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Story Publication logo July 2, 2012

Buried in Dandora: Nairobi's Waste Management Disaster

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Rahab Ruguru, a 42-year-old mother of six, lives on the outskirts of Dandora. Apart from a four-year-old, Mrs Ruguru takes her whole family scavenging on weekends and after classes - to earn money for school fees, books and uniforms. No matter what regulations the bureaucrats in Nairobi may issue, she does not see a time when they will stop picking through Kenya's leftovers. “If this site moves, then I will move with it - or we will not survive,” she says. Image by Micah Albert. Kenya, 2012.

Photojournalist Micah Albert discusses the waste management inefficiencies in Kenya's Dandora Municipal Dump Site, the only dumping location for waste in Nairobi, East Africa's most populous city. Spanning over thirty acres of land and amassing approximately 2,000 tons of waste per day, the dump site serves as a starting point for understanding the growing health, poverty, and sanitation problems facing the rapidly expanding capital and region.

This audioslideshow is part of the Pulitzer Center project "Buried in Dandora: Voices of Nairobi's Waste Management Disaster," which explores the expanding human rights crisis spanning the region due to waste management inefficiencies.

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