Nairobi Quotes

Where would you like to go, what would you really like to do with your life? See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Morrocan midnight. Love a beautiful woman.

You do not respond to a mosquito bite with a hammer.

The summer my cousins return from Nairobi, we sit in a circle by the oak tree in my aunt’s garden. They look older. Amel’s hardened nipples push through the paisley of her blouse, minarets calling men to worship.

I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder -- alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware -- is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.

I have learned that I, we, are a dollar-a-day people (which is terrible, they say, because a cow in Japan is worth $9 a day). This means that a Japanese cow would be a middle class Kenyan... a $9-a-day cow from Japan could very well head a humanitarian NGO in Kenya. Massages are very cheap in Nairobi, so the cow would be comfortable.

I felt Nairobi's foreignness — or really, my own foreignness in relation to it — immediately, even in the first strains of morning. It's a sensation I've come to love as I've traveled more, the way a new place signals itself instantly and without pretense. The air has a different weight from what you're used to; it carries smells you can't quite identify, a faint whiff of wood smoke or diesel fuel, maybe, or the sweetness of something blooming in the trees. The same sun comes up, but looking slightly different from what you know.

We walked into my mother's house at 10:30 in the morning at the end of February 1992. I had been gone for three weeks. She had been so desperate about us - she, too, looked thin and haggard. She was stunned to see me walk in, filthy and crawling with lice, with a huge crowd of starving people. We ate and drank clean water; then, before we even washed, I put Marian in a taxi with me and told the driver to go to Nairobi Hospital. We had no money left and I knew Nairobi Hospital was expensive; it was where I had been operated on when the ma'alim broke my skull. But I also knew that there they would help us first and ask to pay later. Saving the baby's life had become the only thing that mattered to me. At the reception desk I announced, "This baby is going to die," and the nurse's eyes went wide with horror. She took him and put a drip in his arm, and very slowly, this tiny shape seemed to uncrumple slightly. After a little while, his eyes opened. The nurse said, "The child will live," and told us to deal with the bill at the cash desk. I asked her who her director was, and found him, and told this middle-aged Indian doctor the whole story. I said I couldn't pay the bill. He took it and tore it up. He said it didn't matter. Then he told me how to look after the baby, and where to get rehydration salts, and we took a taxi home. Ma paid for the taxi and looked at me, her eyes round with respect. "Well done," she said. It was a rare compliment. In the next few days the baby began filling out, growing from a crumpled horror-movie image into a real baby, watchful, alive.

There's organized confusion on African roads while driving in the cities. If you want to mess up Afican Cities very easy, just fly in 100 Americans put them on the road and tell them to drive.

What's happened here, Sayid? There never used to be such begging." "You are right," he said. "I believe they have learned this thing from those in the city. People come back from Nairobi or Kisumu and tell them, 'You are poor.' So now we have this idea of poverty. We didn't have this idea before. You look at my mother. She will never ask for anything. She has always something that she is doing. None of it brings much money, but it is something, you see. It gives her pride. Anyone could do the same, but many people here, they prefer to give up.

Shrinking from men, being on guard, avoiding drawing attention to oneself: this is the daily life of women in Africa and the Middle East. As girls growing up in Mogadishu and Nairobi, my sister and I covered ourselves with hijabs to conceal ourselves from public view. Today, women in Europe must consider what manner of dress will best deflect the attention of the increasing numbers of men on the prowl.

I had now also got to deal with the fate of my horses and my dogs... In the end I decided to give them to my friends. I rode in to Nairobi on my favourite horse, Rouge, going very slowly and looking round to the North, and the South. It was a very strange thing to Rouge, I thought, to be going in by the Nairobi road, and not to be coming back. I installed him, with some trouble, in the horse-van of the Naivasha train, I stood in the van and felt, for the last time, his silky muzzle against my hands and my face. I will not let thee go, Rouge, except thou bless me. We had found together the riding-path down to the river amongst the Native shambas and huts, on the steep slippery descent he had walked as nimbly as a mule, and in the brown running river-water I had seen my own head and his close together. May you now, in a valley of clouds, eat carnations to the right and stock to the left.

