Kenyans Are Being Violently Evicted From Their Homes to Make Room for Developers
Kenya’s outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta presided over the worst wave of evictions in the country’s history. On the eve of the country’s general election, nothing seems set to change.
A resident of the former North Sewerage estate in Kariobangi, Kenya, demolished by the Kenyan government in 2020. (All images courtesy of Jaclynn Ashly)
Esther Wanjiku Gitau does not like to remember what transpired in May 2020, when she and thousands of others were forcibly evicted from their homes during brutal mass demolitions of a long-established community in Kenya’s capital Nairobi.
“I can’t think about that day without crying,” says Gitau, who is in her seventies. More than two years ago, government demolitions flattened her home in Kariobangi, an informal settlement located about ten kilometers from the city’s central business district.
When Gitau remembers her neighborhood, the Kariobangi North Sewerage estate — or simply the sewage estate, where hundreds of families had established themselves over almost three decades on about twelve acres of land, a rare smile takes over her face.
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