Embakasi rats stealing women’s underwear

 Kwa Njenga slums

Women from Kwa Njenga slums in Embakasi have been forced to hide their pants after rats showed an insatiable appetite for them.

Residents say the rats habitually patrol the makeshift bathrooms to steal aired undergarments. A few stubborn rats even enter the houses in search of the underwear, which they race to holes in the sewers. Others disappear without a trace.

Mama Ivy, a resident at the slum, told The Nairobian the rats steal underwear only to drag them to their hideouts at the bank of a nearby river.

She said it is indeed a problem among women living in the slums and has called on the government to escalate the slum upgrading programme to all the slums in the city.

“Most women here suffer in silence. The rats are notorious with pants. I don’t understand why,” she said.

Josek Otieno, Another resident, blames the women for keeping their dirty pants in the house, thereby attracting the rats.

“I suspect these pants have some smell which the rats love. Ask yourself why these creatures only carry ngothas away!” he posed.

But Dorothy Mutindi who lives in the slum, differed with Otieno saying the women led a clean life, contrary to the belief that slum women are dirty.She said the rats sometimes carry even clean clothes which are later recovered from their holes.

“I doubt if the rats eat the clothes as some people claim, but just use them to make their holes warm. Some of these clothes have been recovered after months, seating at the river bank where the rats live,” said Mutindi.

Some of the victims, declined to speak to The Nairobian, saying it would be shameful to parade their plight about lost pants to the media and the whole world.

“No. I don’t talk to journalists; you go to the river bank and look for the rats. You want to write bad things about us,” said one of the female residents who we overheard lamenting about disappearing pants.