Why Nairobi identity has to be recognised

Yet, most of the politicians seeking to score a point have worked before in the city governments of the past, or they own some of the property that has blocked waterways, or have had opportunity to raise policies that would have made Nairobi better livable for a majority of its people, or are contractors for the various projects that have made Nairobi, previously a swamp, into one huge concrete jungle.

Several other ‘professional’ groups are hassling one another out of the doorway for TV or radio interviews, spewing jargon that really mean little or nothing to thousands of Nairobians who live in crowded slums, on riparian land, without sewerage services, without regular potable water supply, without storm water drain ways, without the possibility of rescue or escaping in case floods storm their houses; without a reason to call Nairobi home, in any sense that the word carries.

Read: From Ainsworth to Sakaja: How Nairobi built a flood disaster

These professionals, from architects, engineers, urban planners to environmental officers, seem to have completely ignored the identity of Nairobi in their work. The old description of the ‘green city in the sun’ does not appear to provoke deeper reflection in the minds of those eager to build another skyscraper in Nairobi.

The architectural plans of most buildings in Nairobi have some flimsy reference to ‘green’. Indeed, the representation of nearly all building plans, as imagined by the architect (but, should we say AI) has some green background or provision for greening the building or the neighborhood. But the green dream just ends there. In the end what is delivered is a jungle of concrete and glass. In this urban concrete, life is lived as a rat race.

Nairobi may be the only city in the world with a national park within its borders. But one can bet that thousands of Nairobians do not know this fact, and will live happily (or sadly) in the city, retire and return home or go to Lang’ata Cemetery without visiting the park. Why? Because there is no time for such luxuries for a majority of the city dwellers.

Nairobi has a bad name in literature. Meja Mwangi’s writings remain the sharpest observation on the city of Nairobi. In Kill Me Quick, Nairobi rejects the youth. Meja and Mwangi are outrightly excluded from the working of the city. They live on the streets and when they find work, it hardly pays a living wage. In the end, the city either spits the youth out or sends them to jail, where they have no chance of making a life for themselves thereafter. This problem persists to date despite thousands of young people traveling to Nairobi in search of that elusive good life. 

Meja Mwangi continues to examine the existential problem of the city in Going Down River Road and The Cockroach Dance. Ochola and Bathroom Man in the two texts, respectively, for example, degenerate from the squalor of Ochola, who lives in the shanty lands of Nairobi to the ‘madness’ of the Bathroom Man. These are not just persons on the margin of the mainstream of city’s life but people who appear to be non-people.

Read: Ignored warnings: How poor planning left Nairobi exposed to deadly floods

Charles Mangua’s Son of Woman, for instance, gives the reader a seemingly okay guy, a civil servant. But what the ‘son of woman’, Dodge Kiunyu’s life shows is nothing but a permanent state of ‘dodging’ all manner of issues in life, from alcoholism, to failed love relationships, to ending up in a failed robbery. In the end, Dodge Kiunyu dodges the city when he migrates to Mombasa with his childhood friend, now a wife. The city spits him out, and he hopefully dodges its seemingly life-sucking force.

There is more than enough of this literature, which has often been discussed as popular urban fiction, but which in the end is really a dramatisation of the inhospitable nature of city life. My Life in Crime by John Kiriamiti simply warns of a crime-ridden space. My Life with a Criminal extends the tale. My Life in Prison may appear as if it is a closure on the ‘crime narrative.’ However, the redemption is only temporary. For the city sucks one into its belly and spits out a broken body and soul. Which is why in his writing, Ngugi wa Thiong’o appears to be running away from the city. In both Devil on the Cross and Petals of Blood city life is depicted as evil and worth avoiding.

The image of Nairobi is quite appealing on first encounter. Any young person who arrives in Nairobi in search of a job or any other opportunity, such as education or training, will be excited at the bright lights, plentiful restaurants, the planned or unplanned neighborhoods, the colleges, office blocks, the factories, shops, cars etc. It is a promising place. It offers the individual a chance to dream, in the short and long run. But the dreaming can go on forever. The dreaming can end up as a nightmare. The lack of jobs, the imbalance between income and expenses, the crime, the violence; the rat race to beat deadlines, find work, pay bills, send money to relatives back home etc. The individual, just like the Bathroom Man, ends up in an unending cycle of doing but not succeeding, working without satisfaction, appearing to be on the move socioeconomically but one is actually stuck in an unending cycle.

It is quite difficult to love Nairobi. Like it, yes. There are some good neighborhoods. The best hospitals are in Nairobi. It has fairly acceptable schools and colleges. The shopping malls could make one imagine that they are somewhere in Dubai, London, New York or Johannesburg. But suddenly meeting raw sewage, even in supposedly exclusive neighborhoods, or being charged by a speeding motorcycle that is on the wrong side of the road, or chokora daring you to pass him without buying him lunch, or stopping 10 centimetres away from a gaping manhole, can wake one violently from the dream of making it.

As a recently launched publication NYI-ROBI declares, ‘Nairobi is one big high school, and we are all teenagers crushed by peer pressure and serious FOMO, cosplaying as adults. A very large overstimulated, chronically online high school where nobody ever graduates and everyone insists they are doing fine.” Nairobi can be this dark. But, well, even in this darkness, in the good old swamp, with its sewage and flooding, some dreams are still realised.

The writer teaches at the University of Nairobi. [email protected]