Looking for Solutions in an Unsustainable City
Learning a Lesson from a Fire: A Profile of Phyllis Gichuhi
In January of 2018, a fire razed the Kijiji slum, an informal settlement in Nairobi. Approximately 6,000 people were displaced and their lives tragically damaged. The impact of that fire was not limited to its direct victims. In the month that it took to reconstruct the settlement, residents of the formal neighborhood adjacent to it noticed a change in their water supply. Long accustomed to rationing water, the residents of this town now had an abundance of it. It was a confirmation of the fact that the informal settlement had been meaningfully affecting their water supply, as most had long suspected. But for most, the conversation stopped there. Rationing was the norm and this temporary surplus was no more than a brief deviation from that. For one resident of that neighborhood, however, that interpretation did not suffice.
Phyllis Gichuhi did not take the newfound abundance of water as a brief break in rationing. It served as a warning call about the path that Nairobi was on towards unsustainability. “I’ve seen how the city has changed since I was a kid,” she reflects. Nairobi has rapidly expanded, with people flocking to the city. Many of people who move there, however, cannot afford the price of living in Nairobi’s formal neighborhoods, and so they join informal settlements throughout the city. These settlements are typically highly overpopulated; the 6,000 people in the example above lived on two to three acres of land. The increase in water supply after the fire confirmed what Gichuhi already knew to be the case: Nairobi, with its current water management system, could not sustainably support its growing population. Moreover, where once that lack of access to water may have impacted just the informal settlements, this issue now impacted formal settlements as well, implying an ever-worsening situation. Gichuhi found herself witnessing the ways in which her city’s resources had become strained. “It’s one of the things that I get angry about,” she notes, “when I see how things are starting to slowly break down.” The fire, for her, was a reminder of another part of the city that was falling apart. Quite simply, Gichuhi saw that fire and its aftermath as an invitation to look deeply at Nairobi’s water management.
Two years earlier, Gichuhi had joined Amani Institute’s Certificate Program in Social Innovation Management. “What do I really want? What is my purpose?”, she recalls asking herself. The answer was simple: “I wanted to do something with impact.” During her time at the institute, she found that she connected with the issues of water and sanitation in Kenya. So when she heard about Archimedes Project through the Amani Institute, it was her passion for water issues and the formative experience of watching the impacts of the settlement fire that motivated her to apply for the Frontier Social Entrepreneur Fellowship.
For her, the fellowship represented a prime opportunity to apply her broader interest in urban sustainability in the most deeply personal way by focusing it on the issues most pressing to her home. The fellowship would be a chance to thoroughly understand the water and sanitation ecosystem in Nairobi. Archimedes Project offered her a perfect circumstance in which she could contextualize these ecosystems within larger questions of sustainability. With that in mind, Gichuhi applied.
As she began her fellowship, Gichuhi found herself deeply immersed in desktop research on the water and sanitation ecosystems in Nairobi, a precursor to her field research. Her hope is that the Fellowship can provide her with a “better understanding of issues of water and sanitation and how communities as well as the government and other organizations are dealing with the problem.” Embedded in that effort to understand the problem was a desire to understand the “gaps in the solutions that are already being implemented.” It is ultimately about helping her home find sustainability in its new era of urbanization. And that must begin with understanding why this problem hasn’t been solved yet.
“There’s what I thought I knew coming into it and my preconceived ideas, so what’s been interesting is busting myths, seeing what assumptions I have and seeing whether they’re true, and seeing what my biases are.” One such assumption that has been challenged relates to the role of the government. Gichuhi, like many people, suspected that the government was doing quite little to provide water and sanitation to the urban poor. While her preparatory research revealed a written government commitment to providing water and sanitation to the urban poor, she was disheartened to find that this expressed interest did not translate into meaningful action. Just 0.2% of the government’s available funds are allocated to the issue of sanitation. The people’s distrust of the government, according to Gichuhi, “is appropriate and residents are disgruntled for good reason. Water and sanitation are basic human needs and the government’s’ inability to effectively manage these resources is a direct contributor to the negative feelings of its citizens.”
In reality, Gichuhi found, much of the onus for providing water and sanitation services falls on non-governmental actors. This produced a mixed bag of emotions for her. On one hand, since the government’s priority does not seem to be the provision of adequate water and sanitation, these types of organizations are incredibly important. On the other, she worries about how equipped these organizations are to handle that responsibility “These associations have a reputation of not being effective and not living up to their mandates,” she lamented. In that she finds reason to feel both “hopeful and slightly discouraged.” While the organizations of today may not be able to live up to their aims, it is clear that there is room to innovate.
As she continues her fellowship, Gichuhi intends to meet with the organizations she has identified to understand what challenges they have faced while working on water and sanitation issues in Nairobi. For her, the prospect of understanding why they have been unable to solve this crisis is immensely exciting. “The experience thus far has been truly enriching,” she reflects. “It has provided a platform for questioning and learning.” This experience is the beginning of a long road towards helping Nairobi become more sustainable. It is a step in the right direction.
Amanda Orbuch is summer 2018 intern at the Archimedes Project. She is a rising junior at Stanford University. Majoring in Philosophy with a minor in English, she spends much of her time working on applied ethics. In her free time, she enjoys creative writing and weightlifting. She considers access to potable water one of the most pressing issues of the present and future and is deeply committed to expanding access to this crucial resource.
Follow Amanda Orbuch’s other stories about our 2018 Fellows:
