Potholes. In Chicago, they make mosaics out of theirs. In New York, they create conceptual photographs with theirs. In Kampala, they fish in theirs. In Mpumalanga, they take baths in theirs.
Hate them or tolerate them, potholes are very much part of the city-dweller’s life. And nowhere is that truer than in Nairobi.
In commiseration with Nairobi’s pedestrians, cyclists and motorists, the folks at Lost in Nairobi have started More Potholes Than Roads, a collection of photographs of Nairobi’s potholes taken by the people who call the city home. The project will highlight the problem caused by potholes and other road-related challenges, and perhaps even motivate Kidero to repair every pothole and defect on Nairobi’s roads.
To submit photos of the craters,cracks, depressions and dents that make up Nairobi’s potholes, please contact us on: lostinnairobi@yahoo.com or alternatively, connect with us on twitter (@lostinnairobi) and hash-tag the photos #morepotholesthanroads
So begins Abdul, Jeevanjee Gardens’ resident tour-guide.
He stands in front of me, wagging an index finger that is coal-black with dirt.
“Lorry!” he says loudly, nodding and pausing between the two syllables for emphasis.
The red lollipop is back in his mouth. Abdul sucks on it loudly and with evident pleasure. When he jumps onto the low park bench, I notice that the brown of his bare soles matches the colour of the cardboard that spreads across the bench.
He runs around the park bench, the hood of his grey waterproof jacket flapping behind him, reenacting the speed and untimely demise of the ill-fated lorry in his story. Suddenly, he stops running and flashes a cheeky smile my direction. The one-man show is over; all is left is my surprise at how white Abdul’s teeth are.
On the opposite side of the park, a crowd of people has gathered around a man who is shouting something in Kiswahili. Is he a preacher, a street performer or a conman? Perhaps he is all three. This is Nairobi: a man can live many lives in a single day. Not too far from the crowd, a woman lies under an emaciated tree. She sits up abruptly and breaks into song. Abdul points at her.
“Angalia huyo! Mbaya!”
Who taught this little boy to recognise insanity, to label it as ‘bad’?
As if on cue, another woman – this one a stone’s throw away from where we are – sits up, takes a puff of her cigarette and begins to sing. She too lies on an unfolded cardboard box, surrounded by bulging plastic bags and empty soda bottles.
Abdul says nothing this time; the second woman is his mother.
He’s somber now, and we sit in silence for a minute.
His mother glances back at us a couple of times, turns around and pulls a thin blanket closer to her chin. Earlier, I approached her and offered to give her son my uneaten bowl of fruit salad. When she nodded assent, I asked what her boy’s name was.
“Abdul,” she said in a slurred voice, the effect of glue or some other intoxicant .
“But he’ll also answer to Musa.”
Abdul slides off the bench, kicks at the dust and points at an abandoned cardboard box.
“Look at that box,” he says. “People sleep in boxes.”
I look at the cardboard and a feeling of hopelessness, as heavy as the grey August clouds, descends upon me. It promises to rain tonight. Where does Abdul sleep when it rains?
In a useless bid to do something, anything, about the situation, I open the lid of my plastic bowl and push the fruit salad towards Abdul. He ignores my gesture and the motivation behind it.
Abdul does not want my charity.
What is there to pity? He may be barefoot and homeless but his body is solid and healthy-looking, and he is sharp and impressively articulate for a three year old. His daily struggles have imparted upon him two of the most important survival skills: vigilance and self-reliance. Place Abdul and my three year old son in a jungle and there is no question as to who will know where to forage for food, how to spot danger, and what would constitute as natural shelter.
I cover the dish, hand it over to Abdul and ask him to take it to his mother. He skips over to the avocado tree underneath which she lies. A woman in an ill-fitting suit stops by the tree and smiles. After the preliminaries, she hands over a black plastic bag to Abdul’s mother and disappears behind the small City Council building near the park’s entrance. Abdul shoves his hand into the plastic bag. I watch as he places the bag’s contents into his mouth and mull over how he’ll be affected once the Nairobi City County government completes redeveloping the park. As part of the ongoing rehabilitation, City officials will erect security lights and trim down the park’s fence. Will Abdul and others who call the park home be forcibly removed as a security measure?
