Kenya’s filthy working-class

Kenya’s next cholera epidemic will not be in the slums but in relatively affluent areas where Kenya’s educated and employed single people live in filth and squalour, writes Sophie Khakasa.

The reality TV show How Clean is Your House? portrays such filth and grime to make one wonder how people survive in such squalour.

But dirt is not a television fad in far off places. A filth epidemic is in Kenya and it’s urban, single and educated.

Tales were told of married women keeping soiled napkins with the baby’s poop under the bed. But that is nothing compared to the dirty extremes of Kenya’s present day single community.

Mama Celestina, a cleaning lady who lives in Kibera, says she will never clean a certain female lawyer’s house in Lavington again.

"Even if she paid me Sh1 million, I would not clean her house. The dirt in that place is enough to make one ill," she says of the woman who had hired her for the day.

"She had thrown used sanitary towels under the bed and the room smelt like a mortuary. Used innerwear, some badly stained, were scattered all over the house. For reasons only known to her, there was a bottle of urine in her wardrobe yet she has running water and a toilet that flushes!" says a horrified Celestine.

According to Celestine, it appeared the lawyer had used and re-used her innerwear and even turned them inside out for further recycling till it was virtually impossible to re-use them anymore.

"Instead of washing them, she just discarded them all over the place," says Celestine.

Unwanted visitors

These days, many working- class Kenyans live alone and have not been spared the selfish and individualistic lifestyle that does not allow one to stay with relatives. The singles also do not invite anyone home and have made peep holes on the door to spy on unwanted visitors.

Their doors, curtains and windows are permanently shut and fresh air waits patiently outside their doors. This uncensored, wild freedom where no one is watching has resulted in singles doing things that are outrageous enough to shock the dead.

When God created man, he assessed his creation and found it to be very good. But it appears he had no idea what filth the single community would evolve into.

These single individuals — of both sexes and well-educated — are so lazy that some even eat directly from the Sufuria without bothering to wash their hands. At no time will you find a clean glass for drinking water, if they have clean, drinking water in the house in the first place.

Dirty utensils form heaps all over the house, emitting a stench that would drive houseflies into exile and make toilet flies to turn up their noses in disgust.

Fat cockroaches crawl all over the floor, nibbling on bits of mouldy leftovers. Cobwebs abound and spiders roam freely. Mosquitoes buzz all over the house, excited at the prospect of suckling drunken blood night after night. Bees, wasps and beetles are permanent residents in these houses. Throw in bacteria and their houses are a game park.

"I have never owned a mosquito net," says Peter Mwasi, an accountant and a resident of Kariobangi South, Nairobi.

"The damn thing reminds me of a coffin. Plus who could wash it?" he asks with a guilty laugh.

Looking at the many suave souls driving posh cars and walking executively into flashy offices, you would never guess that come evening, they retreat into "virtual slums" in their homes in affluent neighbourhoods.

Some of these single urbanites don’t bother with a bath or spread their beds. They could be wearing dirty socks and shirts. Some smell of stale sweat from their unwashed armpits in spite of spirited efforts by perfumes imported from Dubai to disguise the stench.

Too busy to wash

Many don’t brush their teeth but chew mints to kill the stale breathe from their mouths. No wonder many remain single. Who would kiss them?

A manager at a bank in Nairobi confessed to Crazy Monday that he had used his sheets for the last six months but has been too busy to wash them.

"When they turned black, I rolled them up and threw them in a corner of the bedroom. I simply crawl into bed and sleep on the mattress," he chuckles.

A senior journalist with a well-respected media house told Crazy Monday that he had used up all the cups and glasses in his house and had now resorted to taking soda for breakfast.

"I once kept people waiting at a meeting for three hours because my clothes were drying on the line. You know how wet the weather has been recently. So these days, I dry-clean all my clothes. In any case, I don’t have time to get those cleaning women over," he says laughing.

Sometimes, he confesses, he goes to work without his underwear.

"Who invented boxers? They are so big. It’s like washing a tent," he complains.

Recycled shirt

He says the most expensive things in his wardrobe are shoes.

"Once people notice your shoes, watch and tie are expensive, they completely miss the recycled shirt," he says.

While a measure of filth can be tolerated among men, it’s the number of women joining the filthy club that is appalling. When a boss urgently passed by his secretary’s house in Huruma recently to pick a flash disk, he found her house in such a sorry state that he sacked her the following morning.

The secretary, who lives in a single-room, had bits of ugali and vegetables congealing on her sofa and carpet. A red undergarment could be seen peeping from beneath her bed while five cups, remainders of the previous day’s coffee, stood defiantly on the coffee table.

There were beer bottles, including one that was broken, on the only seat in the room so the boss couldn’t find a place to sit.

He was negotiating his way around the room when he slipped on a sticky material on the floor and almost fell (apparently the secretary had thrown up the night before after taking one too many and had not found time to clean up the mess before going to work). Used condoms still lay scattered at the foot of the bed.

But who would expect doctors, who are expected to know better, to be filthy? One doctor who works in Eldoret but maintains his family in Kakamega demonstrated that even medics have no qualms nurturing bacteria in their houses.

Used syringes

When his brother-in-law paid him a visit, hundreds of gigantic medical texts, heaps of old newspapers, used syringes, banana and orange peels and empty packets of milk littered the house. His brother-in-law had to climb over the books to squeeze into a seat. He refused to eat the food offered

The irony is that it is slum dwellers that live in filthy surroundings who clean and spruce up all the posh homes you know.

Without them, the Kileleshwas and Muthaigas of this world would be filthier than Kibera.