In drought-hit Kenya, selling water keeps youth off drugs
NOW ON to his third job since finishing high school a decade ago, Festus Chege is hoping his latest venture as a water vendor in Githurai, a growing suburb to the south of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, will pay off.
Like many young people from poor families, the 30-year-old passed his highschool exams but lacked the funds to pursue his studies, confining him to work in the city’s fast-expanding informal sector.
Kenya’s current drought, which is affecting some 3 million people across the country, has led to a drop in water volumes in reservoirs serving Nairobi residents.
The city authorities have been forced to ration water services, giving priority to critical facilities like hospitals.
Taps in poor households are now empty of piped water most of the time, and they have little choice but to buy their water from vendors like Chege.
“The water business is good,” said Chege, who has been selling water for the past four months. “People call me to supply them with water as early as 4am.”
Chege, who uses a rickshaw to transport the water, sells 20-litre drums of water for 50 shillings (R6.50) each. In a day, he can supply as many as 40 drums, earning him more than double a government clerk’s wage. It’s five times more than what he was making last year hawking second-hand clothes.
“There were days when I would find myself idle because of a lack of customers,” said Chege. That’s when he would join his friends to smoke bhang, a form of cannabis – a common pastime among young slum-dwellers. Now, Chege says, he no longer has time to mess around with drugs because he is busy from dawn to dusk selling water.
In January he joined a youth group called Ni Sisi Sasa (“It is our time”), which helps jobless young people in the neighbourhood improve their lives. One activity it offers is water vending.
The group has a water depot in Githurai, which purchases its supply from the Kiambu County Council water unit.
Group members like Chege buy water from the depot at low rates and resell it to local residents at a profit.
“By the end of the year, I want to make enough money so that I can enrol in a teacher-training college,” said Chege.
According to the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company, the capital’s residents need 740 000 cubic metres of water daily to meet demand. Currently only 462 000m3 of water are being supplied due to declining water levels in the Ndakaini reservoir.
The reservoir, which supplies 85% of the city’s water, has a capacity of 70 million m3, but due to poor rains this season, it is only around 40% full.
“The shortage has forced us to ration water,” said Nairobi County’s executive for water, Peter Kimori. The county government plans to sink 140 boreholes in Nairobi’s fringe estates to ward off future water shortages. But experts say more will be needed to meet demand in the capital due to its growing population as rural migrants flock to areas like Githurai, where many find work as manual labourers.
According to the World Bank, there are over 4 million people – around a tenth of Kenya’s population – living in Nairobi and its suburbs. In 1963, when Kenya attained independence, the city was home to only a third of a million people.
Fred Kihara, water fund manager at The Nature Conservancy, an international NGO, said the worsening water problem in Nairobi is linked to climate change, as rainfall volumes in central Kenya have declined.
On top of this, the government is not doing enough to conserve water towers by preventing forests from being cut down for farming, for instance, he said. “Clearing of trees reduces the soil’s ability to retain water, said Kihara, explaining that without trees, the water evaporates faster.
“I am able to do this (water) business because the government has removed harsh regulation on the informal sector,” said Chege. “There is less harassment from tax officials.”