Garbage: Junk value for the urban poor

26. Mai 2009 | Von atsil2 | Kategorie:English TOWe

Garbage in a Senegal slum – a building material both plentiful an perilous

The unrestrained garbage tides of Dakar city make their ways to the slums of the flood victims in the Eastern suburbs like Médina Gounass, Pikine or Guédiawaye

The metropole’s garbage is a surrogate building material for these urban poor – a critical filler to deal with the stagnant water: cheap, instantly accessible and never diminishing. It covers the ground between the crumbling cinder-block houses, becomes grazing ground for goats, playground for barefoot, runny-nosed children and breeding ground for swarms of flies. Disease flourishes here, aid groups say: cholera, malaria, yellow fever and tuberculosis.¹

Urban poor

The Western media showed no interest in the problems of the inhabitants of these Dakari outskirts until recently, when a 7 years old boy had been drowned in the slums of Médina Gounass. The little boy has been swallowed by the swamp underneath a layer of garbage when he stepped on a seemingly solid spot while playing in an abandoned dwelling. The swampy ground was caused by heavy rainfalls collected by the low lying grounds

The Dakari urban poor live at the permanent risk of drowning and of diseases caused by the garbage. They suffer from disastrous sanitary conditions, insufficient health-care and inadequate water supply. Their poverty is resulting from poor education, unemployment and is due to the lack of “what Africa most desperately needs” – “investors, jobs and industries.”(Nicholas Kristof (New York Times)

Plan Jaxaay – a commitment of junk value

After the flood the Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade made a strong commitment of good publicity: He promised to help the population of theinundated suburban areas – providing 52 billion CFA (US $ 104 million) for “Plan Jaxaay”, a construction-project of 4,000 new cement homes to be completed within a year.

Some 900 houses are finished already, but many of them were not given to the flood victims, but to politicians², celebrities (like Fanta Keita, the late African Judo-champion³) and to individuals of the president’s favour or to groups of people who were suddenly resettled for the sake of urban showpiece constructions or for reasons of public relations.

To make things even worse, the new settlements are bare of any infrastructure: There is no hospital, no market, no school, no public transport on no roads. The four-room-homes are inhabited by 20-30 persons in average with no chance to change the contrictive situation:

The home of Demba Saer Seck and some 30 family members live with mattresses strewn everywhere, including in the kitchen and outside in the yard. “I don’t want to complain but to tell you the truth, it is too small,” Seck said. He would like to build more rooms onto the house but the Jaxaay authorities won’t allow this until he has paid the entire mortgage. “It’s a lot of money,” he said. “I don’t see how I can pay it.”⁴

As time went on, the outrage of the flood victims increased and found its expression in a wide range of activism – from individual commitment to action groups right up to street-riots. (French-speaking readers should check the francophone internet-forums)

Aid and self-help

One feature of Senegalese democracy is the culture of political civil courage. And one of its protagonists, Joseph Gaï Ramaka, released the video “Plan Jaxaay” in 2007 – an outstanding movie about the outcry of the Dakari flood victims.

http://www.dailymotion.com/videox1y8tl

Another important participant of the democratic movement in Senegal is the hip-hop- and rap-scene. Especially the label Nomadic Wax publishes harsh criticism at president Wade’s ambivalent democratic attitude.

Democracy in Dakar is mindblowingly good. It’s not just a portrait of a country’s vibrant music scene – it’s the complicated story of how hiphop emerged as a political force in Senegal, and how that force has been both empowered and thwarted in recent elections.⁵

The aid situation is insufficient and ineffective. The big relief organisations all focus on desasters with audience appeal. Due to the good reputation of Senegalese democracy the public mind is not aware of the peril urban poor are exposed to in Dakar. We are pleased to introduce to you the idea of Global EcoVillages:

The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) is a global confederation of people and communities that meet and share their ideas, exchange technologies, develop cultural and educational exchanges, directories and newsletters, and are dedicated to restoring the land and living “sustainable plus” lives by putting more back into the environment than we take out.

GENSEN – the Senegalese branch of GEN in cooperation with Living Routes offers students from abroad the possibility to study and to build these villages all over the country.

Another way to support the Dakari flood victims is by donating to the SEM Fund – the Senegal Ecovillage Microfinance Fund helping to break the cycle of poverty afflicting the people of developing countries. In cooperation with KIVA they are lending micro-credits mainly to Senegalese women.