Nairobi – My Introduction

I have been in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, for a few days now. Up until this trip, my experience of the world outside of New Zealand had only been Brisbane (Australia) for a week to attend a conference I did not appreciate at all.

This trip has seen me stop briefly in Johannesburg (South Africa), has me in Nairobi for a week, then takes me to London (UK), Colorado Springs (US) and then out via San Francisco. At this point in the trip I am processing what I have experienced of Nairobi in a very short time.

Thankfully I have discovered what my body was made for – travelling. I have never had a settled body clock that could get into a rhythm of sleeping, waking and eating – my body has always been all over the place and this has proven to be a strength so far – my body has had no sense of telling me I am in the wrong time zone and the only thing stopping me from sleeping is my mind being overwhelmed with the experiences.

Nairobi has been an emotional rollercoaster right from the moment I stepped off the plane – this city is an assault on the senses.

My first experience was an extremely disorganized, poorly equipped customs system upon arrival. Once through and out into the airport arrival area I had the mission of trying to locate the transport that had been organized for me – to no avail. I made my way outside after not being able to spot any relevant signs amongst the melee of people that were holding bits of paper with names on them waiting for others.

As soon as I stepped outside I was instantly approached by a number of people offering cheap taxi rides – the many signs prohibiting people from soliciting for passengers clearly meant nothing. I had received strong warnings from experienced people not to accept such rides so the word “hapana” (thanks but no thanks) came in handy very quickly. I moved swiftly to find someone who looked official and located a young lady whom I explained my situation to – she took me to a tourist agent who was able to call the appropriate people whom were handling my transport and my driver was found quickly.

He needed to wait for more people from other flights (both of whom turned out to be from Tearfund UK) so I waited at the travel agency and got talking to one of their “contracted” taxi drivers. It turned into a two hour chat as we waited. My ability to conduct decent interviews after 8 years of talkback came in very handy. It was one of the best introductions to Nairobi I could have had as I asked countless questions about the city, poverty, local governance, national politics and the violence of early last year, religion and what he identified to be the pluses and minuses of the city. By the time Kuria and I finished chatting, I felt like I had made a new friend and my knowledge of Nairobi had undergone a steep learning curve.

Once the guys from Tearfund UK arrived we were on our way to Brackenhurst International Conference Centre – my home for this week. It was dark but it didn’t take long for me to realize I had stepped into a completely different world – the roads were rough, the driving was hectic and the poverty was impossible to miss even in the dark.

It’s hard to describe the poverty – the stuff there for everyone to see – it’s dirty, dusty, rundown, yet strangely colourful and full of life. As we made our way along the beat up motorway there were shacks that included homes and shops densely littering the side of the road.

Brackenhurst is located in the hills of Limuru outside of the city and so the drive was a constant climb, passing “villages” that were dusty tin sheds and beat up old shops. Brackenhurst itself is a beautiful place, set amongst tea farms and housing many of Kenya’s native trees and birds – I wouldn’t normally applaud staying in such a nice place – but I have to say that for my own sanity it has been nice being able to retreat to here at the end of my two biggest days.

On Saturday night, the night of arrival, I was able to get to bed by midnight, but had been informed of the chance to go on a safari early the next morning, a chance I couldn’t pass up, so I was up at 4am and we hit the road at 5:30am on Sunday.

The safari was phenomenal – the work done to preserve and increase the wildlife at Nairobi Game Park has created a sanctuary worth more than the small amount of money we paid to experience it. I took many pictures – sadly though, in the distance on one side of the park, the city was visible. Covered in haze and smog it was a stark contrast to the vast plain of the park teaming with wildlife.

From there we went to a gift shop like none I had experienced before. I broke away from the rest of the team before going in and went around the side of the tin shack where I had glimpsed someone working. I encountered three men that were hand crafting all the products being sold in the store and I chatted with them about their work. They had all been doing it for ten years – every day sitting in a little shelter hand crafting some of the most amazing wood work and selling it to tourists. They seemed extremely happy in their work – they spoke about how life was hard sometimes but they love what they do. They were all smiles and more than willing to talk to me. As we ended the conversation, one of them thanked me for coming and talking to them – he said most of the white people just come in, buy their stuff and never actually see where it’s coming from and talk to the people making it – he thought they assumed that it probably comes from factories.

