Week 13: Making Nairobi great .... again....

Summary:

Born, growing up, working and living in Nairobi – I can testify that the emperor that was the “city in the sun” and the “evergreen city of forever spring” is naked. With the clog, meth-crazed chaos and filth that is Nairobi’s reality today – “Make Nairobi great again” is a shared invocation. However, true to the peculiar case of Kenyans – its nakedness when viewed from the external eye is distorted. The solutions to traffic, garbage or housing mess is not a standard solution and calls for an inner eye and an inner solution.

Trump! Like him, hate him – the immediate former president of the United States of America could romance any crowd around the world with his “Make (what?) great again”. This seductive phrase has spread out like a wild bushfire as a panacea of ameliorating the decay we perceive in our real world albeit gregariously applied. In the homes moms will be told – Make dinner great again. In school – Make math lessons great again – in the residential estates make our apartments great again and inevitably with the clog, meth-crazed chaos and filth that is Nairobi’s reality today – Make Nairobi great again!!!

When you repeatedly do something ludicrous or out of norm – it becomes your new normal and you see nothing odd with it. We sometimes need someone outside the status quo to point out “the emperor has no clothes”[7] - to point out exactly what needs to be made great again. The old fable of the child who points out the emperor’s nakedness. The fable, however, is not entirely true. It’s just but a fable. The idea that someone outside your environment can meaningfully diagnose what is wrong with you is a shaky premise smirking the sensibility of a person’s ability to adapt optimally to their everyday experience.

That’s the precise case for Nairobi.

For instance – logistics. The fact that traffic lights work and there are cops to handle the traffic (aka re-interpret the three light signals for the drivers) is a comical misnomer to a newcomer. For locals we are so numb at this that when lights turn green it’s more of a signal to “look at the cop” rather than “go”. The child in the fable would then conclude – the cops need to get out of the traffic stops. However the robust story lies with the locals who appreciate the transitory nature of Nairobi city. On the one hand, for every other Nairobi resident driver at the traffic lights is a significant cluster of newcomer or transiting drivers from neighboring regions with no traffic light control. On the other hand there is the case of a likelihood of lights malfunction (but the genesis a story for another day). A third reason is the good old “peculiarity” of Kenyans – a traffic stop is a bustling “flash” market stop. For an agreed access fee, the cops create the market, the micro entrepreneurs earn their bread. In my opinion – pretty genius.

Another good example is the urban space. For an immigrant to Nairobi – whether coming in from other regions within Kenya or outside of Kenya – it’s hard to fathom Nairobi is the space once referred to as the – “city in the sun” – the “evergreen city of forever spring” (explaining how the city successfully lobbied the United Nations Environmental Program to be headquartered in Nairobi). But in some sort of reverse fable - I can see the nakedness. Having been born and domiciled in Nairobi for all my life – I can perceive the misnomer that is Nairobi’s urban today.

This is the evergreen city where we had picnics by the Nairobi river! Oh yes that repugnant green river flowed silvery water with fish. The river banks were the city’s love capital where the youngsters would observe and learn how to romance and treat a lady well. A young tad worth his salt would spot his baggy oversized trouser and take his choice lady to perch on a manhole a few yards from the river and watch the sunset. In the fullness of time an ice-cream vendor would pass by and the tad in love would then grab two 1-shilling frozen ice lollies to cool the lovers tongues as they bask away in the natural spa of the sunlight skies. Just two decades later, the dense filth that flows through the river churns a belly from yards away. The abyss of how to manage urban waste laid bare.

An interesting story of a good intention lacking foresight [especially of what could go wrong in the wider picture of urban management] begs. It’s the story of the filth that is now Mukuru’s[8] slum reality – a slum home to about 300,000 residents (Mutinda, Yoon, & Kim, 2019) just 7km from the central business district of Nairobi tucked within the industrial area. A conflation of industrial, construction and domestic waste routinely dumped in the area every day creates significant health and environmental concerns afflicting the residents.