One day I sold my table-glass, and then in the night thought better of it, so that in the morning I drove to Nairobi and asked the lady who had bought it to call off the deal. I had no place to put the glass, but the fingers and lips of many friends had touched it, they had given me excellent wine to drink out of it; it was keeping an echo of old table-talk, and I did not want to part with it. After all, I thought, it would be an easy thing to break.

China’s state-owned China Road and Bridge Corporation is building a $14 billion rail project to connect Mombasa to the capital city of Nairobi. Analysts say the time taken for goods to travel between the two cities will be reduced from thirty-six hours to eight hours, with a corresponding cut of 60 per cent in transport costs. There are even plans to link Nairobi up to South Sudan, and across to Uganda and Rwanda. Kenya intends, with Chinese help, to be the economic powerhouse of the eastern seaboard.

I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder—alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware—is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all. And so what was a more interior, intimate effort on my part, to understand this struggle and to find my place in it, has converged with a broader public debate, a debate in which I am professionally engaged, one that will shape our lives and the lives of our children for many years to come. The

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Dadaab is a vivid reminder that refugee problems don't end simply because journalistic interest moves elsewhere. The inhabitants themselves are irremediably stuck. They can't go back to Somalia because it isn't safe and they can't go elsewhere in Kenya because Kenya has problems enough of its own without having 134,000 Somalis pitching up in Nairobi or Mombasa, looking for food and work. And so way out in the desert there exists this strange city-that-isn't-a-city filled with people who have nowhere to go and nothing much to do.

We have all seen examples of God's most wonderful creature, the person, who is inspired to go beyond the mechanical requirements of a task. Such men and women, paid or unpaid, express the spirit of the volunteer — literally the will to make a product better, a school the very best, a clinic more compassionate and effective. Their spirit, generating new ideas, resisting discouragement, and demanding results, animates the heart of every effective society." — His Highness the Aga Khan, Enabling Environment Conference, Nairobi, October 20, 1986.

Don Chrisantos Michael Wanzala "Don CM Wanzala" (born April 13), popularly known as Don Santo (stylized as DON SANTO) is a Kenyan singer, rapper, songwriter, arranger, actor, author, content producer, Photo-Videographer, Creative Director (Blame It On Don), entrepreneur, record executive and Leader of the Klassik Nation and chairman and president of Global Media Ltd, based in Nairobi City in Kenya. ​ The genius of DON SANTO rests in his willingness to break from traditional formula and constantly push the envelope. He flips the method of the moment with undeniable swagger and bold African sensibility. As a songwriter, Santo revisits simple, but profound aspects of the human experience – love, lust, desire, joy, and pain that define classical art and drama. He applies his concept to rich, full vocals that exude his intended effect. It is this uncanny ability to compose classics and deliver electrifying live performances that define everything that is essential DON SANTO. In 2015, Santo won the East Africa Music Awards in the Artist of the year Category while his song "Sina Makosa" won the Song of The year. A believer in GOD, FAMILY & GOOD LIFE (Klassikanity).

So much of what my generation had been promised disintegrated at our touch. Consider the friend, a painter of seascapes, who dreamed of affording waterfront property. On the day the levees broke, the Gulf flooded her studio and painted her walls with costly oils. Consider the friend who worked for six years at a company he hated on the promise of a sabbatical, only to be let go. The friend who complained about family reunions and lost every relative over the age of fifty to a virus. The friend who saved up to invest in a fund and saw her money dissolve like sugar on the tongues of bankers who barely got a scolding from the SEC. The life we'd been promised was a scam, the world a scam, the whole goddamn play a scam and there seemed nothing to do but burn it down as rioters did in Paris, New York, Nairobi—and then creep back through the embers because what other choice did we have?