Abdul returns to me, paper bag in hand. He places the bag between his thighs, revealing the goodies. Bhajia. This, he has no qualms polishing off. He raises his right hand and considers it. The oil from the fried potato slices has cleared a narrow, brown pathway across his dirt-black palm. I think of germs, of rotavirus.
“I’ll wash my hands,” he tells me. “At the City Council building.”
If he’s not clean then at least he has some awareness of personal hygiene.
He throws the greasy paper bag down. I ask him to pick it up and accompany me to the disposal bin. He obeys. The bin’s bottom is missing and the bag falls silently to the ground, defeating the lesson I was trying to impart on him. I wave goodbye and walk towards the nerve centre of town.
On Wabera Street someone puts the lights on in Trattoria. The lamps’ soft orange glow complements the restaurant’s yellow canopies. On the patio, a middle-aged Caucasian man breaks some Italian bread and pretends to read a book, ignoring the pleas of a beggar no much older than Abdul. The boy stands behind the man, begging him for a shilling through the low fence that surrounds the patio. The man is protected by the hedge but there is an invisible border too, one that the beggar-boy will never penetrate. I walk past, amazed that such disparate worlds can inhabit the same space.
Situated in Nairobi’s central business district, Jeevanjee Gardens was built in 1904 by Alibhai M. Jeevanjee, a Pakistan-born entrepreneur whose ventures included the supply of Indian workers to the colonial government for the Kenya-Uganda railway, the construction of various administrative buildings in Nairobi, and the launch of the African Standard, Kenya’s oldest print newspaper. Jeevanjee donated the recreational park to the colonial administration in 1906, and over the years, there were attempts to grab the gardens for private development. Jeevanjee’s grand-daughter Zarina Patel, environmentalist and Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai and other activists have in the past fought successfully to save the green space from the hands of private developers. In 2014, Nairobi City County government invested 30 million shillings for the park’s redesign and rehabilitation.
One-legged bench
A man naps
Jeevanjee’s statue
Electricity post
Lovers’ corner
Statue of Queen Victoria
Thinkers’ corner
Tree planted by Zarina Patel, Jeevanjee’s grand-daughter
Normally, I wouldn’t pay mind to the offerings on a children’s menu but today I am meeting with a prospective employer at Java. My would-be employer, an opinionated three year old with health freak-tendencies, is unhappy with the lack of variety on Java’s kiddies’ menu.
“Look at this!” the bossy toddler thunders, pointing at the paper that doubles as a menu and colouring page.
“No veg, no mashed potatoes, no mukimo, no juice! And, horror of horrors, no milk on the list? Are these people serious?”
He waves over a pretty waitress.
“This is discrimination! Do you guys have something against under-10s?”
The waitress giggles and recommends Java’s world-famous fish and chips. The toddler frowns and orders a cheese sandwich (toasted, no crust, no butter), fruit salad and an adult-sized glass of fresh mango juice. He also demands a customer feedback form. In less than ten minutes the waitress is back with the toddler’s meal, the feedback form, my Malindi Chai Latte, and a bigger smile on her face. At her heels is a slim, young man. A pin on his coffee-brown shirt proudly announces his position in the company. The grin that stretches across his smooth, espresso-toned face is so distracting that I forget his name as soon as he introduces himself. It could be Peter or Paul or John or Isaac; one of those common English names that is favoured by Christian Kenyans.
I expect the manager to say something banal and grating; something like:
What seems to be the problem?
Instead, he tilts his head slightly and listens intently to the toddler’s barrage of complaints. He nods and laughs disarmingly. When he has ascertained that the toddler has exhausted himself, he responds:
“You see, we used to have more items on the children’s menu. But we noticed that adults were ordering from the children’s menu. It’s cheaper, you see. And then they’d complain about the food portions!”
