It’s easy to moan about Nairobi. Moan about floods. Moan about traffic-jam and “matafakas” cutting you off in traffic. Moan about the drainage system and about Sonko. (Those two are not related.) It’s easy, in moments of cynicism to think the worst of Nairobi, how hopeless and desperate it has all become. It’s easy to stare at KICC and get angry at the Koreans for putting their logo up there. (Yeah, like Ketepa will put a banner up there?). And don’t you just hate this new army of obnoxious motorbike guys with their stinky leather jackets in 32 degree heat, choking life on the roads and literally begging you to run them over? It’s so easy to sit and think this city has totally gone to the hounds. Well, until you leave the country and you realise that, with all its dysfunctions, this is heaven. That there is a reason expats cling to the trousers of the immigration ladies when it’s time for them to go back home.
The other day I thought, “What is my Nairobi?” Then I asked the same question to a few chaps. Here is Nairobi as seen by myself and a few different folk.
Best Western Hotel
You are sitting in the house on a Saturday night, no plan, feeling depressed because you are broke and someone said, Acha I will call you later for drinks and they didn’t call. And the mama you were hoping to hook up with hasn’t said a word even though the two ticks have turned blue. You feel like you aren’t loved. That your life is over. You have a loose 1K? (Surely you must). Wait until 10pm and drive to Best Western Hotel, take the elevator to 7th floor, use the stairs to 8th, there is a bar there called Level 8. It’s overpriced and it’s blue, so don’t go in. (Not yet). Stand at the edge of the rooftop, turn the collar of your jacket, thrust your hands in your pocket and look out at the arresting vista of Nairobi. There is nowhere in Nairobi with a more spectacular view of Nairobi than that rooftop. It’s gobsmackingly gorgeous. Don’t take a picture, because this is an image you store in your heart. Later, jump into Level 8 and order a hot toddy.
Old, meet new.
The bank sits in a building on the corner of Kenyatta Avenue and Muindu Mbingu Street (I think). It’s an old building, probably built at the start of the century. Pre-colonial architecture: Arched windows. Heavy wooden doors in deep brown. White and gray concrete that refuses to age. The pillars at the entrance, they stand so tall you HAVE to tilt your head back to see how far up they run.
Working my way up the stairs past those pillars reels me back to a time where nothing surrounded this building but open opportunity. And time momentarily stands still when I am stepping into the bank. When I have one foot in and one foot out, I feel as if I am crossing over the line that separates one century from another. I overhear conversations. Men on the outside speak of building a great city, men on the inside are writing cheques and counting bills to conquer that city. They don’t speak, their money speaks for them.
The men on the outside built us a city – our city – and we took it from them.
The energy this building exudes defines Nairobi for me; an energy that drives men who dream of building and conquering cities. My words shiver with that energy.
The sun.
They once called it the “The Green City in The Sun.” The only green left, perhaps, are in the golf courses. But the sun stayed on. I asked Ayisi Makatiani – Venture Capitalist, CEO Fanisi Capital – what his Nairobi is and he said, “Nairobi for me is a perfect sunny day, and they are more of them in Nairobi than any other city I have visited or lived in. Despite the cloudy or dry days that you might occasionally get, the perfect sunny days in Nairobi more than makes up.”
Uhuru Highway Traffic
There is a scene in Training Day where Denzel tells Hawke to roll down his window and “listen” to the sound of the street. We spend time in traffic in our air conditioned cars, locking out Nairobi. Crack it open next time as you sit there immobile. Let the spirit of Nairobi fill your car. That sound you hear, that restless sound? That is the sound of Nairobi’s inertia.
Sharwama; Diamond Plaza
Go at 9pm. Ask for this kao guy called Jackson. His number is 0725 616687. Get that chicken in coconut sauce and two garlic naans. Eat with your hands. Then later sit there and have a fresh pineapple-mint juice and watch the smorgasbord of Asian families on a night-out. It’s a carnival, this place. There is a family on the next table; they have this amazingly handsome little boy whose chin is at the edge of the table, as he struggles to see the rest of the table, and his sandaled feet swing gaily from the edge of the bench. That boy’s innocence has not been scratched by the city and it drowns all the hubbub around you. Finish your juice and go home.