game hunting was flourishing; and, dining at Muthaiga Club, I was offered trout freshly caught in the mountains, together with some last bottles of a particularly fragrant Rhine wine. Not since that last bright summer in Paris in 1939, when the wealthy of the world came flocking to spend their money lest they should not visit Paris again, had I seen women so well groomed, wearing so many lush furs. Baboon pelts and leopard skins were particularly popular. Great log fires burned in the grates of the club chimney places, though the nights were scarcely sharp. The men wore dinner-jackets or dress uniform. The conversation tended to hunting. In the day one had golf at Brackenridge, or swimming or riding or fooling round the game reserves where giraffe still roam haphazardly. Normally one looked in at a roadhouse for an apéritif around eight in the evening, and after dinner perhaps went down to Torr’s to dance. They say the altitude at Nairobi makes people slightly crazy, but after the desert I found it all delightful, as though the world were enjoying one long holiday. As

In 1498, Vasco da Gama the Portuguese navigator explored this eastern coast of Africa flanking the Indian Ocean. This led him to open a trade route to Asia and occupy Mozambique to the Portuguese colony. In 1840, it came under the control of the Sultan of Zanzibar and became a British protectorate in 1895, with Mombasa as its capital. Nairobi, lying 300 miles to the northwest of Mombasa is the largest city in Kenya. It became the capital in 1907 and is the fastest growing urban area in the Republic having become independent of the United Kingdom on December 12, 1963 and declared a republic the following year on December 12, 1964. Kenya is divided by the 38th meridian of longitude into two very different halves. The eastern half of Kenya slopes towards the coral-backed seashore of the Indian Ocean while the western side rises through a series of hills to the African Shear Zone or Central Rift. West of the Rift, the lowest part of a westward-sloping plateau contains Lake Victoria. This, the largest lake in Africa, receives most of its water from rain, the Kagera River and countless small streams. Its only outlet is the White Nile River which is part of the longest river on Earth. Combined, the Blue Nile and the White Nile, stretches 4,160 miles before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea.

Moi, moreover, made full use of his control of government machinery to obtain funds, harass the opposition and manipulate the results. The delimitation of constituencies was skewed heavily to favour Kanu strongholds in the North Eastern, Rift Valley and Coast provinces. The number of voters needed to return a single seat in opposition strongholds in some cases was four times higher than in Kanu strongholds. Whereas the North Eastern province, with 1.79 per cent of the electorate, had ten seats, Nairobi province with 8.53 per cent had only eight seats; whereas Coast province with 8.37 per cent of the electorate had twenty seats, Central province with 15.51 per cent had only twenty-five seats. The average size of a secure Kanu constituency was only 28,350 voters, while seats in opposition areas were on average 84 per cent larger with 52,169 voters. The registration process was also manipulated. The government cut short the period allowed for voter registration and delayed the issuing of identity cards needed by young potential voters, effectively disenfranchising at least 1 million people. Opposition areas were under-registered. The highest figures for registration were in the Rift Valley. The independence of the Electoral Commission was also suspect. The man Moi appointed to head it was a former judge who had been declared bankrupt two years previously and removed from the bench for improper conduct.

Obama’s father had studied in a missionary school and was working as a clerk in Nairobi. He was encouraged to come to America for further study by two missionary women, Helen Roberts and Elizabeth Mooney, who were living at the time in Kenya. In Obama’s Selma narrative, this was made possible by the Kennedy family. “What happened in Selma, Alabama, and Birmingham also, stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House,” he said. “The Kennedys decided we’re going to do an airlift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country.” Soon after that Obama got married and “Barack Obama Jr. was born.... So I’m here because somebody marched. I’m here because you all sacrificed for me.” Except that the Kennedys had nothing to do with Obama’s father coming to America. As Obama’s staff eventually acknowledged, Obama Sr. arrived here in 1959. John F. Kennedy was elected president the following year.1 The two American teachers who had encouraged Obama Sr. to make the trip paid his travel costs and the bulk of his expenses. There was an airlift, organized by the Kenyan labor leader Tom Mboya with financial support from a number of American philanthropists. It brought several dozen African students to America to study, but Barack Obama Sr. did not come on that plane. Rather, he came on his own and enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.2 Moreover, the march in Selma occurred in March 1965, while Obama Jr. was born in August 1961; Selma had nothing to do with the circumstances of Obama’s birth.

