Central Nairobi
The “old” heart of downtown Nairobi may only date back a little over a century, but there is still enough here to while away a morning or afternoon while you decide what you think of modern Kenya. The Central Business District is not the most cosmopolitan part of the city – that dubious honour would have to be shared between several suburban malls – but after the dark, anti-democracy period in the 1980s and the collapse of security in the 1990s, twenty-first-century central Nairobi is beginning to feel like a world-class city again. One advantage of strolling around here in the daytime is that if you choose to check out the CBD’s nightlife, you’ll have some idea of where you are.
Kibera
Kibera is a sprawling mass of shacks, just a few kilometres southwest of Nairobi’s city centre. It was long thought to be the largest shanty town in sub-Saharan Africa, home to around one million people; although recent mapping exercises have dramatically reduced the estimated number of residents down to as few as 250,000, the scale of the place can still be difficult for most Westerners to imagine. The slums were a flashpoint during the post-election violence in January 2008, when protestors torched buildings and uprooted the Nairobi–Nakuru railway line that runs right through Kibera, and the area is still the scene of occasional politically motivated riots. There have been no major incidents since, however, and although it’s perhaps best not to just wander down there, it’s safe to visit if you’re accompanied by local residents or NGO workers – a number of local operators even offer morning excursions to the area.
Kibera started at the end of World War I as a village housing Sudanese Nubian soldiers of the demobilized armies of British East Africa. Subsequently, as rural-to-urban migration increased, people moved into the area and began putting up mud-and-wattle structures. Today most residents live in makeshift huts, typically measuring 3m by 3m, with an average of five people per dwelling. Access to electricity, running water and sanitation ranges from zero to very minimal – the occasional makeshift pit latrines are shared between anything from ten to one hundred homes, though foreign donors have constructed some new toilet blocks. The streets are a mass of seemingly endless trenches, alleyways and open gutters clogged with waste and sewage. As well as lacking even the most basic services, Kibera has an HIV infection rate of between fourteen and twenty percent, and the number of orphans rises daily. However, the slum somehow works and is full of small businesses, from video cinemas to bakeries. Few residents buy newspapers or own TVs; the community radio station Pamoja FM (99.9 FM) provides a vital “glue” that helped prevent Kibera from ripping apart.
When booking an escorted visit to Kibera, make sure before you sign up that you know exactly where your money is going: some businesses are not above running “pro-poor” tourism as part of their activities while pocketing much of the cash supposed to be supporting slum projects. As you visit various premises and community projects, you should find the experience deeply affecting, if not enjoyable, and not without its lighter moments. Good options for a tour include: Kibera Tours or Explore Kibera Tours.
Security in Nairobi
Nairobi isn’t nearly as bad as its “Nairobbery” reputation would suggest. The city has cleaned up considerably over the past few years: the city centre is less threatening, there are fewer street children, beggars and touts, and a dedicated tourist police force patrols the streets. That said, it pays to take some precautions against crime. It helps to memorize any route you’re walking, as lost-looking tourists are easier targets. Keep your hands out of reach, as a handshake can sometimes throw you off guard, and be – rationally – suspicious of everyone until you’ve caught your breath. It doesn’t take long to get a little streetwise. Every rural Kenyan coming to the city for the first time goes through exactly the same process.
At night, be extra vigilant if you’re walking in the city centre and don’t wander outside the CBD unless you’re really clued-up. Be especially wary in the River Road district, which in practical terms means anything east of Moi Avenue, and indeed sometimes including the avenue. Even some locals avoid walking there and taxi drivers are quite often reluctant to venture into certain parts of the district. Obviously don’t walk through the parks at night.
All the main bus and matatu stations are somewhat chaotic and ideal for pickpockets and snatch-and-run robberies. If you’re driving or being driven, avoid displaying phones and cameras and laptops, and keep your windows rolled up, especially at traffic lights.
