Sokomoko Kibuye, the stink of toilet politics behind cholera shutdown

When NyarSindo planned the family outing route along the grocery shopping, she forgot to account for one thing; the bowel movements of Manyala who has learned enough to voice his concerns but not the experience to preempt his movement ahead of time.

After the young boy had tired out ducking under stalls of ripe red tomatoes and through sacks of potatoes and piled up plantains he would just rush up and declare ‘Nataka Kupupu’ with the emergency of a screwed up face that says he might have held off the discomfort for far too long.

Now, being in the middle of Kibuye market, I panicked.

Any Kenyan knows that public toilets are the s**t. The thought that comes to mind when you have to go in public is literally the ghetto; the toilets are bound to lack water if not abandoned to the stench of refuse and invaded with street urchins.

Bowel gold

I turned to the trader next to me and asked for a toilet. He pointed me in a direction through spaces of wooden sheds that went every direction any way you looked, and asked me to find my way through the maze with general directions of: turn left just after that road, and you will see a building written 'Choo'.

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I grabbed the boy and raced through the market sun, jostled past people, and surely I found the toilet. It was easy to spot as you moved between the rows of wooden stalls separated by murram road. To my surprise, it was rather clean. There was no piped water, of course, but there were women who manned them and had plastic drums of water, which they used to keep the place clean.

Manyala was able to use the lavatory provided with a limited roll of tissue, and to clean his hands with liquid soap for a small fee of Kes10.

This toilet money accumulates into a fortune since Kibuye market, like typical metropolitan markets in Kisumu, attracts 15000 to 25000 people like me. The market hosts about 7000 traders, a number that doubles on Sunday, as well as 2800 traders doing wholesale and about 1000 artisans, according to a Maseno University study from 2013. That study projected that 60 per cent of Kenyans will be living in towns over the next five years, from 35 percent at the time, meaning the numbers have doubled.

Penny pinching

Judith Matengo, also known as Nyaramba, who serves as the chair of Kibuye Market says it is the toilet money that is at the center of a tussle for control of one of the oldest markets in Kisumu. The fight has drawn in city officials, local politicians, and the market committee leadership, and culminated in its shutting down, allegedly over ‘Cholera Fears’.

In mid-April, Kisumu City manager Abala Wanga shut down Kibuye market pre-emptively, claiming the current conditions at Kibuye Market not only endanger lives but also increase the risk of spreading cholera.

But these conditions were similar to other markets in Kisumu, so why just Kibuye?

The issue of toilets has been a challenge in all of Kisumu markets, most of which grew out of periodic exchanges between local communities, then the colonials and now urbanites in the area.

Lying on the flatlands between the lake and the rift escarpments, Kisumu is often flooded and prone to bouts of cholera.

All the markets, most of which lack piped water, were often neglected by public servants, informing public reforms that encouraged a movement away from Council management of toilets to the Market Committee, with proven positive results.

Reforms to give market women a say 

Nyaramba says that she joined Kibuye market 15 years ago during this shift, having paid kes50,000 as license fee to sell her tomatoes at the market. She says, during the city council days, the toilets were left uncleaned, the garbage lay uncollected for days.

When readers threatened to protest about the state of sanitation, the city manager handed over the toilets to the market committee.

The market committee took over and was charging Kes20 from all the traders, which was used to source for cleaners to ensure that each market had appropriate sanitation managed by the Market Committees. She said that when she took over as chair, she lowered the fee to Kes10 but still managed to collect enough to keep the toilets clean and have spare change.

She said she also used her new position as chair to waive the cost of getting stalls in the market, having experienced it as a barrier of entry herself.

While the move made her very popular with the traders, this decision also meant that the spaces could not be secured by outsiders and rented out.

“Kugawa hiii soko tuligawa an amani sana, hii ndio soko hatukumwaga damu," she said making reference to the many cases witnessed in Kisumu where subdivision of market spaces always ends violently.

Other markets rented out their spaces and allowed rented container spaces created a flaw that would cripple all attempts to operate markets in Kisumu.

