I've really enjoyed spending the last few weeks in Kenya. I like Nairobi a lot, and going forward, this is a place I intend to visit as often as I can. My holiday is coming to its end, and in a few hours I should be on an aeroplane ferrying me back to Europe; first to Paris, France and then onward to London; back to the life in England, the stony and expressionless faces you encounter on your daily commute; that cold, dull dreary weather. Whatever one says about Africa, it remains the case that in the overall people in Africa are happy; and certainly happier than people in Europe, in my opinion. I will miss Kenya, and Nairobi in particular.
But of course there are other things that have to be said, issues that I have found particularly unpleasant. Class, is more of an issue in Kenya than it is anywhere else I've been to, except Brazil. With Brazil's history though, the wideness of the gap in the social hierarchy is explainable with a measure of rationality. Much less so with Kenya. There simply is no reason (save for greed and selfishness) why, for example, one kilometre from the splendid, clean and well maintained Central Business District (CBD) of Nairobi, is located Africa's largest slum, Kibera, where more than 2 million of Nairobi's inhabitants live, a significant proportion of the city's population.
Kibera is only one of several slum areas in the city. Indeed much of Nairobi is slummy, even those other areas such as Eastleigh, Juja Road and other such places that are not officially designated as slums. It's particularly bad because these slummy areas are largely neglected, almost as if the inhabitants (usually the poorer lower classes) are insignificant and irrelevant. Street cleaning, for instance, takes place only in the CBD and in those plush highbrow parts of town where well-to-do Nairobians live. Poor people, it seems, are not worthy of having their streets cleaned. 200 metres outside the CBD and every street corner is piled high with rubbish (garbage as my American friends will say), because, of course, there are no upper-class people resident in the vicinity. I have found it deplorable.
(Following this writing, I learned that municipal workers were on strike, which perhaps explains what I saw and just described).
The society's sharp class distinction also means that there is much resentment between the classes. Being class-neutral myself, I have found it easy to hold conversations with all kinds of people. Indeed, the most interesting chats I've had since I've been in Kenya have been with two separate individuals; one, Simba, a security guard and the other Moses, a bus conductor. It's interesting to see how truly insightful and philosophical some of these so called "lower-class" people can be. But it's the deep resentment that I observed that has touched me the most.
The society's sharp class distinction also means that there is much resentment between the classes. Being class-neutral myself, I have found it easy to hold conversations with all kinds of people. Indeed, the most interesting chats I've had since I've been in Kenya have been with two separate individuals; one, Simba, a security guard and the other Moses, a bus conductor. It's interesting to see how truly insightful and philosophical some of these so called "lower-class" people can be. But it's the deep resentment that I observed that has touched me the most.
In the aftermath of the Westgate Mall tragedy I got the distinct feeling that there were quite a few among the lower classes who were cynical and had little sympathy for the victims of the terrorists. I thought this unfortunate.