Eating
Nairobi has no shortage of eating places. Their diversity is one of the city’s best points, and eating out is an evening pastime that never dulls. Admittedly, anything like authentic Kenyan food is generally not highlighted in most restaurants, which concentrate on offering a range of Asian and European cuisines, and spectacular quantities of meat. Included below are one or two of the city’s fancier hotels, where the food has a good reputation. For further eating listings, check out the bars and nightlife section, which includes a number of venues that double as restaurants. When assessing prices (or checking your bill) remember there’s a two percent training levy and sixteen percent value-added tax (VAT) on food and drink in all but the smallest establishments. Some include or add a variable service charge as well, which could raise the actual food and drink price by a further eight to ten percent. Most places include these taxes and charges in their menu prices, but some don’t. At the more upmarket restaurants in the following listings, it’s often a good idea to reserve a table or, as an alternative to calling yourself, try the free services of Eat Out Kenya, a Nairobi-based online startup that makes restaurant bookings for you via your mobile.
Nairobi National Park
Notwithstanding the hype, it really is remarkable that the plains and woodland making up
Nairobi National Park
should exist almost uncorrupted within earshot of Nairobi’s downtown traffic, complete with more than eighty species of large mammals, including all the giant savanna species with the exception of the elephant. It boasts the greatest density of
megafauna
of any city park in the world. There is, in fact, no comparable park anywhere. In contrast to the pitted streets of the city, gridlocked with traffic, the park is a haven of tranquil wilderness where humans have only temporary landing rights.
The park is a good place to spend time during a flight layover, or before an afternoon or evening flight, and you have a high chance of seeing certain species, especially black rhino, which might well elude you in the bigger Kenyan parks. Although it is fenced along its northern perimeter, the park is open to the south, in theory allowing migrating herds, and the predators that follow them, to come and go more or less freely. For all the low-flying planes and minibuses, you have a greater chance of witnessing a kill here than in any other park in Kenya.
The Nairobi migration
Until the end of the twentieth century, the Nairobi National Park witnessed the second-largest herbivore migration after that of the Mara and Serengeti, with thousands of wildebeest and zebra streaming in from the south in July and August for the good grazing. Before 1946, when the park was created, only the physical barrier of Nairobi itself diverted what was a general northward migration on towards the Aberdare range and the foothills of Mount Kenya. The erection of fences along the park’s northern perimeter closed that migration route, while the steady encroachment of housing, industry, farms and livestock grazing along the southern boundary is also tightening the wildlife corridor there. The wildebeest you see nowadays are mostly sedentary individuals that stay in the park all year, and the migration has been reduced, in most years, to a trickle. Conservationists are, however, determined to keep the southern corridor open, claiming that to fence the park (partly a response to fears about lion and rhino poaching) would effectively suffocate its ecosystem, which depends on free-ranging wildlife to be sustainable. The “Friends of Nairobi National Park” (t0723 690686) have the full story on this and much more about the park.
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust elephant and rhino orphanage, inside the western end of the park, offers a chance to see staff caring for baby elephants, and sometimes baby rhino, which have been orphaned by poachers, or have been lost or abandoned for natural reasons. The trust is run by Daphne Sheldrick in memory of her husband, the founding warden of Tsavo National Park, and, during the hour-long open house, the elephant keepers bring their juvenile charges up to an informal rope barrier where you can easily touch them and take photos.
After many years of trial and error, Sheldrick and her staff have become the world’s experts on hand-rearing baby African elephants, sometimes from birth, using a special milk formula for the youngest infants and assigning keepers to individual 24-hour guardianship of their charges, a responsibility that includes sleeping in their stables. Without the love of a surrogate family and plenty of stimulation, orphaned baby elephants fail to thrive: they can succumb to fatal infections when teething, and, even if they survive, can grow up disturbed and unhappy and badly prepared for reintroduction to the wild.
Rehabilitation is one of the Sheldrick Trust’s major preoccupations. For rhinos, which mature at twice the speed of elephants, this involves a year or more of walks with their keeper, introducing the orphan’s scent, via habitual dung middens and “urinal” bushes, to the wild population. Many of Nairobi National Park’s rhinos grew up in the Sheldrick nursery; the last surviving member of Amboseli’s famous long-horned rhino herd was rescued by the Trust in 1987 and is now a successful breeding female, having been released in Tsavo East. In the case of elephants, which mature at about the same rate as humans, the process of reintroduction is more attuned to the individual: outgoing animals are encouraged while young to meet wild friends and potential adoptive mothers, again through walks with their keepers, most often in Tsavo National Park. More traumatized elephants take longer to find their feet. Matriarchs who were Sheldrick orphans themselves, such as Eleanor at Tsavo East, have been responsible for adopting many returnees.
