Where do you go to the toilet if you live in an informal settlement (aka a slum)? Lidia, who lives in Nairobi, showed me around her Nairobi neighborhood Mathare and the sanitation situation there. “A house with its own bathroom is my big wish. But I fear this will remain a dream. ”
Mathare consists of small houses made of stone or clay and wood, covered with corrugated iron. There are some beds in Lidia’s room, one corner is meant for cooking, and her belongings are stacked from the ground or are hanging from hooks from the ceiling. Next to the door stands a blue bucket with a lid, her toilet for the night.
“During the day we go to the public toilet,” Lidia says, “about a five minute walk from here, but at night we use this bucket. Despite the lid, the house smells unbearable, especially when one of us has diarrhea again. And so I get up early in the morning, and take the bucket to the river to empty it.”
“As you can see and smell, the public toilets are not cleaned daily. But it's better than nothing. The worst thing about communal toilets is that moment when I have to urgently and there is a line at the entrance.”
"I was born and raised here, my parents live here, it is my home. We could move to the countryside, but what do you do there if you don't own any land? Moreover, education is worse there than here in Mathare. I want to offer my children the chance for a better life, hopefully in a house with a toilet. ”
Words by Ilona Eveleens, pictures taken by me on assignment for newspaper Trouw in Mathare. Click here to read the whole story, on the Trouw website.