Tony Mochama (left), author of Nairobi: A Night Guide through the City-in-the-Sun, book signing Phoenix CEO John Mwazemba's copy. The book gives a rare close-up of Nairobi, a certain culture in a certain time and place that could otherwise be lost in oblivion with the passage of time as the city evolves. PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
The book gives a rare close-up of Nairobi, a certain culture in a certain time and place that could otherwise be lost in oblivion with the passage of time as the city evolves.
An adventurous lover of life, his writing sometimes sounds like a promise of endless summers, perpetual tans and perfect waves.
Nairobi, as someone remarked, always has streams of people walking at any time. It’s one of the mysteries of the city.
Mochama and Cole are in good company of other writers who loved, lived and walked the lengths and breadths of other cities and documented them for others, whether through fiction or non-fiction.
“The light drains out of the evening sky until it looks like a cheap T-shirt whose colours have run from over-washing. Nairobi, by weekday, is a mad asylum of matatu mayhem and stone-faced pedestrians hurrying to get home.
The Nairobi Night Runner is street-bumped by an albino and a pretty, square-faced girl in Nairobi’s Tom Mboya Street where it is said 100,000 people storm by, daily and nightly”.