Battle of the stalls

Uhuru Business Market which ideally should be the largest market in the lake region at the center of Kisumu was one such market that could not be let because city traders came to blows fighting for space within it.

Inside this new market the local government let out spaces and allowed traders, local politicians and county officials to set up stalls which were rented out at kes10,000 each with a three-month deposit, an inhibitive sum for many petty traders.

This scramble for space also created market slums in which metal sheets were welded into impossible crannies, creating extra stalls that were now hot cake. But this created unsanitary, dark and damp storage and unsafe narrow back-routes on the passages with hanging electric lines.

This tussle for slumlord rents from traders left three people nursing injuries as they fought for the space crippled the subdivision of the market and left it empty for more than a year with more traders operating outside its precinct than inside it.

Ms Nyaramba says that she has resisted the move to bring those containers to Kibuye, marking her out by city officials who see a prized real estate around the busy market. In fact, outside Kibuye, City County stalls have already been erected overlooking the market, awaiting the final assault.

Coincidentally, Kibuye traders were moved to Uhuru Business Market to get accustomed to what their market could be, while Kibuye, in the meantime, would undergo upgrades to sanitation facilities, drainage systems, and utilities.

The bureaucrats pen

Kisumu County officials announced that Kibuye would remain closed, until the various actions, such as provision of an adequate, clean, and safe water supply to the market, design and implementation of a solid waste management system for effective waste collection and disposal, are undertaken.

“Cholera cases have been reported from Nyando, Ahero, and now a suspected case from this area. Given that Kibuye supplies food not only to Kisumu but to other parts of the country, urgent action was necessary,” Director of Public Health Fredrick Oluoch said. “There are no water connections for sanitary facilities, no electricity, poor drainage, and no waste management. Without immediate intervention, we would face a serious outbreak.”

With the stroke of a pen, the market traders were thrown onto the streets, converting the sidewalks into an informal market outside. This one is on the sidewalks and above the drainage systems with no sanitation, leaving them even more exposed to cholera than inside.

When we visited Kibuye market this week, none of the improvements had been made, garbage from two weeks prior still lay abandoned at the market that had always breathed life into the heart of the city, now wilting. What we saw were the traders who were cleaning the market themselves.

History of chiro

Kisumu derives its name 'Kisuma' from markets, the old tribes would meet on the open plains and bartered their surpluses with the fishermen at the head of the Gulf of Lake Inyanza before the colonials called it Winam, bringing along the Indians.

Not all of these ancient markets survived, and those that did had a method to them.

Most of these old markets and their colonial successors were successful based on their locations at the intersection of highways. Kibuye and its extension Kondele on Kakamega road. Nyamasaria, Jubilee and Oile on Nairobi road, Bandani, Riat, Kisian and Ojola on Busia road, Obambo on Bondo road, Chiga on Kibos road, Dago and Kiboswa on Nyahera road and Mamboleo on Miwani road.

Markets that did not have this component factored in their design have tended to collapse as have been the several attempts by the government and its western development partners to construct new markets. Cases in point are Manyatta, Migosi and K’Owino World Bank II projects developed in the 70s.

Failure has never stopped bureaucracy from trying. When we first set up in Kisumu we sent out our photographer to do a few shots of the Kes 600 million Uhuru Market, in Kisumu as one of the legacy projects of former president Uhuru Kenyatta.

It stood empty like a white elephant and told of the caliber of projects the Jubilee government sunk trillions of dollars borrowed from Eurobond casinos which would just never pay for itself. This was mainly because of the major flaw that had befallen the previous development projects to build markets, which is to follow the roads. If only they could have asked Kennedy Otti a tailor who had set his stall inside the market.

‘’Watu walijaribu, wakiingia ndani hawakuwa wanauza vizuri juu wenye wananunua wengi wao ni mtu ya gari na wenye wanapita kwa mbio.’’ Otti said.

But the state never listens to its taxpayers, it listens to its officials. President William Ruto is now bent on building more of these Uhuru-type of white elephants in the country in a scheme of launching grand edifices for getting re-elected, yet they will mostly end up as future cattle dips.

