Nairobi - A Diverse & Vibrant African City !

The road between Kenya & Tanzania. It is very narrow & has shocking potholes in places, although they are slowly repairing it & building a new road between the two countries.

Well, I’m back from Nairobi & I thought that I would firstly just tell you a little about the city’s background & history …..

Nairobi is the capital city of Kenya & has an estimated population of between 3 and 4 million people. The name “Nairobi” comes from the Maasai phrase “Enkare Nyirobi” which means “place of cool waters” as the city lies on the Nairobi river.

Nairobi was founded in 1899 as a small rail depot along the railway line which linked Mombasa to Uganda. It quickly grew, and became the capital of British East Africa in 1907 and continued as the capital city in 1963, when Kenya became a free republic.

The scenery along the road - it's pretty desolate & not a place you'd like to break down on - especially at night - as sometimes there are no people for miles around

During the colonial period, Nairobi was the centre of the colony’s sisal, tea and coffee industry. Perhaps one of the most well known coffee farms of the day was the one owned by Karen Blixen (Isaak Dinesen) who wrote the book “Out of Africa” with it’s famous opening line “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills”. The Ngong Hills lie just outside Nairobi, and resemble a set of 4 knuckles – the name “Ngong” means “knuckles” in the Maasai language.

I’ve visited Karen Blixen’s farm more than once, and it is a must see if you are ever in Nairobi. The original house still stands & is fully furnished (although a lot of the furniture has been reproduced) exactly as it was in the time that she lived there. You can visit the house, walk through all the rooms and explore the gardens (there is even some of the old coffee processing & farm equipment outside) and it is truly a wonderful and very moving place, and one that you will probably never forget.

One of the places we stopped for lunch - I had an Iced Cafe Latte & a hickory ham, honey & sultana sandwich on rye - a real treat & like nothing we can get at home !

Nairobi is considered to be one of Africa’s most prominent cities both financially and politically, and is also home to one of the largest stock exchanges in Africa, the Nairobi Stock Exchange.

Of course, like any big African city it also has it’s problems in parts – crime, litter, disease, poverty & slum areas. But as you know, I try to focus on the positive side of African life on my blog & not so much the negative, depressing side so often portrayed in the media – because that is not all that Africa is about !

Skylights in the Westgate Shopping Mall allow the blue African sky to brighten up the mall interior with lots of natural light

Whilst in Nairobi we ate out quite a lot – we avoided the city restaurants at night (a short taxi ride from our hotel) as parts of the city can be unsafe and with a 4 year old in tow, we opted to rather stay in and eat at our hotel instead. (More about the hotel we stayed at tomorrow).

During the day we ate lunch at coffee bar type places which are of course, a novelty to us as we don’t get them here in Tanzania. We visited several of the larger shopping centres and malls around the city, the Westgate Mall (pictured above & below) is one of the newest and largest, and on a par with any good mall you will find in South Africa or the UK. We were most impressed !

Inside the Westgate Mall, where preparations for Christmas are already underway - we watched several people decorating Christmas trees for display purposes as we ate lunch - my daughter loved all the glitzy baubles & tinsel !

Our purchases included lots of books and magazines (we don’t have a single decent book shop in our closest city here, and magazines are like hens teeth !), stationery, toiletries, make-up, cosmetics, clothing, shoes, Christmas & birthday presents, linen and lots of dry goods like ingredients for my Christmas cake and decorations, food colouring etc for my daughter’s birthday cake.

On the day we left we also bought bags of ice to fill our coolerboxes and packed those with quality meat (which we also can’t get here for love or money !) such as rolled pork and chicken roasts, cold meats (ham, turkey) etc and some nice bread which we can’t get here easily (Rye, wholewheat etc – it stores well in the freezer for months !) Of course we also bought some food treats for the dogs & cats !

So that, in a nutshell, was Nairobi and I’ll be posting some more about it tomorrow !