n 1985, Bob Munro volunteered his time to go and serve in the poorest slums of Africa on behalf of the United Nations. He loved football. One day, he was passing through the Mathare slums in Nairobi, Kenya, which happens to be one of the poorest areas in the world, and where more than a quarter million people live in abject poverty and filth. He saw some children playing football, bare feet, in total grime— they weren’t actually playing football, but kicking each other. As he saw one of the children kick the other, he immediately shouted, ‘Foul’, and the game stopped. He got out of his car and being the white man, obviously stood out. As an ardent lover of football, he said, ‘This is not the way to play football.’ He took the ball and told the boys, ‘Tomorrow I will bring another ball and teach you how to play football.’ The next day, 600 children were there to play football. He made a rule that only those children who clean up the place be allowed to play. He started a volunteers’ group for self-help and said, ‘Those who want to play football as part of my team must clean up.’ The children got involved and started cleaning the slums, and out of love for football, slowly the entire area was cleaned. As time went by, he developed teams to play. He developed referees from within. Guess what was the result in four years? The Kenyan football eleven national team emerged from the same Mathare slums. Bob Munro has created thousands of football teams from there, but the rules are very unique. The rules are very clear that every player in those football teams must contribute 60 hours to social work and community service per month. Only then can they play football. They get additional points not for winning a game, but for completing a community service project such as cleaning, counselling and helping others. He has created 8,000 volunteers out of this system of community service through the love of football.

Anna Chapman was born Anna Vasil’yevna Kushchyenko, in Volgograd, formally Stalingrad, Russia, an important Russian industrial city. During the Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, the city became famous for its resistance against the German Army. As a matter of personal history, I had an uncle, by marriage that was killed in this battle. Many historians consider the battle of Stalingrad the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare. Anna earned her master's degree in economics in Moscow. Her father at the time was employed by the Soviet embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where he allegedly was a senior KGB agent. After her marriage to Alex Chapman, Anna became a British subject and held a British passport. For a time Alex and Anna lived in London where among other places, she worked for Barclays Bank. In 2009 Anna Chapman left her husband and London, and moved to New York City, living at 20 Exchange Place, in the Wall Street area of downtown Manhattan. In 2009, after a slow start, she enlarged her real-estate business, having as many as 50 employees. Chapman, using her real name worked in the Russian “Illegals Program,” a group of sleeper agents, when an undercover FBI agent, in a New York coffee shop, offered to get her a fake passport, which she accepted. On her father’s advice she handed the passport over to the NYPD, however it still led to her arrest. Ten Russian agents including Anna Chapman were arrested, after having been observed for years, on charges which included money laundering and suspicion of spying for Russia. This led to the largest prisoner swap between the United States and Russia since 1986. On July 8, 2010 the swap was completed at the Vienna International Airport. Five days later the British Home Office revoked Anna’s citizenship preventing her return to England. In December of 2010 Anna Chapman reappeared when she was appointed to the public council of the Young Guard of United Russia, where she was involved in the education of young people. The following month Chapman began hosting a weekly TV show in Russia called Secrets of the World and in June of 2011 she was appointed as editor of Venture Business News magazine. In 2012, the FBI released information that Anna Chapman attempted to snare a senior member of President Barack Obama's cabinet, in what was termed a “Honey Trap.” After the 2008 financial meltdown, sources suggest that Anna may have targeted the dapper Peter Orzag, who was divorced in 2006 and served as Special Assistant to the President, for Economic Policy. Between 2007 and 2010 he was involved in the drafting of the federal budget for the Obama Administration and may have been an appealing target to the FSB, the Russian Intelligence Agency. During Orzag’s time as a federal employee, he frequently came to New York City, where associating with Anna could have been a natural fit, considering her financial and economics background. Coincidently, Orzag resigned from his federal position the same month that Chapman was arrested. Following this, Orzag took a job at Citigroup as Vice President of Global Banking. In 2009, he fathered a child with his former girlfriend, Claire Milonas, the daughter of Greek shipping executive, Spiros Milonas, chairman and President of Ionian Management Inc. In September of 2010, Orzag married Bianna Golodryga, the popular news and finance anchor at Yahoo and a contributor to MSNBC's Morning Joe. She also had co-anchored the weekend edition of ABC's Good Morning America. Not surprisingly Bianna was born in in Moldova, Soviet Union, and in 1980, her family moved to Houston, Texas. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, with a degree in Russian/East European & Eurasian studies and has a minor in economics. They have two children. Yes, she is fluent in Russian! Presently Orszag is a banker and economist, and a Vice Chairman of investment banking and Managing Director at Lazard.