Inside the store was packed with what these guys had been making and I quickly encountered the selling tenacity of Kenyans. I swear, if these people were sales people in New Zealand they could get very wealthy very quickly. I resisted purchasing though as I wanted to get a feel for prices in a few places before I purchased anything, but since it was my first time in a place where bartering is the way sales are made, I tried my hand at it to see how it works – walking away from it each time.

After having lunch outside the store, we drove a short distance to where some of Nairobi’s elite live. The roads were still very rough, but beyond the gates of the houses there were lovely manicured driveways and gardens. There was a clear separation between their sanctuaries and the rabble outside, with high, solid walls and broken glass and barbed wire on top of them to stop people climbing in.

To show us the contrast our drivers then took us to a vantage point where we could overlook the Kibera slum – the biggest slum in the world and the place I was to visit the next day. I had heard much about the slum and seen many pictures – it lived up to it all. It was a dense fog of rusted tin shacks and rubbish – home to one million people , the equivalent of the entirety of Auckland yet only covering an area similar to Auckland’s CBD. I looked on, knowing that I was going to be entering Kibera the following day. I took a deep breath of anticipation.

From there we drove into Nairobi’s city center. I have to be honest and say I felt uneasy. My feeling was probably ill founded but it led me to put my camera out of site. I can’t explain it and there was no logical reason for it.

Following that, we were taken to a mall just outside the city center. The mall was like any upmarket western mall complete with flash cars in the car park. The difference here was the security. The security was immense, with guards throughout the carpark with batons and armed guards carrying automatic rifles at each of the main entrances into the mall building. The shopping and the spenders inside were being heavily protected and looking around at the people, my assumption would be that many of them were from the nicer parts of Nairobi – people who spend their time in their gated, protected homes – get in their nice cars to drive to and from their secure work places and to and from the heavily guarded malls.

In this sense, Nairobi is protecting the holy grail of national economic theory – the middle class – the group of people understood to be the necessary element to grow any economy. I’m not going to begrudge their lives that are seemingly insulated from the ravages of poverty around them though – in their situation, I would probably do the same – Brackenhurst is acting as my equivalent escape.

Once the shopping was finished – where I didn’t purchase anything; If I’m going to buy anything from a western mall, it’s going to be in London or San Francisco, but I’m in Africa and I wanted to purchase something African – we headed up until the hills again past Brackenhurst and to a vantage point where one can gaze upon one of the most spectacular views in the world – the Rift Valley – a valley that stretches all the way from Jordan to Mozambique. Its enormity is staggering and even on a hazy day where the view was not as magnificent as it obviously could have been it took my breath away.

We passed many tin shack shops and stopped at one where the viewing area was safe – some of them were made of old rickety wood that I wouldn’t stand on if I was paid. I got out and tried to snap some pictures but the haze meant I couldn’t do it justice. I approached an old run down stall and asked how much for a Coke. Western I know, but they were 300ml glass bottles with the old cap that needs to be popped off – none of that screw top plastic rubbish. I asked how much and got it for 50 Kenyan Shillings (about $1 NZD). I enjoyed every sip of it overlooking one of the most amazing views in the world.

It was then my turn to make a bartering purchase so I made my way towards a shed selling authentic, handmade Kenyan product and put my game face on. I avoided eye contact with the guys doing the sales and quickly surveyed what was there. I made it look like I was browsing around and not very happy with what I was seeing as I worked my way towards the dolls I had spotted and wanted to purchase for my daughter. Waiting till I knew I was being watched by one of the young guys, I picked up one of the dolls, inspected its stitching etc then put it back down and went to move on, guessing what would happen next… sure enough, the young guy very quickly came over, picked up the doll and walked over to me asking if I wanted to buy it – the game started and oh what fun it was – an eager salesman clearly well crafted in his work vs me, the guy who obviously had some money but didn’t want to spend too much of it. I had seen and heard the price of the same doll in other shops and was ready to pay a little more than necessary for it if I thought it would lead to being able to have a conversation with the young guy afterwards.

