Lead image for Meet the six women firefighters transforming emergency response in Mukuru .
Mukuru Viwandani is the kind of place where a fire can destroy a family in under ten minutes. Wooden houses sit wall to wall, pathways are too narrow for a fire truck to pass easily, and illegal electricity connections run overhead like a web waiting to catch. When a fire breaks out here, the damage is fast, and it is total. It is also, of all places, where six young women in their 20s have chosen to work as firefighters.
They grew up in these same lanes, in Mukuru Kwa Njenga and Kayaba, and they know exactly what fire does to a neighbourhood like theirs. That is partly why, when the fire engine arrives and its doors swing open, and it is these six who climb out in heavy boots and soot-stained helmets, the residents who line the alleys to watch do not quite know what to make of it.
They trained under the Morendat Institute of Oil and Gas (MIOG) petroleum and hazardous material response programme, and they are quietly rewriting what emergency response looks like in Nairobi's informal settlements. These are areas that firefighters dread: tightly packed wooden houses, narrow paths that block trucks, illegal power lines that spark danger at the worst possible moment. For these six, that danger is simply where their skills matter most.
"We know the risks, but we are not scared as young women. We have what it takes to join the global history of women fighting fire against all odds," says 24-year-old Veronica Monyanyi. She still remembers watching fires tear through her neighbourhood, helpless to do anything about it; a memory that pushed her to join the training. "The skills I have acquired have made me bolder and more ready to fight fire for the sake of protecting life and property."
For Olympia Mbatha, the pull was more personal. "When I was 15, I watched a neighbour's house in Mukuru Kwa Njenga burn to ashes in less than ten minutes, because nobody knew how to handle a cooking gas leak. A three-year-old child died in that fire. That day, something changed inside me. Joining this training wasn't just about getting a diploma, it was a promise I made to ensure another mother in our slums doesn't lose a child to preventable flames."
Read: Woman survives second fire as Mukuru inferno kills two
She has been told, more than once, that a woman's body cannot carry a 30kg hose or lift a casualty but decided not to listen. "Fire doesn't care if you are male or female; it only respects skill, stamina and strategy. We are here to prove that women can lead on the frontlines of disaster response."
Vivian Moraa says the training has put her on equal footing with her male counterparts, preparing her for everything from wood and mattress fires to chemical combustion, oil spills and LPG tank incidents. What drives her, she says, is the precision and discipline that disaster management demands, sharpened by her own experience of living in an informal settlement.