The toddler is pensive now; his scowl has been replaced by a ghost of a smile. He leans across the table.
“Imagine that,” he says to no one in particular, “a grown man ordering a meal from the children’s menu! What does that say about Nairobians, do you think?”
The manager laughs, thanks the toddler profusely for his feedback, bows slightly and bids us adieu.
Java’s Menu (photo credit: creative.co.ke)
And perhaps this – the customer service – more than Java’s pioneering spirit, is the secret to the coffee chain’s success.
Had the meeting with the bossy toddler taken place in Nairobi fifteen years ago, our choice of venue would have been limited to fast food chains (before Java there were Wimpy, Nandos and Steers), functional restaurants with little ambience, or the localised version of a British chippy: Kenchic. But Java opened its first restaurant in 1999 and the face of Nairobi’s cafe culture was transformed.
Java appeared and suddenly, it was cool to drink expensive cups of home-grown, home-brewed coffee surrounded by locally-made paintings of women with thundering thighs. Java became the thing you did on a Saturday afternoon with your girlfriends, the joint you took a woman you wanted to impress, the place you referred your American caffeine-addicted client to. Hell, Time even listed it as one of the top ten things to do in Nairobi.
If, like me, you grew up in middle-class Nairobi in the ’90s, then there are certain experiences that will forever remain etched in your memory: where you were when Kenya’s first FM station, 101.9 Metro FM, was opened after the liberalisation of the country’s airwaves in 1996 (at home, cramming for KCPE), what you were doing during the 1998 bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi (visiting with a friend in Riara), and your first visit to Kenya’s first coffee chain.
I first went to Java as a High School student sometime between 1999 and 2000. I have no recollection where I got the money for my chocolate chip cookie sundae from: unlike my friends, I did not have a monthly pocket money allowance (my parents chose to teach me the value of money by limiting my access to it). As my friends and I grew up, we frequented Java to catch up and to mark various milestones – surviving secondary school, graduation from university, our first jobs, falling in love for the first time, falling out of love for the nth time. As I grew, so too did Java, and perhaps in some ways Java and I grew up together: Java went from a fledgeling company with one outlet in Nairobi to a coffee chain with 19 cafes across Nairobi, Mombasa and Nakuru and ambitious expansion plans.
Java offered more than quality coffee, diverse menu options, comfort and ambience: it represented sophistication for the status-obsessed middle-class and social mobility for the working class. Nairobi’s middle-class wanted to be seen in Java; it’s working class aspired to go to Java. And this -Java’s influence on Nairobi’s urban culture – has never been better illustrated than in two songs by Sauti Sol and the Villagers’ Band, Kenya’s popular boy bands. In Sauti Sol’s Lazizi, a group of young men (presumably middle-class, all) sing of taking their special lady-friends to Java for coffee while the Villagers’ Band’s Kenchic tells of the woes of a working-class man whose special lady-friend prefers Java to the more wallet-friendly Kenchic.
But Java’s success is also reflective of the rise of the Kenyan consumer. Whether this increase in consumption – of cars, smart phones and other goods and services – is as a result of Kenya’s growing middle class or is actually due to debt-driven spending, one thing is for sure: there is an increase in the number of coffee shops in Nairobi and other urban centres in Kenya. The Artcaffe restaurant and bakery chain recently took over several Dorman’s coffee shops in Nairobi and Mombasa and Java intends to open 7 more outlets in Nairobi and Kampala soon. Growth is not limited to the coffee industry: international fast-food chains such as KFC and Subway have opened outlets in Nairobi to leverage Kenya’s rising economy.
Even with the growing competition, Java continues to hold a special place in the hearts of many Nairobi residents. This might explain why, two weeks after the new Java outlet on Kimathi street opened its doors, I could not find a free table.
City Park Entry (Photo Credit: Friends of City Park)
The other day I was walking down Limuru Road without sense or purpose, as you do when you are unemployed. In my company was Amazing Woman Number 7 (AW7) who is a student at the University of Nairobi and is therefore almost as idle and definitely more economically challenged than I am.
