Rehabllitation Programme: N. C • C • K •. Experience In The Dandora Community Development Project, Nairobi

Abstract

In December 1968, the NCCK came to learn about Kaburini Squatters vil.lage. Kaburini is a SWahili word which means "by the cemetery". A community of about 400 families illegally settled behind the Moslem cemetery off Quarry Road, near Kariakor. A day before Christmas in 1968, a fire broke out in one of the houses. It spread rapidly and brought half of the village to ashes. Six months later another fire broke out and eliminated the remaining half of the village. The city Council refused to give the community permission to erect new shanties in place of what had been destroyed. This state of affairs went on for a few weeks until the situation elicited public outcry. The City Council authority felt that the families affected should go back to where they originally came from. A few families moved mostly to another squatter village but about 300 families were stranded on the spot. Finally the City Council decided to move these people to Karura Forest, a distance of 8 miles from the City Centre. Initially the people were provided with fifteen tents, food, two tanks of water which were filled every day by the City council trucks and two blocks of pit latrine. This was a temporary and expensive measure, to give the City Council time to think of a more permanent arrangement. It was at this time that the NCCK carne with a proposal to Nairobi City Council about a permanent rehabilitation programme. The NCCK offered to raise £23,000 on condition that the City Council would raise £10,000 which would be mainly used to prepare a piece of land for site and service purposes. As a sites and service programme to house Mathare Valley squatters was already underway, it was agreed that t.hzee. hundred plots should be reserved for EX-Kaburini Squatters while the £10,000 would be used for redevelopment of other squatter villages near Mathare Valley. The money raised by the NCCK and NCC was to be used as follows: