In 1995, Angeline Adhiambo, then a 20-year-old dropped out of school in form two. This was after the sudden death of her father who was their family’s sole bread winner.

“After the death of my father, my mom, a housewife was forced to relocate back to Migori together with my siblings, but I chose to stay and face the world,” said Adhiambo.

After months of engaging in domestic work, Adhiambo says she met a young man who invited her to his workplace: the Dandora dumpsite, with the promise of making more money.

“He told me that women were making good money from just picking scrap material from the dumpsite and selling them and that is how I found myself working at the site,” she narrated.

And as fate would have it, the young man who introduced Adhiambo to the Dandora dumpsite would later become her husband.

In 2019, Adhiambo’s husband succumbed to acute Pneumonia, a condition he had unknowingly battled for 10 years. She was left to take care of four children.

“After ten years of working at the dumpsite, he started experiencing chest and joint pains, but he would just take painkillers to subdue the pain.”

“We never bothered to seek medical attention until one day when he collapsed while working at the dumpsite. He was rushed to a nearby clinic which referred him to the Kenyatta National Hospital where he was diagnosed with acute Pneumonia. He passed on two weeks later,” she said.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Pneumonia is a form of acute respiratory infection that is most commonly caused by viruses or bacteria. WHO says that Pneumonia can cause mild to life-threatening illness in people of all ages and is the single largest infectious cause of death in children worldwide.

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The burden

The death of Adhiambo’s husband left her with a burden she says is heavy to bare.

“I became the father and mother of my children after he passed on. Taking my children through school remains the biggest struggle”.

The Ksh 300 she earns daily from her hustle at the dumpsite is not enough to cater for her bills.

“When my husband was alive, our combined earnings though little would take care of things and the struggle wasn’t that much,” Adhiambo noted.

Financial challenges saw her first-born daughter drop out of school and get married at the tender age of 15.

Adhiambo is among a group of widows working at the Dandora dumpsite. They formed a support group for widows whose late husbands worked at the dumpsite.

37-year-old Grace Wairimu’s husband of 12 years collapsed and died after developing breathing difficulties while sorting out garbage at the dumpsite.

Grace, who deals in buying and selling scrap metals at the dumpsite says an autopsy revealed that her husband’s lungs had collapsed due to inflammation.

“He had exhibited signs of weight loss and persistent coughing. There were days he would cough throughout the night, and he had difficulties in breathing especially during the cold seasons,” said Grace.

For two years after the death of her husband, Grace says she battled depression, something she says also affected her two children.

Grace is the chairperson of the widows’ group that has a membership of 15 women.

She says that 10 members of her group are widows while 5 have ailing husbands.

From the little they earn from selling scrap material collected from the dumpsite they contribute Sh100 daily to the group. The group offers small loans of up to Sh 10,000 at an interest rate of 5% per month.

According to Grace, majority of the women in her group lost their husbands to chest, lung and kidney infections and complications.

She observes that what the women earn at the dumpsite is not even enough to feed their families and most of them have reported incidences of defaulting on rent payments for months and children dropping out of school.

“The number of people who have been taken ill and some died as a result of working at this dumpsite is huge. The problem is that we don’t keep statistic because the community and people working here assume that the deaths and illnesses are normal and not related to the pollution around” she said.

“We have at least 10 known widow groups within this area and many more across Dandora estate,” Grace noted.

For Selina Ayuma, nursing a sick husband and taking care of family is taking a toll on her.

Selina, a mother of three, says her 42-year-old husband was diagnosed with bronchitis in 2021 and has been unable to work since then.

“He is battling severe chest pain and breathing difficulties that cannot allow him engage in kind of heavy duties like he used to at the dumpsite,”

“My son dropped out of school due to lack of school fees and joined a bad gang. He once survived a shootout in Kayole by a whisker and relocated to Kisumu,” Ayuma recounted.

Ayuma, who still works at the dumpsite says that the support group has come in handy for her.

“Being able to fund my husband’s medication is the biggest challenge I have right now.’’

“Through the support group, we have been able to support each other as well as getting help from some churches and organizations,”

She takes her husband for treatment at the Kenyatta National Hospital every Monday, something she says comes at an expense.

Heavily Polluted air

Established in 1977, the Dandora dumpsite was part of a World Banks funded affordable housing project in the Eastern part of Nairobi.

Considered as one of East Africa’s largest dumpsites, the 32-acre garbage site provides direct and indirect employment to an estimated 3,000 people.

At least 2,000 tonnes of waste are dumped at the site every day.

Kimani Njoroge, a Nairobi based biochemist and researcher says the dumpsite remains a great health threat both to those working there and those living in neighboring estates Dandora, Korogocho, Babadogo and Kariobangi North.

“The smoke emanating from the dumpsite is pure poison both to animals, people and plants,’ Njoroge explained.

He added “Dandora and its surrounding areas are hotbeds respiratory illnesses and infections”.

Njoroge cites severe coughing and wheezing, asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, high blood pressure, heart attack, strokes and miscarriages as among conditions that can result from breathing contaminated air.

In Dandora, Njoroge observes that the levels for fine particulate matter (PM10) from dust, dirt, soot, and smoke (PM10) are highest during the day and are clearly visible while the fine particles from soot and volatile organic compounds (PM2.5), are most common at night when the garbage is set on fire.

“The mean PM10 in Dandora is over three times the recommended rate,” Njoroge revealed.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends maximum levels for fine particulate matter (PM10) at 50 micrograms per cubic metre on average over a 24-hour period.

Dandora also has high levels of PM2.5 of 33.63 micrograms compared to WHO’s recommended maximum levels of 25 micrograms per cubic metre on average over a 24hr period.

WHO data shows that a third of deaths from stroke, lung cancer, and heart disease are due to air pollution.

Nairobi Metropolitan Services Public Health Specialist Sammy Simiyu notes that cases of upper respiratory tract infections in Nairobi County have doubled in the last four years from 379,250 in 2017 to 768,415 in 2021.

Simiyu adds that about 124 deaths in every 100,000 are due to air pollution.

Awareness

The widows are blaming the government for neglecting and abandoning them. They say lack of knowledge on how they can escape and remedy the effects of the polluted Dandora environment is to blame for the many fatalities.

“Many of those we have lost discovered they were sick when it was too late, and this is due to lack of awareness. I wish the government could pitch camp here with occasional free medical checkups and treatment of respiratory infections,” Grace equipped.

But despite the obvious health challenges that have caused the lives of their dear ones, the women are not keen on living the dumpsite unless the government provides them with an alternative income source.

“As much as what I make from the dumpsite is little, I cannot quit with no option at hand. It might be risky, but the situation forces me to wake up daily and head up to the dumpsite,” Ayuma concluded.