Kaldis in the rain.
Her name is Joy and she has a face so beautiful it hurts my eyes. I meet those eyes the moment I walk into Kaldis Coffee, wet from the rain. Joy finds me a place to sit. Kaldis was once this quiet spot where I slid into to get away from the heavy breathing streets of Nairobi. These days it is always full and noisy. Murmurs gather in the air and hold a raucous kamkunji. I have been meaning to find another spot which chaps from Nation Media Group have not turned into a spot for informal meetings. But I still do not know any other place that serves better milkshakes. And then there is Joy. She is the kind of waitress that makes it hard to leave. She has a heart I would like to kiss.
I sit facing the door. Outside, the sky is leaking. Joy comes back with a menu. I look up at her, at those African poetry eyes and say,
“Jaber, get me a vanilla shake and…”
“…sirloin steak, well done with chips. I know.”
Meanwhile outside, water rolls down the glass door like tears from a tired heart. Nairobi is weeping, but I know she is not one bit sad.
A city stirs.
Chris Bitti – CEO, the TheDBagency – lives on the penthouse suite of International House. Sometimes at 5am he steps off his balcony with a cup of tea in hand he looks over the city slowly stirring awake. “It’s still at that time, there are a few people up and about but mostly it’s still. But you can feel the city slowly awaken, like a hungry giant. You can feel something major coming, like this massive wave that is building somewhere and is headed right to the heart of the city and you know something serious will happen in the day, you know someone out there is about to take your place. Nairobi is a beautiful hell.”
The Tunnel
The only place Tamms loves more than a swimming pool is that tunnel that gets you off Thika Road and into Forest Road. That tunnel that looks like you are in Nairobi’s large intestine. She could be asleep at the back of the car but you have to wake her up to experience that tunnel or she sulk for hours. “It’s because of the darkness, and the lights,” she explains. Whenever I drive through there I tilt the rear view mirror and watch her at the back, the lights slashing her face in rapid succession and when we finally emerge into the sunlight she always says, “let’s do it again!”
I am from Nairobi.
I am from Nai. Tried. Tested. Contented. Being there, done that and did not even want the T-shirt. My Nairobi is all about contrasts. The anguish of bumper to bumper traffic on Langata Road versus the open savannah of the Nairobi National park. Totally English. Karen Blixen, afternoon tea on greens at Muthaiga. Little India. Maru Bhajias at DP in Parklands. Or standard Central cuisine with Kienyeji boilo, mukimo at Njuguna’s. Best of Kisumu flavours at Mama Oliech’s in Dago for fresh fish and osuga. Bonding with the boys. Kuku choma, beer baridi and a car wash at Nairobi West. Back uptown for a little bohemian experience. Cappuccino at Java House. Chilled Mojitos at Mercury but still keep it real with a White Cup and Rhumba at Carnivore. Bourgeois Picnic for the expat friends at Blankets n Wine. Shake a leg at Choices Baricho Road with the clande before the Midnight ratchet special at F1 with the usual perverts. Mdundo, Old school with E-Sir and Ogopa DJs. Doing the Lipala with Sauti Sol or the sophisticated air guitar with Jonathan Butler at Safaricom Jazz. This is my Nai.
The Post Office.
I recently went to the registered mail section of the post office to get my mail from abroad. It’s down a steep staircase that drops you into the soulless pit of GPO. There I found a sluggish and uninspired old man who shuffled around in sandals. (It was a Saturday). He barely looked at me (or my ID) as he pointed with dark nails at the place I should sign. It was this old massive book. Then he went and sat on this wooden chair with a sigh (or was it the chair that sighed?) and got back to his newspaper and mug of steaming tea and I wondered if he had an email address.
Three wise men?
“There are three men on Kenyatta Avenue. They have been standing there for nearly eight decades, watching as the swampy town became a city right in front of them. The man on the left is wearing a shuka and carrying a staff in one hand, as if he is going to herd goats and not to kill other men. He has his gun slung, almost like an afterthought, to his left arm. You can tell he wants the one in the middle to think he is staring at him, but his gaze goes far higher. The one in the middle is a conformer, in his ironed shorts and military pose. He is a man of war, the kind you don’t want to mess with. He stares at the obelisk on the other side, the story of another war. The third man has a rifle strung to his left shoulder. There isn’t much to him, not enough character even other than a seeming discomfort with his new role.