In the early 1980’s the 647 acres of land that the slum now sits on was virtually unoccupied. The landscape featured massive deep unfilled quarries that became a settlement threat with children falling in and dying or in the rainy season the holes becoming breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Local narrative goes that in a bid to solve the problem of filling these gaping holes, an officer of the city county (then the city council) working with the area chief agreed to temporarily redirect trucks carrying the city construction and domestic waste up until the quarry holes were filled up and relieve the immediate human problem. Then, it was a genius solution of killing two birds with one stone – it relieved the pressure of the overwhelmed Dandora dumpsite[9] as well as saving real lives. Years later, after the holes were filled, the dumping continued creating small hills with the dumping extending to the Nairobi river as a new ‘hole’ to be ‘filled’.

Though genius in the 80’s this temporary solution lacked exit strategies and failed to put in perspective the rational choice of the predominant private garbage firms who would save money for making the shorter 7km trip as opposed to the designated legal trip 14km away from the Central Business District.

Similar to the paradox of Kibera slum[10], we have Mukuru slum – low value informal settlement area that, spatially speaking, with proximity to the central business district and good road network should attract great value.

A final tale of Nairobi’s peculiarity of perceived problems is the pet peeve of dignified housing. Kibera and Mukuru slums are just but two of the estimated 158 slums in the city housing nearly a third of the city’s residents in predominantly informal single roomed iron sheet shacks. A further third of the city’s residents live in single roomed high density tenements considered vertical brick slums falling short in basic provisions (KNBS, 2018). Spatially speaking, Mukuru and Kibera share in common distance from the CBD of about 7km. The tale on the other end of the spectrum is the higher end Kilimani - Lavington area also 7 km from the central business district.

From an outsiders view, this is just but “a same script, different cast” urban theater that is screening globally in virtually all cities – from New York, to Sao Paulo to Johannesburg to Sidney. The case of low supply of affordable formal housing solution.

In investment terms “a gap between formal housing choice and the price the low income urban resident is willing to pay”. The “shinning knight” of the foreign solution then jets in to build affordable housing for sale - the faster the better. Blinded by the shining armor the government of Kenya has repeatedly hummed along these tunes - panel beating policies aimed at selling houses to the two – thirds “unserved”[11].

This "eternal eye" influenced policy narrative presents the protagonist as the poor slum dweller and the villain as an “ugly monster” slumlord dominating the weak;

The narrative is often blind to the duality of existence for majority of low income residents who more often than not are making optimal choices on how much to spend on a transitory urban housing opportunity vis a vis the rural palace under constant development. The narrative also often fails to dig deeper into the genesis of such a market solution for housing in Nairobi. Unlike many cities in the world private ‘landlordism’ has pervaded Nairobi since the 1960’s. In all national housing surveys, the role of private landlords in housing has been dominant from about two – thirds in the 70’s and 80’s, to now about 86% of all housing (and in the low income housing over 90%) (KNBS, 1996) (KNBS, 2002) (KNBS, 2009) (KNBS, 2018) (KNBS, 2019). There are virtually no squatters in Nairobi. 0ver 90% of Nairobi’s slum residents are tenants renting out these contraptions of dwellings in Nairobi– since before the state of Kenya was formally declared!

But just who are these slum residents and who are these slum lords?

True to Nairobi’s peculiarity, there is a further twist to this tale of dignified housing. I weave it in a story of growing up in formal brick Nyayo Estate Highrise[12] adjacent to iron sheet Kibera slums.

Growing up, the lines between “we” who lived in stone and “they” who lived in metal blurred along children friendship lines – we all went to romance and intermingle by the Nairobi river and inevitably became friends and visited each other. I could perceive even then that for quite a number of my friends, economically speaking - we were peers. It was all down to choice of how much to prioritize for rent of an urban house over the rural palace (oh yes - official statistics have shown nearly 40% of slum residents own of land with title in another part of Kenya – a percentage comparable to those living in formal high end housing at about 43% (KNBS, 2018)).

In terms of the investible opportunities in affordable housing – even then (in the 1990’s), I could perceive Kibera as a preferential investment opportunity. Our next door neighbor was a slumlord of a row of those ugly looking contraptions that paint the slum landscape. But it was advantageous to befriend the children as that gave me and my siblings a ticket to sample their frequent delectable cakes and flat breads because – economically speaking – then, as it is now – solving housing for the low income residents of Nairobi was really good business. The external eye tends to view these entrepreneurs as greedy slumlords – the ugly face of power and dominance over the weak who grab urban space and viciously hold on to it sucking the blood out of poor residents. I saw a kind woman who accepted a time-bound high risk opportunity and invested accordingly such that in under 5 years she had recouped her development cost and any period thereafter was free cashflow. The under five year timeline was very telling to fall within one political election cycle as the urban political order has always been fluid and you could easily fall out of the good books in one election season. In fact in subsequent years her structures were “grabbed” by “vijana” (youth living in the area but who are often a front for another older investor in tune with ground politics of the time) and she laid very little resistance– choosing to walk away with the profits already made. After all she was astute to the risk and the time bound nature of the investment.Numbers do not lie and when you put the math to it - developing the iron sheet slum contraptions offer the investor a payback in 40 months whereas it takes a minimum of 135 months (3 times longer) for the shiny formal residential blocks to offer a return of capital to investors[13].