The National Museum
In 2008, the
Nairobi National Museum
reopened its doors after a three-year, Ksh800 million facelift. The refurbished result is a still partly sparkling, showpiece attraction and a good prelude to any tour around the country. It’s easy to reach from the centre of town and provides a solid overview of Kenya’s culture, history and wildlife.
Hall of Kenya
This expansive entry hall into the museum is sparsely appointed with some of Kenya’s most impressive and unusual artefacts and artworks. In one display case is a Swahili siwa from the 1680s. The siwa, a ceremonial horn intricately carved from an elephant tusk, was traditionally blown on celebratory occasions as a symbol of unity and was considered to possess magical powers. There is also a sambu, a Kalenjin elder’s cloak made from the skins of Sykes’ monkeys. Beautiful photos of some of Kenya’s animals adorn the wall of this hall, and prepare you for the next gallery.
The Great Hall of Mammals
Dedicated to Africa’s charismatic, endangered megafauna, and the plains animals that are still found in some abundance in Kenya, this hall features some impressive dioramas. In the centre of the room are examples of a giraffe, an elephant, a buffalo, a zebra and an okapi, the strange forest-dwelling relative of the giraffe found only in the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Along the walls are displays of most of Kenya’s mammals, including the big cats, primates and antelopes, with explanations of their habitats, diets and life cycles. Also displayed in this gallery is the skeleton of Ahmed, the most famous of the giant-tusked bull elephants of Marsabit, in the north of the country. In the 1970s, when poaching was rampant in northern Kenya, conservationists feared that Ahmed would be targeted because of his enormous tusks. Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, assigned two rangers to track Ahmed day and night until he died of natural causes at the age of 55. His tusks weighed in at 68kg (150lb) each. There’s a life-size replica of Ahmed in the courtyard between the entrance and the shop.
Just off the Hall of Kenya gallery is a room devoted to ornithology, featuring 1600 specimens in glass cases. Kenya’s birdlife usually makes a strong impression, even on non-birdwatchers. Look out for the various species of hornbill, turaco and roller, and for the extraordinary standard-wing nightjar, which is frequently seen fluttering low over a swimming pool at dusk, hunting for insects.
The Cradle of Human Kind
The unique interest of the Nairobi museum lies in the human origins exhibit, where paleontology displays are housed. Along the walls, skeletons and skull casts of ancient hominins trace primate diversity and the evolution of the human species back millions of years. Of particular importance is the almost complete skeleton of “Turkana Boy”, the 1.6-million-year-old remains of an immature male hominin found near Lake Turkana. Hardcore paleontology fans will want to visit the Hominin Skull Room, which contains the skulls of some of our ancient ancestors and non-ancestral cousins, such as Homo erectus. The understanding of human evolution is itself a rapidly evolving field, with new theories about human origins and ancestry appearing almost yearly, but East Africa is invariably its field-research location.
Cycles of Life
Upstairs, next to the temporary galleries of local art, the Cycles of Life exhibit covers Kenya’s tribes and cultures, in neatly laid out displays of artefacts telling the story of each ethnic group from childhood through adulthood to ancestor status. If you’re planning on travelling through any of the areas inhabited by pastoral peoples (especially Pokot, Samburu, Maasai or Turkana), then seeing some old and authentic handicrafts beforehand is a good idea.
The room begins with a display of traditional birthing methods and child-rearing techniques, including a traditional Pokot child carrier made from monkey skin and children’s toys made from discarded scraps of metal. The exhibit moves on to explain initiation and circumcision rituals. On display here is a Maasai warrior outfit, complete with spear and shield. The adulthood display contains various clothing and beauty products including beaded necklaces and earplugs used by some of the semi-nomadic tribes to stretch the earlobes. A display of grave markers and artefacts used to send someone into the afterlife marks the end of the exhibit.
