The Intro

All hail Nairobians.

 I hail from a diverse, complicated and highly volatile community called Nairobi. Our little city has a population of over three million people that represent every language group on the planet. You will find a member of every known earthly population right here on our very own red volcanic soil, probably except for Eskimos coz of the temperature.

I have lived in Nairobi my whole life, all 25 years of it, and I am proud to say that I have experienced all of it. The slums, the high rises and suburbs all have some sort of wisdom to offer any person who ventures into this city hoping to make it big, or at least etch out a living. In those 25 years I have closely observed how the people here make it from one day to another and how the choices they make help shift the next generation to whole new ways of thinking or behaviour.

Let’s start with the slums; the origin of the word slum is thought to be the Irish phrase 'S lom é (pron. s'lum ae) meaning "it is a bleak or destitute place." Nairobi is home to the second largest slum in Africa and the third largest in the world. It is true that in order for an economy to survive, or atleast be attractive to investors, a lot of cheap labour is required.  This is where the great slums of Nairobi come into play; it may shock you to realize that within walking distance of every great neighbourhood, there is a slum present. Some slums are even present within the middle to high end neighbourhoods. The best, but albeit the least visible example, is the Mathare valley which is walking distance from Muthaiga.  Kibera is nestled between Ngong road and Langata road, two of the busiest roads in Nairobi. Its presence there ensures that the industries there and the nearby industrial area have a constant flow cheap eager labour. Not something to be completely proud about but someone is making some money from it.

At some point in my life I used to walk from work through Mathare Valley, during this time I would roll up my sleeves and take off my tie in order to ensure I look as inconspicuous as possible. The twenty minutes I spent walking through that slum everyday gave me an undistorted view of the horrors of that place. I describe it as horrors because of open sewers right on someone’s front door, kids playing around them and people cooking mere inches from it. Houses made of wood and mud just leaning in each other for support. I cannot describe what is there in just 1,000 words so I will not try.

 Slums are not created over night; people do not just show up and decide to live in squalor. It is a process that starts over time with the participation of other more well of people. What follows is not a way to justify why people live the way they live but the things that actually drive them into the lives that they are in now.

Has anyone worked a low wage job, I know for damn sure that I haven’t so for those who haven’t like me you should know that peanuts are actually worth a whole lot more than what most people in Nairobi earn. So if you are stuck in a job that pays you about Kshs. 3,000 a month and you have to pay rent, food and general family upkeep then this is the only place you can afford to live in. Everyone wants to try and get out of it but more often than not there is always something out there that pulls back down. You could lose your job, a relative could die or get ill and a lot of the time your possessions could be stolen or your house demolished. All this happens to them every day and after some considerable time, they resign to their fate and crawl to the nearest cheap liquor spot to numb their pain.

In come the middle class, these are relatively skilled members of society who live in permanent houses and own an average of one car. On average, these people have a net worth of zero. Which on paper, apart from the lifestyle difference, means that the people in the slums may be worth a lot more than the middle class. A mortgage, car loan and children in private schools mean that there is no surplus in their budgets for any other income generating ventures. One factor that I believe causes all this is that they spend a lot of time around rich or otherwise well off people. This leads them to want that life and wanting that life becomes very expensive. Holidays on loans, buying rounds of drinks on credit cards and buying their families all the latest toys puts a real strain on the salary. Eventually if they are not careful, they may end up in the slum because all it takes is one wrong move and everything disappears. The car is repossessed, the house foreclosed on and the children kicked out of school. The smart ones create a strategy and move up to the level of the kings.

The section known as the high class is made of kings. The reason why I say that is because they stand on the shoulders of the rest of the people. In order to make one very rich individual, you will need hundreds or thousands of other small people who end up forming a pyramid with a king at the top. W e are all members of that pyramid and in reality, the number one person on the list of Forbes sits at the very top of that pyramid. These individuals shun away from the public life, using only politicians and other personalities to push their agendas. It is no secret that people with money do not like talking about money and any questions about what they are worth are simply brushed away. It may be a tough pill to swallow but most of these people are the reason why we are not moving forward as much as we would like. Imagine that you run multiple companies that rely on a particular set of raw materials that would ensure the company remains profitable. However, the land is inhabited by people who have either settled there or have been there for a while but do not have proper documentation. The right thing to do would be to relocate them to some other land and give them documentation to ensure that they are happy, but that would be very expensive. Plan b is to destroy their homes and force them out, label them as illegal squatters that would be cheaper and containable since people without a voice cannot be heard. People with no one who will listen to them cannot be heard either, since the only people who would listen to them have already been paid off by you.

Something you may not know is that rich people are too rich to go broke, by this I do not mean that they cannot run out of money. I mean that in the odd chance that a rich person loses his wealth the society or even the country will look for a way to ensure that he doesn’t. His is presence probably has a positive effect on the economy so if he goes down then a lot of other people go down as well.

The high end neighbourhoods are characterized by live fences, razor wire walls and tall trees within large compounds. The air is always cooler there whichever season it is. These houses are especially well guarded and more often than not you would not know who lives there since the cars that are occasionally seen arriving or leaving are heavily tinted. In this neighbourhood, neighbours do not know each other but simply nod acknowledgements if they were ever to meet when taking a walk.

This is where we all aspire to live but few ever achieve

This is the Nairobi I was raised in, and this is where I live.