Dodge

The issue is not just a selection of bad location and sabotaging renting through scrambling for spaces, it lies deep in the extractive nature of the government that is self-evident. In 2009 the Food and Agriculture Organization did a study on Market-oriented Agricultural Infrastructure: Appraisal of Public Private Partnerships. Marketing and Occasional Paper that made the same conclusions you could make today.

Low administrative efficiency of public service led to poorly planned, designed and financed capital infrastructure projects, poor cost recovery rates, and inadequate maintenance and user tariffs set too low to cover operational costs or payback capital investments, for either political reasons or mismanagement and corruption, especially in the process of procurement of infrastructure engineering, construction and maintenance services.

No one thinks about the country in a society where everyone is trying to eat everything. Ms. Nyaramba says that while she was collecting money from the toilet, first the county began asking for money to fuel the fire engine, and pay for other utilities informally.

Then the officials started asking for personal favors, payments she claims are being used to finance the political ambitions of the officials. She claims when the demand for the cash grew beyond what the kitty could afford while keeping the sanitation working, she put a stop to it. And from that objection, the officials have sworn to remove her from her position as chairlady of Kibuye market.

Efforts to reach out to Abala Wanga Kisumu city manager for comment were unsuccessful as he did not answer to our calls or text message by the time of going to press.

Battle of kidi

When we followed up with the traders that had gone to Uhuru market, most of them said they wanted to return back to Kibuye because sales were too low to support the costs of operation at the market.

Unlike Uhuru Market which is still new, Kibuye enjoys the advantage of the highway and the community of civil servants whose houses are located next to the market.

Kibuye also stands at an intersection of churches that make a chunk of its Sunday peak sales days. Catholic Cathedral stands at its steps while AIC Arina, ACK Emanuel Church Shaurimoyo Parish, Winners Chapel International Kisumu and Kisumu Central Church complete the encirclement beyond which civil servant estates lie.

Ms Nyaramba had secured a court injunction against the county at the time we talked to her that allowed them to return to Kibuye. The re-entry itself had not been smooth, even with the court order. The traders show us video clips of goons pelting them with stones who had apparently been stationed to man the gates and prevent their access.

While they said they overpowered the goons, they informed us that the county still tried to stop them from accessing the premises by keeping the gates locked, and when they broke in the police put out a wanted notice for ‘their boys’.

How Kibuye is choosing the next Kisumu Governor

Ms Nyaramba says she is defiant and will not bow to the county officials, intending to fight both physically and in court.

She says she has a strong court case since the alleged cholera case is non-existent and that claims that she had overstayed her tenure as chairlady are baseless since elections have not been held in nearly all Kisumu markets. Their case was no exception.

With her hands literally shaking she retold a story of how she has been hunted in this market before, in 2024 over these same toilets when goons were unleashed in the market at 4am. Two people died in what was reported as an internal fight to control the Kes17,000 daily collections from the toilets, including bathing services.

Ms Nyaramba said she was saved on the brink of death when she had been attacked and was being hacked with crude weapons. She claims she made several calls to authorities for help but they went unanswered for hours, while two people were killed.

She said she survived that and sort of developed something for her market. For her Kibuye had become more than just a location where vendors gather periodically to sell merchandise; something that came to define her as a person and businesswoman.

Like all historical markets, it had become central to the political, economic, and social prospects Kisumu’s people.

Ms Nyaramba has not only stopped the cash that was funneling funds to the ambitions of county officials she has thrown her own weight around a rival, showing the political fractures beneath the tussle.

The market chairwoman commands political clout from her role as chairlady with connections to traders and other influential market leadership as well as the deep pockets that come with her position and business. She boasts how she has financed some of the current crop of politicians, resources which she promises to marshal again in the oncminng polls.

As the state attempts to dismantle this powerful woman it created out of its own inefficiency, it faces its inconsistencies in its justifications, and harms the consumer who benefits from the cut-throat competition of rival Kibuye traders that had made it the cheapest and most popular market in Kisumu.