A record-strength El Nino is bearing down on Kenya, threatening to displace nearly 900,000 people and flood the country's poorest riverside communities, who are bracing for a repeat of last season's deadly deluge.
In Kibera, one of Africa's largest informal settlements, Agnes Shikoli, 62, lives just metres from the Ngong river in an iron-walled home that flooded to waist height in March. Her sister, Beatrice Khalayi, 58, died of electrocution when water engulfed her house, one of more than 60 Kenyans killed by floods this year.
The short rainy season, which runs from October to December and peaks in November, is set to be far harsher. The odds of a very strong El Nino between October and December stand at 81 percent, fueled by a powerful Pacific system paired with a warm Indian Ocean, in a pattern reminiscent of the catastrophic rains of 1997.
Nairobi's drainage, built for 2.5 million people but now overwhelmed by a daytime population near seven million, is a key reason the floods turned deadly. Clogged channels and riverside shacks swept away in minutes put up to 100,000 low-income residents at risk in the worst case.
City crews in high-visibility vests are hauling garbage from riverbeds, yet a full sewer overhaul carries a 192 million dollar price tag that neither the national government nor the struggling city council can easily afford. For families like Shikoli's, who scrape by on about two dollars a day, the choice is stark: flee with nowhere to go, or stay and hope.