Their life is one big waste dump
Feb 23, 2003
On a hot Monday afternoon, a lanky, dark-skinned man bends over a huge KCC garbage skip at Nakasero Market. With a tattered broom and a rusty shovel, the man, clad in a yellow tunic, collects garbage that has fallen off the now overflowing skip.
By Stephen Ssenkaaba
On a hot Monday afternoon, a lanky, dark-skinned man bends over a huge KCC garbage skip at Nakasero Market. With a tattered broom and a rusty shovel, the man, clad in a yellow tunic, collects garbage that has fallen off the now overflowing skip.
From the look on his face, the young man is incensed by the stench coming from rotting foodstuffs and used condoms among other things in the skip. In a few minutes, a truck will collect the garbage and take it to an unknown destination.
Soon, a heavy-duty green and yellow KCC truck arrives at the spot. It backs up, offloading an empty skip and, using a mechanised arm, loads up the full one. The truck immediately speeds off, turns into Kampala Road, then onto Bombo Road and heads for Gayaza Road. The long journey to the biggest garbage collection centre in town begins here.
The truck turns, a few meters off Mpererwe-Kiteezi Road which, leads to the enormous Mpererwe Sanitary Landfill in Kiteezi. This is where all garbage collected from the various skips in the five divisions of Kampala ends up.
As one approaches the 20-acre landfill, the thick, sickening odour of rotting food, reminiscent of human excreta, hangs in the air. Thick clouds of dust can be seen in the air as trucks carrying sand and the garbage laden KCC trucks speed past one another to empty their contents at the far end of the collection centre.
The garbage collection centre stands on raised ground a few meters away from the main road. From a distance, mountains of refuse containing used tins, torn paper boxes, metal scrap and plastic bags are very visible. On top of each garbage heap, flocks of marabou storks gather to gorge themselves.
Beside the dark, ugly birds, men and women hover around the heaps in small groups. With sacks on their backs, the locals are busy picking whatever they think is valuable from the rubbish heaps. While some are filling their sacks with metal scrap, others are piling their containers with used tin cans. Some stock their bags with torn paper boxes and others are busy fishing for food to eat.
“This is where I spend the whole day,†says Martin Lingabo, while munching away at a half rotten loaf of bread. “This is where I work; where I get money to feed my family and to survive,†he adds. Like many of his colleagues, Martin reports to ‘work’ at 8:00am and leaves at 6:00pm.
“So, what keeps these people here the whole day?†I ask.
“My friend, this is a full time job. We pick a lot of valuable items from what many of you out there think is rubbish, which we sell for money,†says John Atwan, one of the locals.
“Every morning we assemble here and wait for the KCC trucks to bring garbage from Kampala. Once the rubbish is dumped, we dig through the filth in search of valuables,†he adds. According to Atwan, valuable items include used tins, torn cardboard boxes, car tires, plastic materials (like basins and jerrycans) as well as steel scrap.
“After collecting these items, we pile them into separate heaps, each far away from one another to avoid fights and confusion, and then wait for businessmen and big companies to buy,†Atwan says.
Regular customers include Mukwano, a Kenyan firm and Mulwana’s Nice House of Plastics factory, which buys plastic materials and plastic bags for recycling. The cardboard boxes are recycled into egg trays and soft boards. Atwan says that the prices for these items vary depending on the customer turnout.
“Sometimes customer turnout is low, so we have to adjust our prices accordingly. Otherwise, we won’t eat. The standard rate for a ton of paper boxes is sh25,000. A kilo of steel is at sh100. A full Dyna truck of tires is worth sh15,000.
On a good day, Atwan says, one can sell three Dyna trucks full of tires. How much one gets out of this business depends on how much one collects. On average, each man collects 50 sacks daily, while ladies collect between 20 and 30. Atwan goes on to say the busiest times at the site are from early morning to lunch.
Lunch time is specifically important because the trucks come in with edible items like bread, expired tinned foods and leftover food from restaurants and hotels, so everyone will keep around at this time.
One has to be alert at this time, because that is when fresh items are coming in. If you are not early enough, you can easily miss out on good items — and lunch for that matter. As if to prove this point, a group of young men and women rush past us at the sight of an approaching KCC truck. Scrambling and falling over each other, they fight to get the ‘best’ item as it dumps its load. With bare hands, the ‘scavengers,’ as these people are called, start to excavate whatever they can lay their hands on.
While garbage trucks come from many areas of town, it’s the trucks from State House and posh places like Kololo and Muyenga that the scavengers are most interested in: “There are lots of valuable and expensive things like useful containers, sometimes boots, and yes, good tinned foods,†says Godfrey, one of the scavengers.
Here, words like, “Tonsindika, nze nasoose wano, totwala bintu byange (Don’t push me! I came here first, do not steal my stuff)†are common.
Where does all this garbage come from?
“All the garbage that comes here is collected from the five divisions of Kampala, including Central, Lubaga, Makindye, Kawempe and Nakawa,†says Michael Mudanye, KCC’s Solid Waste Engineer. “Seventy to 100 trips are made daily to this site by the KCC trucks, in addition to the private collectors.â€
Mudanye says that 70-80% of the garbage brought to this site is made up of organic mater such as peelings, leaves and foodstuffs. The rest is metal, plastics and polythene bags. But, once in a while, the garbage contains extraordinary things: “One time we received rubbish which had AK-47 bullets and we reported the matter to the Police as soon as we collected them,†says James Oloya, the site engineer with Dott services.
