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Some city residents don’t have to frequent five-star hotels to enjoy first-class cuisine.
Bacon with potato wedges on egg white and pork chops dipped in sauce with cream of mushroom soup can be indulged in for free at Nairobi’s Dandora dumpsite.
That is how some slum dwellers enjoy meals which are the preserve of the rich, despite nutritionists warning about health risks of leftover food.
The top-quality meals are dumped there by garbage trucks offloading leftover food from the airport or any of the city’s five-star establishments.
If you also throw left-over macaroni, spaghetti, ham and cheese from your upmarket address in Westlands, Highridge or Runda, you make the palate and stomach of Margret Wairimu, a mother of four, very happy.
It is from the dumpsite that Wairimu feeds her children on a variety of cuisine including Chinese food. But she has to be punctual, because missing the garbage truck means that she would not be able to ‘lay out the table’ for her children.
“This is our largest ‘shopping mall,’ where we get expensive meals for free. All types of meals are found here. I have tasted meals from different cultures. Who knows, I might also have tasted a meal from the president’s plate.”
Wairimu is not alone in this. Other ‘beneficiaries’ include street children and the marabou stork that call Dandora dumpsite home. To get an edge over the birds, some residents use dogs to keep them at bay “since dogs and marabou storks don’t get along,” says David Linus aka Davi Rasta, who has operated a food kiosk dealing in dumped leftovers at Korogocho for over 20 years.
His customers are those who cannot go to the dumpsite. His kiosk stocks “bread, bottled and canned juice, meat, rice, butter, hamburgers and all manner of food from pricey hotels.”
His local and ‘international cuisine’ cost between Sh20 and Sh60.
A truck driver named John explains that the best months to have five-star meals are November and December, when the tourism season peaks, “creating a continuous flow of waste.”
Beatrice Karanja, another beneficiary, says meals with hotel labels sell faster at Korogocho market.
“On a lucky day, I can make between Sh1,000 and Sh1,500,” she reveals.
Items on her ‘menu’ cost between Sh20 and Sh50 and comprise canned juice, margarine, butter, sweets, jam and apples.
Alice Achieng, a resident of Dandora has raised her three children on leftovers which she describes as very delicious, healthy and without health risks.
