Kenya (Nairobi) - Pieces

On the cover of Lonely Planet’s Guide on Kenya are the confident and anxious gazes of a cheetah family. Flip a couple pages past the front cover to the introduction page and you immediately get the sense Kenya is the premier tourist destination of eastern Africa. When taking into account the extensive wildlife, vistas and culture, nowhere in Africa is arguably so diverse and so accessible.
Outside the terminal gate at Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, forty or more drivers crowd a painted line on the floor holding paper name signs. Four middle-aged women decked out with outdoors safari attire, apparently a tour group, rant about the lack of pages provided in their passports. No free page, no visa, no entrance. They find their driver and laugh out the sliding door.
At the end of the line, a short, bald-headed Kenyan holds a sign with the title, “Village” for Village Volunteers, an NGO (Non-Government Organization) who’s purpose is to create sustainable development projects with other NGOs. This is achieved through grants, fundraising and importantly, to send volunteers where the help is needed.
Not far from the airport is Embakasi and the Doonholm district, a middle-class suburb of gated—and guarded—communities. (The term “suburb” is used to reference the upper-class locations of Nairobi.) Homes in Doonholm are like townhouses in the States; a two-minute walk from the Village Volunteers transition home however, will take you to the outer fringes of the Pipeline slums, a shantytown of makeshift huts and development housing. Interspersed between the shanty shacks and cement-framed apartments is a communal market of produce, services and apparel, in particular a wide assortment of shoes.
Vendors hawk their goods from a blanket or branch constructed shed. Higher end services, including salons and computer repair to government offices are walk-in closet-sized alcoves found along tarred roads leading into city center. The term “hole-in-the-wall” must have originated from the slums.
I stepped away for the rail track and let the six-car train chug over puddles of murky rancid water. The uneven chatter frightened a nearby chicken to flutter its wing fruitlessly. Scrupulous hawkers followed Winnie, a 26-year old Kenyan girl, and myself from behind their disheveled kiosks.
“Mzungu,” a group of guys ID-ed me smirking. We kept walking.
Two girls whispered.
“Go find your own mzungu man!” A man passing by witnessing the exchange yelled in Swahili at the girls. Winnie laughed.
“I’m going to open my own kiosk and call it the ‘Happy Mzungu’,” I joked. Happy white man.
“You should. You would have everyone’s business,” I was told. “You could listen to people’s problems and give them money,” Winnie suggested.
Maybe not. White is the color of Kenyan Schillings, in fact, and wearing an Arsenal jersey and speaking through an acceptable South African accent doesn’t change the fact I am a mzungu out of his element. Time is key.
An hour through standstill traffic brings me to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. A dense commercial market centered by the Hilton hotel—a landmark reference surrounded by rail, bus and matatu services, as well as a cluster-fuck of vehicle and pedestrian madness. And madness is an understatement, as a thick skin and ample patience is required to deal with the daily commutes and transfers of the mass population, where everyday is an endeavoring experience. Government willing, a civil engineer would generate serious bank to organize the civil chaos that is Nairobi.
Eight nights will be spent here, an excessive amount for anyone visiting without necessary purpose. But our purpose is necessary. And as the country regains credibility, we will examine the pieces that led to its fallout, and what picture it will construct as a result.
I’m sure somewhere in Kenya, Simba is presiding high on Pride Rock and those same middle-aged women from the airport are locked comfortably in their Land Rover jovially snapping pictures from a safe distance. As much as I’d like to join them (privately and unguided where one can break park rules and throw a rock at Simba for the sake of an exciting shot), that is not my purpose here in Kenya. Behind the tourist veil is a forgotten and misconceived reality, raunchy and impoverished, rife with corruption and hope of peace through a morbid recent history and uncertain future.
“This is Africa,” Leonardo DiCaprio’s character states in the movie, Blood Diamond. Although used expressively before the movie’s release, the phrase—and its variation—is spoken with heightened popularity; at least it is here in Nairobi. “T.I.A.”
And as the electricity randomly switches off and on, herding pedestrians narrowly dodge reckless traffic, taxis and buses alike regularly fail or demonstrate the effectiveness of driving on empty, and political passions run rampant from city center to the bush, I am in Africa. No singing lions or wisecracking meerkats. This is Kenya.