Dandora
My name is Johanna Omolo; I am 28 years old. I am a professional football player for Club Cercle Brugge in Belgium and the Kenyan National Football team Harambee Stars. Today, I want to share my story with you – the story of a boy from Dandora. I was born and raised in Dandora until I moved to Belgium to become a professional football player. To paint a picture of where I grew up, Dandora is the biggest garbage dumpsite in East Africa and one of the largest in all Africa. It is home to all of the garbage collected from Nairobi’s 6.4 million people and businesses. Everything that no one wants gets dumped in Dandora.
When I go back, I know I am close to home whenever I start to smell and to be welcomed by the famous stink of Dandora garbage dump. It is unbearable. When I’m accompanied by guests, they all reach out to close car windows. It is often hard for folks to believe that I grew up here; it is even harder to believe that close to 1 million people still live around this smell every day from a dumpsite that reached its maximum capacity in 2001 where it was also declared a health hazard.
The trash here burns daily, forming and producing constant garbage smoke; filling the air that everyone breaths with toxic chemicals and garbage. Health wise, it was not the best environment to grow up in. We were exposed to all sorts of diseases as children. Around 6,000 people scavenge the garbage each day and some families even live inside and at the center of this garbage, foraging to find something to eat and to earn a living. Young kids and women are the most vulnerable, exposed to all kinds of illnesses.
Beside the garbage dump, what made growing up in Dandora tough were the gangs. D (as Dandora is affectionately called in Nairobi) is home to Nairobi’s toughest gangs. Growing up, gangs were everywhere – fighting and trying to take over the entire place. There were also cults used by politicians to force their agenda on people. These groups brought curfew on us; we couldn’t do anything without reporting to them. The gangs run the show. They collected funds for the dumping and for transportation. Often, people would be killed whenever a transition from one gang to another occurred. Looking back now, we literally lived in a war zone.
“Where everyone sees a community in despair, I see hope. Where people see drug addicts and criminals, I see young boys and girls with potential.”
At the time, we were really young and it was scary for all of us. We were living around constant gun shots, police & gangs fights, these scenes would even find us in classrooms. It was unbelievable growing up in that environment. Many youngsters didn’t make it, they’d be recruited and they’d later be murdered by rival gangs or their own cults. Even if you weren’t a gang member but you were deemed to have done something wrong in their view; they would ‘gang up’ on you and beat you up … once, a friend of mine got his ankle chopped off.
February 3, 2018, 2:35 pm
Some belgium football clubs can offer trainings,shoes or other neccesary tools for playing football.
February 5, 2018, 10:52 am
My brother you are doing a good job..keep it up .Human being may not reward you but God will.