On a hot Monday afternoon, a lanky, dark-skinned man bends over a huge KCC garbage skip at Nakasero Market. With a tattered broom and a rusty shovel, the man, clad in a yellow tunic, collects garbage that has fallen off the now overflowing skip.
From the look on his face, the young man is incensed by the stench coming from rotting foodstuffs and used condoms among other things in the skip. In a few minutes, a truck will collect the garbage and take it to an unknown destination.
Soon, a heavy-duty green and yellow KCC truck arrives at the spot. It backs up, offloading an empty skip and, using a mechanised arm, loads up the full one. The truck immediately speeds off, turns into Kampala Road, then onto Bombo Road and heads for Gayaza Road. The long journey to the biggest garbage collection centre in town begins here.
The truck turns, a few meters off Mpererwe-Kiteezi Road which, leads to the enormous Mpererwe Sanitary Landfill in Kiteezi. This is where all garbage collected from the various skips in the five divisions of Kampala ends up.
As one approaches the 20-acre landfill, the thick, sickening odour of rotting food, reminiscent of human excreta, hangs in the air. Thick clouds of dust can be seen in the air as trucks carrying sand and the garbage laden KCC trucks speed past one another to empty their contents at the far end of the collection centre.
The garbage collection centre stands on raised ground a few meters away from the main road. From a distance, mountains of refuse containing used tins, torn paper boxes, metal scrap and plastic bags are very visible. On top of each garbage heap, flocks of marabou storks gather to gorge themselves.
Beside the dark, ugly birds, men and women hover around the heaps in small groups. With sacks on their backs, the locals are busy picking whatever they think is valuable from the rubbish heaps. While some are filling their sacks with metal scrap, others are piling their containers with used tin cans. Some stock their bags with torn paper boxes and others are busy fishing for food to eat.
“This is where I spend the whole day,†says Martin Lingabo, while munching away at a half rotten loaf of bread. “This is where I work; where I get money to feed my family and to survive,†he adds. Like many of his colleagues, Martin reports to ‘work’ at 8:00am and leaves at 6:00pm.
“So, what keeps these people here the whole day?†I ask.
“My friend, this is a full time job. We pick a lot of valuable items from what many of you out there think is rubbish, which we sell for money,†says John Atwan, one of the locals.
“Every morning we assemble here and wait for the KCC trucks to bring garbage from Kampala. Once the rubbish is dumped, we dig through the filth in search of valuables,†he adds. According to Atwan, valuable items include used tins, torn cardboard boxes, car tires, plastic materials (like basins and jerrycans) as well as steel scrap.
“After collecting these items, we pile them into separate heaps, each far away from one another to avoid fights and confusion, and then wait for businessmen and big companies to buy,†Atwan says.
Regular customers include Mukwano, a Kenyan firm and Mulwana’s Nice House of Plastics factory, which buys plastic materials and plastic bags for recycling. The cardboard boxes are recycled into egg trays and soft boards. Atwan says that the prices for these items vary depending on the customer turnout.
“Sometimes customer turnout is low, so we have to adjust our prices accordingly. Otherwise, we won’t eat. The standard rate for a ton of paper boxes is sh25,000. A kilo of steel is at sh100. A full Dyna truck of tires is worth sh15,000.
On a good day, Atwan says, one can sell three Dyna trucks full of tires. How much one gets out of this business depends on how much one collects. On average, each man collects 50 sacks daily, while ladies collect between 20 and 30. Atwan goes on to say the busiest times at the site are from early morning to lunch.
Lunch time is specifically important because the trucks come in with edible items like bread, expired tinned foods and leftover food from restaurants and hotels, so everyone will keep around at this time.
One has to be alert at this time, because that is when fresh items are coming in. If you are not early enough, you can easily miss out on good items — and lunch for that matter. As if to prove this point, a group of young men and women rush past us at the sight of an approaching KCC truck. Scrambling and falling over each other, they fight to get the ‘best’ item as it dumps its load. With bare hands, the ‘scavengers,’ as these people are called, start to excavate whatever they can lay their hands on.
While garbage trucks come from many areas of town, it’s the trucks from State House and posh places like Kololo and Muyenga that the scavengers are most interested in: “There are lots of valuable and expensive things like useful containers, sometimes boots, and yes, good tinned foods,†says Godfrey, one of the scavengers.
Here, words like, “Tonsindika, nze nasoose wano, totwala bintu byange (Don’t push me! I came here first, do not steal my stuff)†are common.
Where does all this garbage come from?
“All the garbage that comes here is collected from the five divisions of Kampala, including Central, Lubaga, Makindye, Kawempe and Nakawa,†says Michael Mudanye, KCC’s Solid Waste Engineer. “Seventy to 100 trips are made daily to this site by the KCC trucks, in addition to the private collectors.â€
Mudanye says that 70-80% of the garbage brought to this site is made up of organic mater such as peelings, leaves and foodstuffs. The rest is metal, plastics and polythene bags. But, once in a while, the garbage contains extraordinary things: “One time we received rubbish which had AK-47 bullets and we reported the matter to the Police as soon as we collected them,†says James Oloya, the site engineer with Dott services.