Reaping from disaster

By Peter Thatiah

Two weeks after the demolition of buildings along Thika road started, the wave of celebration continues. As if in a comic strip depicting a man-eat-man society, a wave of new entrants are taking over the ruins and demonstrating that it is not time yet for mourning. Here, one man’s misery sends the other laughing all the way to the bank.

Mama Rose, in a woolen balaclava, is doing roaring business selling porridge, tea, snacks and food to the entrepreneurs on the demolition sites.

Having been descended upon with bulldozers without warning, many former owners retrieved only merchandise from their buildings and fled. They left building blocks, plumbing pipes, metal scaffoldings, iron bars, electrical wiring and other fittings in the rubble. They realised that labour to retrieve these fittings would cost more than the mangled items. Enter Nairobians, who have since been reaping with abandon from their miseries.

Anthill

Starting at the ruins where Nakumatt Supermarket once stood, the scene is like an anthill. Mike Opiyo, who specialises in building blocks, is chipping away at the collapsed walls of the supermarket with a crowbar, removing crisp building blocks and arranging them for buyers. Behind him, his wife, who calls herself Nya-Ugenya, is chipping away on the other side of the wall. A pickup truck is parked nearby and young men are piling on it a mixture of sand and pebbles that will be sold to road repair contractors.

Opiyo sarcastically says that this should be a lesson to those rich contractors who do not want to give him building jobs. Now that things have gone full circle, it is time for him to hit back. While the building contractors may choose to deny Opiyo a job, no one will get in his way when it comes to demolitions. In his view, the Government should be encouraged to demolish buildings on a much larger scale as a means of job creation.

Inside what used to be the basement of the supermarket, Martin Mutwiri is hanging precariously

On the far right, Mike Opiyo’s wife, ‘Nya Ugenya’, does not consider breaking up concrete a man’s job.

on a concrete ledge. He is hammering away with all his might and informs me that he can’t stop working to chat with me. So we will talk as he continues. "A full length of these iron bars costs Sh1,800. If I can remove two in a day I will be happy. I have never seen anything as good as this," he enthuses.

Metal bars

But the work of removing the bars is a hard one, necessitating hammering from dawn to dusk. Those who are not as ambitious as Mutwiri use hacksaws to cut out the pieces they manage to free from the pillars. They then sell them to a broker who has positioned himself on site with a weighing machine. For Sh20 per kilogramme of metal, the average youth makes between Sh300 and Sh1,000 a day.

Mutwiri says he has already done quite surveys of the buildings down the road. The former Jambo Grill and Homeland Club are rich in metal bars and thick plumbing, he says.

Total fuel station, which is next, is sagging under even bigger scaffoldings and metal sheets. On the basis of his surveys and those of his colleagues, Mutwiri calculates that the coming demolitions should be able to fetch him money to start a modest business and then he can forget about the casual jobs he does in the estates.

Mama Rose is one of the women who have taken advantage of the new industry and is also happy with the demolitions. She sells porridge, tea, snacks and food to the self-employed youths. She says: "I sold the same food to the very workers who constructed this building and now I’m doing the same for those who are demolishing it. I will sell the same to the ones who will come to build the highway. I even sell the same to Kenyatta University students when they riot because they usually use this road when stoning motorists."

Employment

Building contractor Hezron Nyagah, in T-shirt, helps to load rubble onto a pick-up. He has a number of delivery contracts. [PHOTOS: SAIDI HAMISI/Standard]

Thanks to her entrepreneurial acumen, Mama Rose is always in business, whatever happens. Indeed, she insists, the demolitions are employing more people than the original contractors, which is good for her business. In contrast, the fuel stations, the supermarkets and other business premises that have been demolished have never given her much business.

And don’t think this is a free-for-all. There is order here. When Crazy Monday enquired from the youths scavenging in the ruins, we learnt that the young men are arranged in groups and you can’t go to the metal side if, for instance, you specialise in building blocks or hardcore stones. Everything is for sale here and the youths have agreed on how to share the lucre. No one complains because the windfall is a blessing for

all.

A youth who does not wish to be identified by name says the demolitions on Thika Road are the best thing that ever happened to him. He is an electrician by training but he can only get casual jobs working under someone else because he can’t afford to buy wiring materials for a single building. But the demolitions changed all that. His target was a club next to the flattened Kenol fuel station. Moving in after the demolitions, his skills in electricity meant he could lay claim to the

electrical gadgets.

He happily recalls: "I simply stripped the whole place of electricity wires and the piping. Most of the switches were intact, as were lamp holders. Armed with the loot, I was able to negotiate for a wiring contract at Baba Ndogo and it turned out to be my biggest project ever. Before that I could only work for Sh150 a day but with the project I made Sh125,000. I’m now an employer because of the windfall."

Windfall

We later meet a man who identifies himself as Hezron Nyagah, a building contractor in neighbouring Ngumba Estate. The demolitions were a godsend and he has many signed contract to prove it. One of the items that are making him salivate are hardcore stones. "These stones are hard to get within Nairobi and you have to travel out of town for them. We purchase them at Ndarugu near Juja for Sh3,000 a truck. Here we are getting them for Sh1,500. The demolitions are good for us."

Further up along the road, many young people have already worked out how they are going to share Safari Park Hotel and the Baptist Church next to it among themselves. It is said the two institutions were built on a road reserve and many youths are salivating at the prospect of ferrying away choice makuti thatch, bottles of champagne and roast chicken. Even the western wall of Moi Sports Complex, Kasarani has not been spared the wiles of the speculators either. With the bulldozers having repositioned at the Roysambu roundabout for another bout of demolitions, the youths are just waiting for the exercise to start and then they will say goodbye to joblessness.

Though some landlords along the road (like Barclays, Co-operative and Equity banks) have already started demolishing their buildings before the arrival of the bulldozers, time is rapidly running out for them. But the youths are waiting with bated breath for the windfall.

|   |    |   Add Comment |    Comments (0)