Off we went on our dusty, leisurely stroll. We walked past the flower vendors’ wares – mountains of sand, molehills of manure, a variety of flowering plants in black plastic bags, tired-looking swan-shaped flower pots, large colourful pots – all for sale, and all spread out over two hundred metres of what may or may not be part of the pedestrian path. We passed the lonely, faded-green pedestrians’ flyover, which seems to be resigned to the fact that its intended users will continue to treat it with disdain (they prefer instead, to run across the road) and that its caretakers, the Nairobi County government, have forsaken it. If that footbridge was human it would be a poorly-dressed middle-aged drunk; a loyal civil servant who was forced to take an early retirement.
Past the dejected footbridge and right after the Hawkers’ Market lies City Park, which at age 89 is almost four decades older than independent Kenya and perhaps deserves to be treated with more respect than it’s been shown over the years. According to its friends, City Park spreads over 60 hectares and is the only park in the city with an indigenous forest. Besides the highland forest, the park is home to various historical sites including World War I and II veterans’ cemeteries, botanic gardens, almost 1,000 species of flora and fauna, and most importantly, monkeys. When it was formed in 1925 the park measured 91 hectares but over the years, some industrious Kenyans decided that the public did not have much use for green spaces and they appropriated tens of hectares of the land. Some have stated that in recent years more sections of the park have been encroached upon by private developers and that the park now only consists of 19 hectares of land. Friends of City Park have actively fought against land-grabbing and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture recently threatened to stall its plans to invest $20 million into the park’s rehabilitation until the land-grabbing issue is resolved by the government.
Sykes Monkeys at City Park (Photo Credit: Wildlife Direct)
I had not been to City Park before, but I had heard a lot about the mystical monkeys that reside within. As AW7 and I walked into the park, I wondered about the monkeys’ famed magical powers. Can they heal all manner of psychological disorders? Do they levitate while meditating? Do they sit around a fire and tell the park’s visitors tales of times past? Suffice it to say, I was looking forward to going into the park’s interior and meeting the monkeys.
As fate would have it, though, we stumbled upon a football match taking place on one of the fields near the park’s entrance. The teams, while enthusiastic, fully staffed and well kitted, were working in poor conditions. The field – vast and dry – was littered with sweet wrappers, empty peanut packets, green and red scratch cards, banana peels and all manner of rubbish that spoke of the general population’s troublesome relationship with dustbins. Where grass grew, it was in dry, green-brown tufts that resembled the last bits of hair on a balding man’s head. The goal posts were so small, it was unclear whether the football pitch was intended for use by anyone over the age of six. Worst of all, there were no spectators. And so, because we are community service-oriented individuals (certainly not because it was hot and we were too lazy to walk the park’s 60 or 19 hectares) we decided to take a detour and watch the game. What, after all, is a football match without spectators?
The football match
“Mu-ghe-mbo, mu-ghe-mbo!” one of the players called out in that French accent that some women find irresistible. It was completely wasted on AW7.
“Ati unasema?” asked AW7.
Which can be loosely translated to mean: I’m not impressed. Also: what in heaven’s name are you saying?
AW7, bless her, is a young lady of virtue, intelligence and many talents but tact is not her strongest points.
“Mu-ghe-mbo, mu-ghe-mbo! Bonjour!”
It took me some minutes to work out what he was saying (mrembo) and that this term of endearment was directed at AW7; because let’s face it, I may be gifted but I’m no beauty. We waved to the player and his colleagues, who by now had stopped playing to appreciate the mrembo, walked to the bottom end of the field and sat under one of the trees.
Under the adjacent tree was a man who was lying on his stomach and snoring contentedly. Next to him a monkey sat cross-legged, chewing popcorn thoughtfully and watching the players. Around its neck was thick black thread from which a whistle dangled. I wondered if the monkey coached one of the teams.