Eventually we came to a price that he was extremely happy with and I knew full well was more than what most people would have sold me the doll for and I got a few other small items. During the course of the conversation I told him I was from New Zealand on the other side of the world – so when the sale finished he followed me out because he was curious and we started to chat. His knowledge of New Zealand was limited to a shoe polish largely used in Nairobi – Kiwi. That’s how I met Peter.

We chatted for quite some time and he told me that for all his life he had lived and still lives in a little village down in the Rift Valley. He hikes up every day to try and sell stuff and makes about 10% on anything he sells. Some days he makes nothing. At 27 he is married and he still lives with his family and his wife.

He talked of how many people had moved from the districts and villages like his into the city thinking they would be able to make a better living, only to end up in the slums but because of pride, most never come back to the villages as it would be seen as a mark of failure. Peter was adamant that he would spend the rest of his life in the village no matter how hard it got as he had seen to many people move into the city only to end up in situations that he definitely did not want to be in. He spoke about being protected by God and he spoke about God’s faithfulness in providing even when things were really desperate. I knew that when he used the word desperate, it carried a very different meaning from what we talk about in New Zealand – desperate in Peter’s terms meant survival, not simply discomfort.

Just as my conversation with Kuria at the airport had been a steep learning curve about the city, so my conversation with Peter was a steep learning curve about life in the villages out of the city. The extra money I paid for my purchases was well spent as it greased the wheels of conversation afterwards – he had made more than what he makes many days.

That was my first real day in Nairobi – by the end of the day my world had expanded immensely. For the first time in my life I had seen real poverty. At times I had felt overwhelmed, confused, isolated and alone. At other times I felt awe and excitement. I had enjoyed the conversations.

One of the things that struck me the most was the proliferation of churches. In Nairobi they are everywhere, from towering monstrosities of stone to little tin shacks. When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere and it was bugging me.

Nairobi is one of the most dangerous cities in the world and corruption is its disease. Poverty is rampant and scores and scores of people are struggling. Alcohol and drugs are an issue in the centers of poverty and HIV/AIDS has taken a toll that has punched the city in the guts. With churches littering the area there was a question building – a question I wasn’t comfortable with as its one I would have given a quick answer to if asked by anyone prior to visiting here – amongst all the squalor, the dust, the dirt, the throngs of people and disease, the heartache, the struggle, the contrast between rich and poor that widens every day in Nairobi, the tribal tensions, the political squabbles – I struggle to even type the question when I was a person so sure of the answer prior to Sunday – amongst all the chaos and mess… where is God? I couldn’t see him and in the ups and downs of the day and that troubled me? Had I got it all completely wrong? Was my theorizing about poverty and my theology divorced from the reality of this chaotic mess?

On Sunday, all my sleepless nights over theological ideas and doctrine through previous years, my arguments with friend and foe alike about God, Christianity, the nature of faith and life seemed to turn into a useless mess. All those pitiful blogging conversations from the safety of a secure and comfortable environment faded into a meaningless oblivion. On Sunday I was in a place where in order to continue to hold fast to everything I had professed to believe up until this point, I needed to meet God as more than a great idea – God needed to show up in the middle of the chaos.

With all that weighing heavy on me, Monday turned out to be one of the most extraordinary days of my life. In the Kibera slum I encountered the reality of the Gospel and all my ideas about the nature of Jesus and the Gospel itself came home to roost. On Sunday, I had the most real crisis of understanding I have ever faced, not just a crisis of a few ideas, but a crisis where my whole belief system was called into question in less than 24 hours – my world shattered around me. On Monday, during the following 24 hours, wrestling with small children on a dusty dirt ground in a Compassion project in the middle of the world’s biggest slum I was reborn – the Gospel came to life in a way I have never known it before.

That story will be told next.

Note: The internet connection here is slow – so pictures will come when I get to London this weekend.