There are three men on Kenyatta Avenue. They share the same rock, a symbol of a shared destiny lost in the sands of time, in the stories of other thousands of men forced to be the ‘feet and hands of the army.’ Under their feet, Rudyard Kipling promises “Even if you die, your sons will remember your name.” But their sons didn’t, and their stories got lost in the struggles that followed. Their story is Nairobi’s story, untold.”
Mama Ngina
Stand at the edge of Hilton, facing Mama Ngina Street at 8pm, when a large throng of people are heading home. Its thick mass of humanity, worn faces who are always hopeful about tomorrow. One entrepreneur told me, “When you see this mass going home you can’t help asking yourself, ‘what product do I have to come up with so that all these people can buy it?’”
The streets!
It is an early Monday morning, the chill is at its harshest and the roads are flooded. Flooded by hordes of people and vehicles wading through the water.
Like always, everybody is in a rush. Navigating through the pavements, I catch whiffs of the weekend on people’s’ breaths. Cars pass by, splashing water on us because, well, that’s what floats their boat (read vitz). Archives looms large, indifferent to everything happening around it. It has had to endure Gor Mahia fans for eons, nothing much can surprise it now. It does not give a shit that for all the lessons they could learn from their past, Nairobians prefer to use it in giving directions because it knows that’s how Nai peeps are. They do not conform. For every person complaining of floods, there’s three blighters, not necessarily kyuk, thinking of the dough they could make if rice grew on flooded tarmac. It is all so fascinating. As I trot down Tom Mboya street, I walk past the same people daily; the balding newspaper vendor with playboy magazines hidden beneath Parents, the conductors who double up as peddlers and the capped dude who walks around selling dummies to dummies.
The only thing you can be sure of, and that I have learned about Nai, is that it don’t belong to your mother.
Joe Black -Insyder Magazine. (Look at that, Joe Black got a job!)
The great divide
If you stand on the balcony of any of the residences of the new National Housing corporation houses in Langata, something powerful is clear. Immediately below you, the rooftop of your little 2.0cc car is clear. After that, another block, then the wall, the big one. The slum starts immediately after it, and that wall makes all the difference. You are standing on the middle class side, where the gates create the big difference between you and everyone else. Rusty tin roofs litter the horizon, with the slum’s streets invisible to your bird’s eye view. Yet your host’s househelp comes from the other side, because it is the only way the system works. The wall separates the lower working class from the lower middle class. Nairobi is defined by its walls. Gray and unforgiving, at least on the side you can see from the balcony, that wall makes all the difference. Nairobi’s walls are its stories.
Best Band in Town
Calabash Band. Tuesdays and Thursdays, Explorer Tavern, Kilimani. Izzo on keyboard. Mayor on drums. Johnny Bass on guitar. Then, standing before the microphone, is Linda Muthama, breaking this musical testosterone with a voice that anchors the night (and you) in one spot.
When birds mate
Nairobi is a place of extremes, the litmus of limits and testing point of resilience. It shuffles your cards, topples your dominos and rearranges your normal nervous balance. Take traffic jams. The melting pot of all pseudo-classes. We meet here every day from 6am to 9pm. The poor and the rich: the pragmatic and the romantic. Traffic equalizes us all then neatly encapsulates Nairobi’s two great exports: radio and patience. We sit and listen to radio hosts talk about traffic with the same enthusiasm teenage boys talks about veet. You try to be patient as you watch two grand Marabou stocks recklessly mate on top of a tree branch above your car. We pray that at least the Mbukinya bus in front of us will have moved before the birds break the branch. We pray the guy hawking life saver vests gets to you before the flash floods hit town. We watch as the sun sits on the horizon like an old sultan as it eats the skyline like yams. Then, the city will turn to a smorgasbord of grace, soft crime, jazzy tranquility and Sabina Joy. And for the rest of us in traffic, radio and patience. But let me tell you what Nairobians have managed to do that other cities have not – they have anaesthetized themselves against Nairobi. You’ll know because the next morning, in their true métier, Nairobians will all meet up again in traffic.
What is YOUR Nairobi? Tell us.