The ‘population problem’ has been seen as something that happens in the Indian countryside or a Nairobi slum. It is cited as the cause of hunger and poverty, yet Europe’s population explosion reshaped world economic structures to the permanent disadvantage of the now poor countries and of the environment.

My own job in Kenya was to help the refugees who had settled in the sprawling slums of Nairobi start their own businesses so they could support themselves and their families. Much of the work consisted of visiting the refugees in their small shacks, which often contained nothing more than a mattress, a kerosene lantern, a cooking pot, some boxes, and a few plastic pails to hold water and food. This kind of poverty—in which human beings are unable to satisfy their basic needs—is not something to which Jesuits, or anyone, aspires. Dehumanizing poverty is something that many Jesuits spend their entire lives combating, whether through direct work with the poor or advocacy on their behalf. The Jesuit goal of voluntary poverty in imitation of Christ is different from the involuntary poverty that is a scourge for billions across the globe. But the two are inextricably connected: living simply means that one needs less and takes less from the world, and is therefore more able to give to those who live in poverty. Living simply can aid the poor.

Je n'ai jamais très bien compris pourquoi on estimait que les femmes étaient moins capables que les hommes d'éviter ces dangers évidents, mais je crois que le règlement était inspiré par la galanterie plutôt que par la raison. En tout, j'ai parcouru six fois la totalité de la route aérienne entre Nairobi et Londres - dont quatre fois en solo [...] -, et d'autres femmes en ont fait autant. De fait, la plus grande erreur de jugement commise pendant un vol au-dessus du Studd revient à un homme [...].

I felt Nairobi’s foreignness—or really, my own foreignness in relation to it—immediately, even in the first strains of morning. It’s a sensation I’ve come to love as I’ve traveled more, the way a new place signals itself instantly and without pretense. The air has a different weight from what you’re used to; it carries smells you can’t quite identify, a faint whiff of wood smoke or diesel fuel, maybe, or the sweetness of something blooming in the trees. The same sun comes up, but looking slightly different from what you know.

These small storefront bookstores provide hours of calm in the Nairobi storm. Because every day when I wake up, the clouds gather, a little darker each day, and I feel less and less equipped to do anything about them. To go anywhere. To make a change. To speak more than the occasional sentence. So I go to the bookstores.

was loved deeply. His grandparents on Oahu doted on both him and his younger half sister Maya. His mother, though still living in Jakarta, was warm and supportive from afar. Barack also spoke affectionately of another half sister in Nairobi, named Auma.

It was late one night at the hotel bar in Johannesburg when Bill told me his daughter is “a very unusual person.” That she was. A couple of nights later, over a South African chardonnay at the Serena Hotel in Kampala, I suggested to Chelsea that we check out the market in the morning. “It’s supposed to be the biggest market in East Africa,” I said. “Actually, in terms of square footage, Nairobi would dispute that,” Chelsea replied.

The august international organizations charged with preserving peace and human dignity in the world—the UN, the EU, among others—would have preferred that terrorist atrocities be limited to Israel. However, once the intentional mass murder of innocent civilians was legitimized against Israel, it was legitimized everywhere, constrained by nothing more than the strongly held beliefs of those who would become the mass murderers. Because the Palestinians were encouraged by most of the world to believe that the murder of innocent Israeli civilians is a legitimate tactic to advance the Palestinian nationalist cause, the Islamists believe that they may commit mass murder anywhere in the world to advance their holy cause. As a result, we suffer from a plague of Islamic terrorism, from Moscow to Madrid, from Bali to Beslan, from Nairobi to New York, authored and perfected by the Palestinians. Israel and the United States are not separate targets of Islamic terrorism. The whole world is its target. Israel and the United States share the bull’s-eye.

