Nairobi slums work on cleaning up their act

A water development project is starting to make an impact, but many fear it is inequitable that residents have to take out small loans to have access to clean water, writes Elijah Wolfson

AT 8am, Patrick Mwangi meets me for breakfast at the Serena Hotel in downtown Nairobi. We are in the hotel’s restaurant, seated at a table covered in white linen, yards from an infinity pool that edges up to a row of jacaranda trees sheltering the well-manicured grounds from the stink and squalling of the city on the other side.

Mwangi, Nairobi-born and bred, is a World Bank water and sanitation specialist, and the driving force behind the Jisomee Mita water-development project, launched earlier this year in the city’s Soweto Slums. “It’s taken three years, and it’s still a nightmare,” he says.