Zombies of Nairobi
Introduction
In Nairobi, a growing number of children live on the streets, surviving day to day in conditions shaped by poverty, neglect, and addiction. Often referred to as the Zombies of Nairobi, many of these young people spend their time in a daze, disconnected from their surroundings after inhaling cheap, toxic substances. The areas they live in—makeshift camps surrounded by garbage and waste—reflect just how far removed they are from basic safety, stability, and care.
At the center of this crisis is inhalant abuse, particularly glue sniffing, which has become one of the most accessible and widely used substances among street-connected youth. Unlike other drugs, inhalants are inexpensive, legal to obtain, and easy to conceal, making them incredibly dangerous, especially for children. The effects can be immediate and severe, including dizziness, hallucinations, loss of coordination, and long-term damage to the brain and body. Over time, repeated use can leave young people disoriented, vulnerable, and increasingly dependent.
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Quotes
"We are entering a city within a city – it's not a physical place, it has no borders, it's rather an hallucination inhabited by tens of thousands of kids. The dark obscure and brutal place hidden inside many plastic bottles. If you open them and sniff what's inside, you'll wake up in a world of zombies."1
"This is one of Nairobi's many dump sites – this place is surreal. If you were here now, you would feel the smell of shit and trash piled up throughout the years. Our journey into the city of zombies starts here. The desperate who live in this place obsessively inhale the fumes of a yellow liquid that they carry around everywhere. They're intoxicated, they're hungry." 2
"Many of them are so dazed that they experience brain blackouts, passing out for a few minutes. The solvents inside the glue can cause effects similar to a hangover – it's a depressant substance that can cause loss of concentration and lack of coordination, but it can also induce hallucinations and transform you into a very hostile and very aggressive person."
"It [jet fuel] has become the drug of choice for many street children who seek a quick relief from stress and anxiety. It's sufficient to just pour some liquid on a small rag and inhale it to be immediately hit by a rapid sequence of dizziness, vertigo, and hallucinations. Yet, exactly like glue, it lasts only a few minutes. In order to get a lasting effecting, the young jet fuel junkies need to sniff hundreds of times a day."
"No one cares about them except an Italian organization called Amani, which has been active for years all over Nairobi to provide hundreds of kids at least two hot meals a week. The luckiest of them get a golden opportunity: a chance to get away from the stress, glue, and jet fuel, and build their own future."
1 Estimating the exact number of children living on the streets of Nairobi is challenging due to the population's high mobility and the lack of a standardized official count. Many independent studies argue the official numbers are an undercount. These sources often estimate that as many as 60,000 children live and work on Nairobi's streets during the day, with roughly 3,000 children sleeping on the streets every night.
2 Research on street-involved children in resource-constrained settings shows that inhalant use is highly prevalent among this population, with studies reporting rates as high as 47% in some contexts. Substance use is strongly associated with prolonged time spent living on the street, exposure to abuse, peer influence, and survival-based social environments, where drug use often becomes embedded in daily coping and group survival dynamics.
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