(AW7 denies ever seeing the monkey but she did not consume enough Omega 3 fish oil when she was a child and her eyesight cannot be trusted.)
AW7 watches the match
Both teams clearly took diversity seriously: there were men of varied ages, heights, body-sizes, and crucially, hairstyles. There were tall dread-locked men, stout balding middle-aged men, and men in fro-hawks that were more outstanding than Paul Pogba’s. Some were running easily, some were huffing and puffing, some were standing around with hands akimbo, and all were shouting to each other in rapid French. The only thing they didn’t seem to have gotten right was geographical representation: as far as I could tell, they were all from West Africa. Who were these men? Did they live in Nairobi? What did they do that allowed them time off to play football on a Wednesday mid-morning? I needed some answers.
During half-time AW7 remembered that she had a class that afternoon and so our day of leisure was cut short. One of her admirers saw us get up and came over to talk to us. Unfortunately, he was more interested in badgering AW7 for her mobile number than he was in answering my questions. I did manage to get one response from him though: the group plays football in City Park twice a week. It can therefore be safely assumed the players live in Nairobi.
I will return to City Park soon: to see the rest of the park, to interview the West African footballers, to witness the monkeys’ incredible powers and to help Friends of City Park clean up.
As I am in polite company, it is only polite that I introduce myself.
Begin with the basics:
Name: Binti (not my real name, obviously)
Age: Under 35 (So technically, still a ‘youth’)
Gender: Still working this one out
Employment status: Unemployed (which is why I have time to write a blog)
Nationality: Kenyan (although I’m told that I could easily pass for Ugandan, Ethiopian or British, which is a very important quality to have in today’s globalised world)
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about the thinking behind this blog. It occurred to me the other day that Nairobi is not Kenya. What a discovery! Just as London is not representative of all of England, Nairobi is not representative of the peoples, cultures, economy and politics in other regions in Kenya. The reality, of course, is that both cities dominate their respective countries’ political, economic and cultural make-up. I won’t get into the whys and wherefores, although if you are interested, some clever people have written about why the UK is London-centric and whether Kenya’s recent political devolution will distribute economic activity and wealth equitably across the newly-formed 47 counties.
Back to my epiphany. Nairobi is not Kenya. Yes, but what is this animal called Nairobi? I lived in the city for about 15 years before leaving it. It was only when I returned, after some years away, that I realised that I do not know Kenya’s capital city very well. Over and above the realisation that economic, political and cultural activity should not be concentrated on my city to the detriment of other regions, over and above my awe at the new Chinese-built highways, over and above my irritation at the numerous apartment buildings that would have you believe that they’ve always been there, I recognise that I am as much a foreigner in Nairobi as a tourist whose plane just landed. Perhaps I was always a foreigner: because when you live in a place since childhood, you don’t pay much attention to it. You don’t look at it from the curious and critical eyes of a visitor.
What is the character of this city; what makes it tick, what makes it work, what makes it not work? What is its history? Who is a ‘Nairobi man’? Who is a ‘Nairobi woman’? Why do ‘Nairobi men’ seem to be so suspicious of ‘Nairobi women’, and vice versa? Is the Sheng word for fifty still ‘finje’ or has it been replaced by a newer, hipper word? Do matatus still show music videos? What do non-Nairobians think of the city and its residents? Where in God’s name is Jericho? Why, pray do tell, are there pool-sized potholes on a pedestrian path in Westlands?
I want to re-discover Nairobi. I want to go to every corner of the city, breathe in its polluted air, get stuck in its world-famous traffic, and get stopped by its even-more-world-famous traffic cops. I want to walk around the city for hours, I want to argue with a matatu tout over the fare, I want to visit the city’s churches, mosques and temples, I want to photograph the city’s idlers, hawkers, beggars and hustlers. Mostly, I want to meet the city’s inhabitants and hear their stories and see the city through their eyes. And perhaps by re-discovering the city, I will learn something about myself and my fellow (wo)man.
Lost in Nairobi 