This month, the city of Nairobi marks 124 years of existence. It is a birthday that is hardly observed, though there are many lessons that we can learn from the pioneers’ mistakes.
Nairobi, surprisingly, is a city still experimenting. It is still struggling with sanitation, housing, and city planning – and to politicians, it is a vast reservoir of voters.
The history of Nairobi, unlike other towns, is a story of chance. For those who have watched Keekopey or Kamakis grow from one butchery to a small trading centre, that is how Nairobi grew, with leaders who could not make decisions.
The Uganda Railway officials did not have a name for the place. On the railway map, it was Mile 327. That was before a signboard appeared at the railway station with the inscription “Nyrobe”, borrowed from a Maasai name. It was later spelt as Nairobi.
Of all urbanised spaces in East Africa, Nairobi is still the most attractive and, administratively, the most challenging. It is a magnet for many people seeking to earn a living and is an ideal idling space for subalterns. As a result, Nairobi gives its managers common nightmares — you can ask Governor Johnson Sakaja.
One of the ironies of the city is that when it started, it was nicknamed the “tin town of East Africa” thanks to the various houses built of tin and corrugated iron sheets.
Most of the writers of the time noted the ugliness of the emerging town. For instance, John McCutcheon, in 1910, observed: “Nairobi is not a beautiful place, but it is new and busy, and the people who live there are working wonders in changing a bad location into what someday will be a pretty place.”
Zones of poverty and plenty
The tragedy is that the city has divided itself into zones of poverty and plenty and has continued with the class divisions of the colonial state. Some parts of Nairobi would still fit chief railway engineer George Whitehouse's description of a "desolate … windswept swamp".
If you look at the slums of Nairobi, you get the impression that the “tin town” tag has not been erased – and that will not be done in President William Ruto's scheme of affordable housing. Actually, the “Tin Town” has expanded and boomed as a reflection of the Kenyan economy.
As written before in this column, Nairobi is a city that was built in the wrong place – and even today, it is still struggling to rectify some of the problems that were associated with what Winston Churchill called “lack of foresight” after he refused to approve its uprooting.
When the railway engineers chose the site, it was only to serve as a depot as they prepared for one of the most challenging engineering feats in railway building: the climb to the highlands and the perilous descent into the Rift Valley.
The current sanitary and climatic conditions were not considered, and everyone reasoned that no city had ever grown out of a railway station. They were wrong. And that explains why 'City fathers' — including Mr Sakaja — must continue dealing with incessant drainage problems associated with a former swamp.
Again, we were told that Nairobi was not like Johannesburg, and since it had no minerals, the pioneers thought no serious investor would put up buildings there. Again, the place was not hospitable and had no history of permanent habitation.
Actually, a few caravan traders had tried to pitch tent there, and those on the record include a trader, Andrew Dick, who ran caravans to the interior in search of ivory. Dick had an ivory store near the Nairobi River, but this folded after he was speared to death in the Kedong Valley in May 1895.
Dick had apparently gone to Kedong to avenge the massacre of his caravan, but even after killing more than 100 Maasai in the fierce fight, he was speared to death. End of story.
An aerial view of Nairobi's City Hall in 1970.
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group
The only other camp was set up by James Martin, who had been contracted to recruit local labour for earthworks during the railway construction. Thus, as railway engineer Ronald Preston observed in his diary: “The only evidence of the occasional presence of humankind was the old caravan track skirting the bog-like plain.”
That explains why the Imperial British East Africa official John Ainsworth — the man credited with building Nairobi from scratch — was shocked when the railway started advertising plots for sale within the precincts of the railway. The auction was the first time plots of land were sold in the city, and Ainsworth was not convinced that the railway engineers had done the right thing.
He wrote a letter to Commissioner Sir Charles Elliot on April 2, 1902: “I have all along disapproved of the present site selected for Nairobi … unfortunately at the time of the selection the railway interests were predominant and what the railway wanted was a large flat space and this they found here.”
In one of his other letters, the Acting Commissioner Clifford Craufurd, Ainsworth details this earlier attempt to make Nairobi a town: “I would like to get the Nairobi Township question settled as I do not want people to commence building there without some plan and order … if the applications already sent in are not attended to, people will begin to think we are indifferent to their interests and to the interests of the place.”
