NAIROBI
NAIROBI
is one of Africa's major cities: the UN's fourth
'World Centre', East Africa's commercial and aid hub, and a significant
capital in its own right with a population of one million (and growing).
Nairobi came into being in 1899: an artificial settlement, created by
Europeans at Mile 327 of the East African railway line, then systematically
being forged from the coast into the interior. It was initially a stores
depot, shunting yard and camping ground for the thousands of Indian laborers
employed by the British; the site, bleak and swampy, simply the spot where
operations came to a halt whilst the engineers figured out the next move -
getting the line up the steep slopes that lay ahead. The name came from the
local Swahili term for the valley, Ewaso Nairobi, 'Stream of Cold Water'.
Unplanned and unexpected, the settlement took root, undergoing a total
rebuilding a few years on, after the outbreak of plague and the burning down
of the original compound. By 1907 it was so firmly established that the
colonizers took it as the capital of the newly formed British East Africa.
Europeans, encouraged by the authorities, settled in large number. The
Africans, meanwhile, were forced by tax into employment or out to specially
created reserves: the Masai to the Southern Reserve, the Kikuyu to their own
reserve in the highlands. The capital, lacking development from any
established community, was, and is, somewhat anonymous in character. The
original centre preserves an Asian influence in its older buildings but is
today shot through with high-rise blocks, indistinguishable from any western
city's. Surrounding it are thousands of acres of suburbs: wealthiest in the
west and north, to the east and south increasingly poor and in parts out and
out slum.
Looking around Central
Nairobi, Kenyatta Avenue is an obvious place to start and a good initial
overview of it- and much more - is to be had from the vertigo-inducing glass
paneled elevators in the ICEA building at the corner of Wabera Street on the
north side. If an excuse for entrance is needed by the guards at the bottom,
tell them you're visiting the Japanese Embassy on the seventeenth floor;
they may even be persuaded to escort you on to the roof. Kenyatta Avenue was
originally designed to allow a full turn of a twelve-span of oxen. Broad,
multi-laned and planted with flowering trees and shrubs, it remains (along
with the Kenyatta Conference Center) the capital's favorite tourist image.
The avenue is smartest- and most tourist- on its south side, with would-be
moneychangers and itinerant souvenir hawkers assailing you from every
direction, and shoe shiners inspecting each passing pair of feet from their
stands. The focus of it all is the New Stanley Hotel's Thorn Tree cafe
opposite Woolworth's at the avenue's eastern end on the corner of Kimathi
Street. The Thorn Tree is Nairobi's one proper pavement cafe and despite
irritatingly slow service ('we are stock taking') an enduring meeting place.
Around the imposing thorn tree in question is a message board, intended for
personal notes but always worth scanning for vehicle-sharing deals, unused
air tickets for sale and so on.
