The mystery of Mburukenge, Mombasa’s seaside shanty

“And you, your son came to threaten me last night.

I hear the boy has a grudge against me.

So far, I have done nothing; only that I have started an investigation.

May it be known to you that I can take a step and you all move out of this place.

Here we don’t tolerate crime even for a second,” Charles Otieno breathed heavily and seemingly annoyed, to one of the couples whose tin-like structures jammed up the Mburukenge slum, a seaside slum in Mombasa.

Otieno is the slum head, popularly known as baba mtaa.

Mburukenge is surrounded by the Indian Ocean to the north, the Buxton neighborhood to the south, the Nyali Bridge to the east, and the Technical University of Mombasa (TUM) to the west.

The slum is a constant reminder of a clear demarcation of the gap between the rich and the poor since the buildings and the institutions surrounding the place spell all but one word-money.

The need to know how the people living there survive drove me there to know more.

The slum’s administration is well laid-out and it spells order.

Charles Otieno is the de facto head of the slum and he is assisted by Betty Karisa, the mama mtaa.

There is also the nyumba kumi initiative with chairpersons heading each group; the overall chairperson, popularly called Balozi, comes third in command.

Currently, Mr. Kimanzi holds this office.

The slum too has an active community policing agency, responsible for each resident’s security.

Otieno reports to the Tudor location chief, Stephen Nyamu, every week.

According to Kimanzi, the Mburukenge’s current balozi, the slum has about 800 structures for houses.

According to the latest census, Otieno says the area’s population stands at around 5000 people.

However, a walk around the slum suggests that the numbers could be higher than that if the many groups of people that we found idling around are anything to go by.

The people residing near the slum hold Mburukenge in bad faith, many terming it as a “gang’s hideout” and “a place where the hopeless abide.”

These sentiments are supported by some of the survival tips that the freshmen joining TUM, the nearest institution of higher learning near the shanty, are told.

Among other areas near the institution, the varsity freshmen are warned against walking around Mburukenge, especially at night, since this might jeopardize their security.

When I was doing this assignment, some guards near the place whispered caution to me, their words carrying a warning of urgency:

“Kule unakoelekea sio kuzuri. Huenda ukapigwa na ukanyanganywa kila kitu. Kuwa makini. Wale si watu, hawana huruma (wherever you are heading is not secure. You might be beaten up and your belongings snatched away from you. Those people have no humanity).”

This dire warning prompted me to ask about the security status of the place.

And so I spoke to one of the members of the community policing group in the area.

Mr. Sango Shadrack said that the group operates in shifts.

There are known people who work round the clock to ensure that the safety of the residents is not breached.

He said they also collaborate with the police whenever they come around for patrols.

In any case of crime, the community policing arrests the person in question and takes them to the administration heads, who may forward the case to the chief or solve the matter by themselves.

He narrated to me a recent incident.

“There was a time when a gang had started to emerge and was reigning terror on the residents.

The gang used to attack people and rob them of their belongings,” he said.

“We moved with speed to thwart the group before it could take roots, and the minds behind its inception were advised and quit their wayward behavior.”

Along pathways, mangrove shades and sewage channels, youngsters and old men abuse drugs and alcohol as if it were legal.

There are several points where alcohol is traded and nobody cares.

Some of the women in the area said they have been complaining day by day for alcohol to be controlled in the area since it is destroying the young generation’s lives, but no step has been taken to turn this situation around.

The village elder said that only pombe ya mnazi (a locally coconut-made drink) is allowed in the area.

But it is illegal on paper and word. The illegal alcohol consumption is so entrenched in this place that even some of the TUM students walk down the ghetto to take the ‘drinks’.

David Kimanzi also said that smoking bhang is common yet no one cares.

He said he has been seeing it smoked for more than twenty years that he has lived in Mburukenge.

“Here people, young, old, women, men, both boys and girls smoke bhang, and nothing is done to them. It is just normal,” said Kimanzi, a night watchman.

Otieno, the slum’s head, lamented the fact that “the government knows that and it does nothing.”

Hygiene in the ghetto is non-existent to the residents of the ocean-side slum.

The drainage system is so poor that even sewage wastes from the posh buildings and homes around the ghetto pass through people’s compounds before it empties into the ocean.

The entire slum has only one toilet facility, which is funded by the Mvita CDF.

The residents pay ten or twenty shillings to use it.

However, there are a few other pits that the residents use for toilets; and some of these are poorly constructed that they might cave in at any time.

They seem too weak and even worse, they are adjacent to the houses.

Dirt from the households is thrown into a drain of sewage water passing down through the place.

One has to be extremely careful when walking around the slum to avoid sliding and falling due to the human excreta dotting the pathways.

Community health workers drawn from Tudor clinic come around once in a while to conduct the cleaning together with the residents and take the dirt to the road near Buxton for collection by the county government.

The clinic also arranges for meetings within the slum where the community health workers converse with the residents and educate them on maintaining good health and hygiene.

The clinic also gives free medical services to the residents during such meetings.

Even though Tudor clinic is almost a kilometer away, the slum residents bank on it whenever they get ill.

In the fore area of the ghetto, almost near the ocean, is a tall narrow structure with metallic pillars and green iron sheets, standing out clearly as a novelty in the area.

The structure is the Ufuoni Seventh-Day Adventist church, the only place of worship in the area.

Schools are also foreign in this area, and the school-going children walk almost a kilometer away to attend either Ronald Ngala or Sparki primary schools, the only public primary schools around.

Conversely, the slum is surrounded by several private primary schools, where pupils are ferried to and from the school on their respective school buses.

Kimanzi decried the lack of even a single kindergarten school for the many young children who are supposed to be in school but cannot make it to Ronald Ngala or Sparki because of the distance.

There is no single playground for children and youth in the area.

However, on weekends, the children go swimming in the ocean.

Otieno narrated with nostalgia about the glorious past days of the slum stars.

He says some time back there was a rugby pitch in the slum where youths would train but soon after they sharpened their skills, they got clubs to play for.

However, their departure dealt a fatal blow to the spirit of the game.

The residents of Mburukenge eke out their living by doing odd jobs in the city.

Whereas some work as guards, others are hawkers in the Buxton area and others help in luggage packing and offloading in Kongowea market.

Others run small-scale businesses such as selling fast foods and household items.

Theirs is a hands-to-mouth economy.

Anybody can stay at the Mburukenge slum. It is that easy; no fee is required for you to be a member of the ghetto.

You just need a confirmation letter from the nyumba kumi chairperson, the village elder, and the community policing approval for you to be registered at the chief’s office as a resident of the ghetto.

For one to put up a house, the community slum administration has to look at where you intend to build and assess whether it is safe.

You would then start leveling the area where you intend to build.

“This is done by filling sacks with sand and piling them together until they reach a certain level ‘where floods may not sweep away your house,” Shadrack explained.

Some people have built several houses for lending out to newcomers.

It is also clear that the residents of Mburukenge are living at the mercies of divine providence if the massive sand walls surrounding this place like a cave are anything to go by.

At this time and era of increased flooding and many occurrences of landslides, Mburukenge residents risk getting engulfed either by the ocean water or being buried by the sand towering above their houses by the slum’s edges.

Another great, yet seemingly oblivious risk that they stand is electricity faults.

There are so many electrical cables closely hanging over the roofs which prove risky.

It’s a home of wonders and as in the words of the Tudor location chief, Mr. Stephen Nyamu, ”That is just a slum where people live. It is a nobody’s land”.

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