The mad rush today to grab overpriced plots in Lavington – Kilimani area can only be made by uninformed foreign investors interpreting the “housing shortage” simplistically to provision of brick and mortar towers.

Born, growing up, working and living in Nairobi – I can testify that the emperor that was the “city in the sun” and the “evergreen city of forever spring” is naked. However, true to the peculiar case of Kenyans – its nakedness when viewed from the external eye is distorted. The solutions to traffic, garbage or housing mess is not a standard solution and calls for an inner eye and an inner solution.

[1] See Michael Machira https://kioneki.com/2018/08/01/how-nairobis-matatus-defied-the-will-of-kenyas-cashless-policy-makers/ [2] See Ken Griffith https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140815081833-31799348-why-cashless-transit-payments-are-not-working-in-nairobi/ [3] See Rasna Warah https://www.theelephant.info/op-eds/2018/08/04/faulty-towers-why-uhurus-housing-plan-is-dead-on-arrival/ [4] See Mathare Social Justice report Maji ni Uhai Maji ni Haki: Eastlands Residents Demand Their Right to Water.” On failure of Water ATM’s just three years on: https://www.matharesocialjustice.org/maji-ni-haki-campaign-for-water-justice/ [5] See The Nairobians comical extension https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/entertainment/nainotepad/2000228199/10-peculiar-habits-nairobians-have [6] See Sunny Bindra’s forward for his book with a comment from Michael Joseph, current chairman of Kenya Airways, former CEO of Safaricom https://sunwords.com/books/the-peculiar-kenyan/ [7] From the famous literary folktale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen “The Emperor’s new clothes” published in 1837 https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/68/fairy-tales-and-other-traditional-stories/5637/the-emperors-new-clothes/ [8]Mukuru slums consists of three contiguous informal villages of Mukuru Kwa Njenga, Mukuru kwa Ruben and Viwandani and home to approximately 300,000 residents. There have been several policies at national and county level to transform the informal settlement. On 1st August 2016, the Nairobi City County declared the Mukuru slums, a Special Planning area vide gazette notice no. 7654, a move intended to control planning and improvement of basic services and housing. [9] Dandora dumpsite is Nairobi’s main land fill disposal area sprawing about 30 acres of land. It was established in 1977 and collects nearly 850 tonnes of the city’s waste daily. Though it was declared completely filled in 1996, the decommissioning process has never been followed through partly because the city has not worked out viable alternative waste disposal mechanisms. See UNEP story https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/smoking-nairobi-landfill-jeopardizes-schoolchildrens-future [10] Kibera is a word from the Nubian language “Kibra” meaning forest. The slum is considered one of the largest in Africa though the reported population of 1 million is highly contestable given its spatial spread on just over 600 acres of land. It consists of 13 villages with fluid borders. Official statistics put the population at about 170,000 persons. See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31540911 [11]In 2018 Kenyan president-led “Big Four” affordable housing initiative unveiled the affordable housing program seeking to build 500,000 units across the country majority of which are in the city of Nairobi and offered for sale through affordable mortgages. See https://bomayangu.go.ke/ [12] Nyayo Estate highrise initially called Kibera Highrise was initially pitched as a Kibera slum upgrading project - an affordable housing estate developed by the government real estate agency – National Housing Corporation in the late 1990’s for sale at Kshs. 240,000 through a tenant purchase scheme. Initially intended for Kibera residents the government eventually opened the ballot to the public on lapse of the uptake period. See https://brianekdale.com/2011/05/04/the-history-of-kibera/ [13] See https://naipolitans.or.ke/nairobis-paradox-do-informal-settlements-provide-unaffordable-housing/