Utawala grows without essential services

By Ferdinand Mwongela

A plane roars overhead as a bus leaves pedestrians choking in a cloud of dust as it bobs and weaves slowly into Utawala Estate. Until about five years ago, the estate was just another sleepy village crawling in a vast expanse of brown grass punctuated by stunted shrubs and Euphorbia trees with sparse houses and Maasai cattle dotting the plains.

On the right side of the road, getting into Utawala, a Maasai manyatta portrays a languid pace and except for a child occasionally running across, it is mostly silent as the livestock are out in the fields. Two GSU officers keep vigil on a tower overlooking Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA). On the left side is the Administration Police’s Rapid Deployment Unit base.

Fast growth

Utawala estate is growing by leaps and bounds despite lack of essential facilities like roads and water. [PHOTO: Jennifer Wachie/ Standard]

Utawala Estate has grown fast over a very short period of time, perhaps faster than even the planning departments had anticipated and they are only now trying to catch up on the provision of essential services such as water and sewage.

The first major line of a sewage system was laid about four months ago; for now pit latrines and boreholes are the order.

This estate that lies just beyond the JKIA going towards Kangundo, has attracted real estate developments in a big way with houses coming up at a dizzying speed and hardware stores, which seem to rival sukuma wiki kiosks in number, making a killing.

Utawala is named after an Administration Police college phrase Askari wa Utawala. Getting past the old airport, all there is to see is the vast expanse of JKIA on one side with the Embakasi Garrison, the General Service Unit Training School and the Administration Police Training College (APTC) on the other. They all stretch over five kilometres by which time one gets the sense of having moved from the Tower of Babel that is Nairobi to another part of the country altogether.

Major shortcomings

The greatest shortcoming, other than the sewerage system, is the lack of a tarmacked road. The road that leads from the North Airport Road goes only up to the APTC gate and from there to the estate is about a kilometre of dirt that only a few public service vehicles ventures in after a heavy downpour.

This is, however, expected to change with the construction of the northern bypass, which passes right by Utawala.

The estate, however, has not yet jumped aboard the rental gravy train with most of the developers being owner-occupiers probably due to the distance from town and access. Kenya Bus Service is the only reliable public transport provider on this route. This, coupled with the Sh80 fare to the city centre, makes it one of the most expensive routes compared to such places as Athi River and Kitengela, which are even further. Public transport providers cite the high cost of maintaining their vehicles as a reason for this given that the final seven-kilometre stretch to the estate, though supposedly tarmac, has more portholes than tarmac.

Maybe because of security, most of these owners have erected massive gates and walls around their properties and one can only see the roofs as you walk along the road.

Slightly beyond Utawala, however, the land opens again to a wide expanse towards Kangundo Road with fenced plots giving it the look of a pattern on a canvas with lines crisscrossing each other but serving as a reminder that more people are moving here as the city’s outskirts continue to develop to house its residents.