In two slums of Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi — Kibera and Dagoretti — the handling of life’s most precious resource hangs in a tumultuous balance, tight-rope walking a fine line between reverence and exploitation. Here, there is no easy access to clean, drinkable water.
Without adequate sanitation or infrastructure, sewage, garbage and the bloated carcasses of animals litter the streams that run through the streets and alleyways of the slums. It’s these same polluted streams in which children play and women carefully sidestep on their way to and from a safe water point each and every day.
The time-consuming and constant struggle to obtain clean water is rife with power dynamics, disease concerns and profiteering, and it’s this relationship to water and the layers of everyday life it influences that is the focus of a team of University of Cincinnati professors’ recently released documentary, The Intimate Realities of Water.
The documentary, which premiered locally at the Esquire Theatre on World Water Day (March 22), was filmed on-location in Kibera and Dagoretti over a two-week period in August and September of 2015. The three-person crew was comprised of political science and architecture professor and producer Adrian Parr and father and son Jon and Sean Hughes — the former, an emeritus professor of journalism, was director of photography and the latter, an assistant professor of journalism/photojournalism, was videographer.
Gathering water is a task generally left to the women in these communities. Sometimes multiple times a day, they traverse the landscapes of the slums they call home to fill their colorful jerrycans with water for their families, repeatedly lugging home the 40-pound former fuel containers. For Mary, one of four Dagoretti women at the forefront of the film, the journey for water takes her down a dusty path behind her shack, where she passes people as they relieve themselves on the corner. She then maneuvers her way through a field used as a makeshift trash site to reach a water pump on the other side, where she then pays for and collects the water she and her family drink.
Access to water — and the quality of the water these slums have access to — are issues that seep into the varying cavities of daily life. The inflated price of water and its safety, compromised by industry pollution and water-born illnesses such as cholera, typhoid and hepatitis, are just some of the trials explored in the film.
Parr, who is also director of the Taft Research Center at UC, is no stranger to these slums. As United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization co-chair of water access and sustainability, she has made many trips to both Kibera and Dagoretti in order to better understand the water-related issues the communities face.
During one of those visits, Parr fell into one of the “dark, chemically, biologically infested streams” she had often seen children playing tag near. Over the next few days, the shoes she wore that day began to fall apart.
“They came unstuck, unglued, because the water I had fallen into was so contaminated it was corroding the shoes,” Parr says. “And this is what kids are playing in? This is what animals are drinking, the animals that are being consumed by human beings?”
Looking for a way to relay these experiences in an ethical and personal manner, Parr pursued the storytelling medium of film. “It shifts the power dynamic from a white woman coming into the area and finding the story on her own terms to the community leading you through their community,” she says. “That was very important for us, to shift that dynamic.”
In doing so, the crew was able to give the individuals in these communities a close-up. Gathering personal portrayals in an effort to put a face to the facts and figures was a goal for videographer Sean. “The data’s not going to tear your heart. The data’s not going to make a connection with your human instincts,” he says.
To keep a low profile, the crew brought a limited amount of equipment throughout their travels. “We didn’t want to alter the situation in any way. We wanted to keep it as genuine as possible,” Sean says.
For Mary, whom Parr originally met through her work with UNESCO, access to water defines the tempo of her life. Her daily routine begins by using water to make chai tea and sending her daughter to get greens that will be cooked for lunch and dinner. Ugali, a dish of floury paste, will also require fresh water. They wash clothes using two to three buckets of water; the grayish waste from the process is then used to clean the plastic covering laid atop the dirt floor of Mary’s shack. If it’s hot outside, the remainder of the water is sprinkled on the ground by the entrance to keep dust from venturing inside.
“The rituals of the day are organized around how that water can be recycled,” Parr says.
On the flip side, in Kibera, a long-standing slum made up of 15 densely populated villages, “water lords” cut into the pipes of the water infrastructure system and siphon off portions to sell for profit. (Several water projects have developed out of Kibera due to its visibility and close proximity to Nairobi, whereas the relatively young Dagoretti has not seen as much improvement in water access.)
Parr likens these water lords to drug lords, using their brawn to keep illegal ownership of their supply. By proxy, water markets are established, wherein the resource becomes “almost like a weapon of war,” she says.
“Water is our greatest resource and our most abused resource,” Sean adds. “It’s our new oil. That’s the new battleground around the world. And as those resources are depleted or contaminated, the haves and the have-nots continue to grow.”
Between gang activity, sanitation concerns and accessibility, the nature of water in these slums is a complicated web of cause and effect. “Water is part of this much larger story,” Parr says. “We can’t just isolate it as just a problem of infrastructure.”
Despite such difficult circumstances, the urban fabric of the areas depicted in the film exudes the human spirit — what Parr describes as an abundance of “joy and generosity” despite the adversity.
In an effort to draw more attention to the issues surrounding the film, the crew submitted their work to various festivals. Last year, it won Best Documentary at the United International Independent Film Festival and Best Picture at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival last year, among other awards.
To learn more about THE INTIMATE REALITIES OF WATER and upcoming screenings, visit facebook.com/intimaterealitiesofwater.
