You can tell you're in Kabarnet and other Baringo towns by the smell of raw sewage in open channels and piles of garbage.
County officials say they have worked hard to improve the water and sewerage system over 10 years.
But traders and residents are not impressed, in fact the s*** is about ready to hit the fan.
Lack of a sewerage system — it's mostly ditches — now forces traders in Baringo to desperately clear open channels by pushing out rotting food and human waste in trenches in broad daylight.
Residents say they are at high risk of contracting potentially deadly diseases such as typhoid, cholera and dysentery, to say nothing of worms and other parasites.
“Hoteliers used to pour out the raw sewage at night during the rainy season but while it's dry they are doing it openly during the day,” Kabarnet resident Silas Komen said on Tuesday.
He spoke while pointing at a slow moving black mixture of human and food waste flowing through a tunnel along City Clock-Stadium Street in Kabarnet town.
“This has been the trend since 1980s but the situation worsens every day. People here can contract deadly diseases due to pathetic hygiene,” Komen said.
Other counties in the region also lack proper sanitation and designated dumpsites. As a result, residents toss litter everywhere. Thus, people toss rubbish, wet and dry, everywhere, blocking waterways leading to the county's main dams and lakes.
Peter Sergon, a car wash attendant, was forced to use a stick to pull out bottles that blocked the slowly flowing human sludge so he could divert it into a trench. Then he could get relatively 'clean' water to wash vehicles.
“We can’t access another source of water to do our business, we only have to divert the flowing sewers to get somehow 'clean' water for our clients,” Sergon said.
He said it is the only way they can earn a living for their families. He said residents and traders have raised the issue many times with county officials but the's no action.
Residents blamed former Cabinet CS for Water Simon Chelugui and Governor Stanley Kiptis for failing to fix water shortage and instal sewerage systems. They cite major towns such as Kabarnet, Eldama-Ravine, Marigat, Kabartonjo, Chemolingot and Mogotio.
Some ground flattening was seen in in Kabarnet before the project stalled since mid-last year.
Chelugu and Kiptis rebut the claims, saying during their tenure in office they have worked hard to improve water supply and sanitation across the county.
It gets worse. Apart from the situation in Kabarnet town, thousands of residents down in Tukwo, Kapsigorian and Sironoi in Baringo Central also face health risks.
Dirty water (a euphemism) flows downstream in the Kiberenge river connecting with the untreated sewage at the County Referral Hospital, Kabarnet.
Last year, communities led by Eldama Ravine Lembus Council of Elders chief Lawrence Bomet threatened to sue the government for failing to put up sewerage systems in Baringo towns.
He said rental houses and lodges were forced to flush out raw sewage into the locality hence, polluting the environment.
“Decomposing food and human waste are being disposed of openly in the towns. There is filth everywhere," he said.
Kabarnet-based civil society crusader Isaiah Biwott said it was time locals sued the state for putting people’s health risk.
“It is so unfortunate that the people of Baringo pay taxes like other Kenyans yet they lack such important public facilities as sewers,” Bomet said.
However, the county environment chief officer Richard Ruto said they have allocated a 24-acre plot at Kiboino area along the Kabarnet-Iten road to be used as a dumpsite.
He said the facility hasn’t been put into use to date owing to unresolved land disagreements.
The town currently heaps waste illegally on private land near an SDA church in Kaprogonya estate.
Nema county director Gilbert Magut termed deliberately causing environmental hazards a crime. He promised action.
Magut warned those disposing of waste carelessly and encroaching on and developing riparian lands that their days were numbered.
“Once got, they shall be arrested and arraigned,” Magut said.
Baringo towns have populations of more than 100,000 people each.
(Edited by V. Graham)
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