Scavengers raid estates as demolition dust settles

Demolished rental houses in Nyamavilla estate in Kayole, Nairobi. [Jonah Onyango, Standard]

For more than two decades Dennis Odhiambo worked hard to feather his nest in the belief that he would have some respite in old age.

Just a day to Christmas, it has dawned on Mr Odhiambo that all he was doing in his years of sweat and toil was building castles in the air using the concrete and twisted metal that now lie before his feet, forming the landscape of what has come to represent a wasteland of his dreams.

Odhiambo talks with palpable pain, with every syllable striking at the very heart.

One of his neighbours forgot she was in a jungle and assisted strangers to load whatever valuables she had salvaged from her house on to a handcart. The “good Samaritans” vanished and the neighbour has nothing but the clothes on her back.

This is the wasteland that was once the populous 20-acre Nyamavilla estate in Nairobi’s Kayole, where more than 600 buildings are facing demolition.

When The Standard visited last Friday morning, the area was a war zone as dozens of youth scavenging for metal battled it out with landlords who had also hired other youth to salvage the metal on doors and windows - the only remaining valuables after the demolition.

Two young men were electrocuted as they attempted to siphon a Kenya Power transformer.

Odhiambo, who ekes out a living from the jua kali sector, secured Sh1.5 million in 2007 and bought a 60 by 40 plot that he describes as a “swamp”.

Patiently, he developed it into a four-storey flat, which, he says, could have fetched Sh30 million currently if sold.

Last week, like dozens of other landlords, he painfully watched excavators bring it down when a private developer claimed ownership of the land that Odhiambo’s building stood on.

The father of two, who was also living in the flat, is now back to paying rent, a duty he thought he had escaped years ago.

“This is over Sh25 million gone just like that. I don’t think I can ever invest in land again,” he says.

He says a church had purchased a flat for Sh40 million just a few months ago.

In his former life just a few days ago, Obiri Omwange worked as a caretaker of four flats. Now, he cannot even afford the green slippers he is wearing.

Mr Omwange is among hundreds of Nairobi dwellers cursing the festive mood after he was robbed of most of his life’s hard work.

On that Tuesday dawn, Omwange had left his house in Nyamavilla estate to escort his wife, who was heading back upcountry.

He says tenants called him saying four bulldozers and excavators had been brought in. “I could not believe it,” he told The Standard.

Hundreds of youth had also been ferried by lorries and ran riot in the entire estate, breaking doors and looting. Cases of attempted rape were also reported.

More than 50 police officers, including the Kayole OCPD Joseph Gichangi, were also present to oversee the demolition orders signed by Environment and Land Court Deputy Registrar on September 17. The previous day Omwange had withdrawn Sh50,000 from the bank and given half to his wife in readiness for the festive holidays as she returned to the village.

By the time he was back to the estate, his door had been broken and looters had taken everything, including the Sh25,000 he had left on a table sure of the security of his house.

Hundreds of youth, armed with new hacksaws and crowbars, have now descended on the wasteland in search of scrap metal. Stolen gas cylinders were going for as low as Sh500.

Another caretaker, who only identified himself as Nicholas, said his landlord could not even summon the courage to witness the destruction.

He told Nicholas since he was now out of a job to “help himself” with whatever could be sold from the building.

He removed all the doors of the two bed-roomed flat that has 20 housing units and sold them for at least Sh3,000 each.

By the time The Standard team left he was in the process of selling 20 1,000-litre tanks, sinks and taps from the building.