairobi River basin, when it rains it pours.

Ngong River cuts through Kibera slum, Kenya’s most populous informal settlement. It crosses through Industrial Area to Mukuru Kaiyaba and Mukuru kwa Njenga, as it collects more waste.

On its part, Mathare River snakes through Mathare slum, the shanty settlement built on a valley facing the river. Its waste, mainly raw sewage, flows out of shacks by gravity into the river. Here, no pushing is required.
When full, the Ngong and Mathare tributaries vomit their portion of offal into Nairobi River.

After joining Nairobi River, the besieged stream will be carrying all types of garbage. Everywhere it turns, it is confronted by more junk ranging from industrial waste, banned plastic bags, motor vehicle spare parts, scrap metal, medical waste, salon waste to used bottles and polythene bags.

Burdened by the weight of a leaking, overwhelmed and broken sewer system, and now greening from human and animal waste, the river grows thick and sluggish, unable to dissolve any more waste.

By the time it picks up more heavy metals as it groans past the Dandora dump site, the chocking stream has lost most of its natural abilities to clean itself.
From a river full of life to a sewer, it is now a mass of death-filled sludge.

Somewhere deep inside its rotten belly, it also carries dead people, some victims of the immorality and impunity annihilating the stream.

The latest clean-up discovered 14 bodies, most of them foetuses and babies wrapped in polythene bags. It is a convenient place to dump unplanned, unwanted foetuses and stillborns. Just how many have been disposed of this way? No one knows.

Heavy and sick, Nairobi River reluctantly picks up more refuse at Mavoko, the home of cement industries, as it empties itself into Athi River. Waste is like the ticket it has to buy to get its way downstream.

It swallows more poison along the way as it flows across the Kapote and Athi plains, through the Athi River town. It has no opening to spit any of the poison running through it as it takes a northeastern turn towards Thika, another industrial town.

When it finally limps back to Kiambu, its county of origin, the once source of life is virtually on its deathbed.

At Fourteen Falls in Thika, it hits the rocks and hurtles down its depth, the chemicals foaming above it while suffocating any life left beneath it as it creates a large white soapy canopy. It stinks from three metres away.

Nearby, flower and pineapple farms are pumping the contaminated water to their crops up the riverbanks, as the defiled river struggles through the water hyacinth on its remaining part of the journey that crosses Machakos, Makueni and Kilifi counties.

In Thwake, in Makueni, Chinese contractors are busy blowing up rocks, dredging and building a Sh82 billion dam. Beside the elephant project flows the same Athi River, which will soon be the dam’s main water supplier.

The deadly river now accelerates to Galana. Here, a small canal into the Galana Kulalu irrigation scheme diverts its waters to hundreds of acres of maize, before rushing down to the Kenyan coast to be swallowed by the Indian Ocean as a large mass of poison.