You only need to look at Eastlands and see how buildings “without some plan and order” have turned the city landscape into an ugly site. But, as Ainsworth had earlier observed, Nairobi was a boring treeless plain, and something had to be done.
Recently, I stumbled upon a November 30, 1899 gazette notice that banned the cutting down of trees in Nairobi “within a distance of two miles on either side of the railway without permission of the District Officer”. Any person caught cutting down trees was liable to a two-month imprisonment and a fine not exceeding one thousand rupees.
While a by-law clause still addresses tree cutting, the “treeless plain” problem has yet to be resolved. The last effort was by John Gakuo, the town clerk Musalia Mudavadi threw under the bus when a cemetery purchase scandal between City Hall and the Ministry of Local Government was unveiled.
To address the environmental problem, Ainsworth brought some young eucalyptus trees to plant along the emerging boulevards. Most of these trees are still visible in some parts of Nairobi. Other trees came from his nursery at Museum Hill, where he had built his home. Ainsworth was not short of ideas for Nairobi and laid out an extensive garden in which he planted numerous trees and flowers in an effort to make Nairobi hospitable.
Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja. The current sanitary and climatic conditions were not considered, and everyone reasoned that no city had ever grown out of a railway station. They were wrong. And that explains why 'City fathers' — including Mr Sakaja — must continue dealing with incessant drainage problems associated with a former swamp.
Photo credit: Dennis Onsongo I Nation Media Group
No wonder when the notorious German hunter Richard Meinertzhagen arrived back in Nairobi in 1906, after his 1903 visit, he saw the difference. “Trees have sprung up everywhere. Hotels exist where zebras once roamed. Private bungalows in all their ugliness mark the landscape where I used to hunt waterbuck, impala and duiker.”
Nairobi grew slowly, and, at the pioneer stages, it was uncoordinated to the extent that there were two plague outbreaks. The plague saw the burning down of the shopping district in 1901, and the medical officer, Dr W.H. MacDonald, recommended the removal of the town. There were various health struggles during that period – and they persist. When Dr Moffat was appointed the principal medical officer, he submitted a report dated May 19, 1903, describing the location of Nairobi town as “a dangerous one”. He condemned the site as “very defective”.
Later Dr Moffat “regretted that the opportunity of the plague of 1901 was not utilised to carry out this somewhat heroic measure" of removing the town from the plains.
Another plague broke out in 1904, and there were some recommendations for the town’s removal. No decision was made then, but the final decision was left to Major J. W. Pringle, an inspector of the railways who was attached to the British Board of Trade.
“As a station site, the level ground commends itself to a railway engineer. As the site for the future capital of East Africa and for permanent buildings for Europeans, the sanitary engineer and the medical expert condemn it. Under this circumstance, I cannot but urge on His Majesty's government the desirability of further considering the question before the construction of numerous buildings of a permanent type pledge them hopelessly to the adoption of a bad site,” wrote Pringle.
An article in the Glasgow Herald in 1907 said that Col Hayes Sandler, the governor of British East Africa, had arrived in London to discuss “the question of the sanitation and drainage of Nairobi where plague in an epidemic form frequently makes its appearance in the Indian bazaars.”
In his letter, Sandler told Winston Churchill: “It is, I admit, too late to consider the question of moving the town from the plains to the higher position along the line some miles to the north. We had a chance in 1902, and I think it was a pity that we did not do so then as advocated by Sir Charles Elliot.”
Churchill, who was the deputy to the Secretary of State for the colonies made the final decision: “It is now too late to change, and thus lack of foresight and of a comprehensive view leaves its permanent imprint upon the countenance of a new country.”
After Ainsworth retired, he wrote in his memoirs: “Our trouble was due to the fact that we had no definite scheme of layout approved, consequently things just moved on and were liable to alteration to suit some particular fad or fancy.”
Well, 124 years, we are still in the plains of Nairobi, addressing the “permanent imprint”.
Simply put, the Nairobi leadership refused to make the tough decision.