Environment Program. 2007. GEO4 Global Environmental Outlook: Environment for Development . Nairobi: United Nations Environment Program. United Nations High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. 2004. A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility . New York: United Nations.

Every nation on the face of the earth has citizens who are endowed with great potentials. There is no nation in the world whose citizens are completely void of potentials. God never created any nation to be void of potentially great citizens. Not India, not the Central African Republic, not Afghanistan nor Moldova is completely void of citizens with potentials. From the kibera slum in Nairobi, Africa to the cubatao, sao Paolo, Brazil, and down to the Makoko slums in Lagos, there are people with great potentials.

Nairobi means ‘cool water’ in Maasai.

La vida me afecta y no puedo separar lo que me hace daño de mi manera de ser.

Tengo una idea clara: hacer de mis errores virtudes y conseguir realizar mis ilusiones.

El corazón siempre ha sido mi motor; es el que me hace vibrar, vivir, amar... y sufrir.

The authorities do try to minimise the number of deaths: guides are given some training in what to do if one of their group is showing signs of acute mountain sickness (AMS) and trekkers are required to register each night upon arrival at the campsite and have to pay a US$20 (plus VAT) ‘rescue fee’ as part of their park fees (though what this actually gets you is unclear). But you, too, can do your bit by avoiding AMS in the first place. The following pages discuss in detail what AMS actually is, how it is caused, the symptoms and, finally, how to avoid it.

Barack était davantage dans son élément que moi à Nairobi, où il était déjà venu une fois. Je me déplaçais pour ma part avec la balourdise d’une touriste, consciente que nous étions des étrangers, malgré la couleur de notre peau. Les gens nous dévisageaient parfois dans la rue. Bien sûr, je n’avais pas imaginé m’intégrer immédiatement, mais je pensais naïvement que je ressentirais en arrivant je ne sais quel lien viscéral avec le continent dans lequel mon enfance m’avait appris à voir une forme de patrie mythique, que j’éprouverais un sentiment de complétude. Mais l’Afrique ne nous devait rien. C’est une étrange prise de conscience que cette impression d’entre-deux qui s’empare d’un Afro-américain en Afrique. Elle m’a inspiré une tristesse indéfinissable, la sensation d’être déracinée sur les deux continents.

you weren’t here, there would be no hotel to drink in. What would happen to all the people who work there? Or at the restaurants and bars next to it? What would happen to all the soldiers from Bangladesh and Nepal and the airport the UN is building so their workers can fly direct from here to Addis or Nairobi for vacation every six weeks? What would happen to this military base the government is building to stop people like me? You have to understand, I love my country too much not to make these little troubles.

Here is my vision of the true justice, the justice of nature: the zoos opened, predators unleashed by the dozens, hundreds … four thousand hungry wolves rampaging on streets of these hive cities, elephants and bison stampeding, the buildings smashed to pieces, the cries of the human bug shearing through the streets as the lord of beasts returns. Manhattan, Moscow, Peking reduced to ruins overgrown by vines and forest, the haunt of the lynx and coyote again. The great cesspool slums, Calcutta, Nairobi, all the fetid latrines of the world covered over by mudslides, overgrown with thick jungle, this is justice.

Preamble The Klassik Era was a cultural and musical revolution that swept through Kenya and East Africa in the early 2010s. It was a time of bold experimentation, fearless expression, and unapologetic individuality that challenged the norms of mainstream music and culture. For the first time, young people from the ghettos and slums of Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu could see themselves represented and celebrated in the music and arts scene, and their voices and stories were given a platform like never before. The Klassik Era was characterized by a fusion of different musical genres and styles, from hip-hop and reggae to dancehall and afro-pop, to create a sound that was uniquely Kenyan and African. It was a time when young artists and producers like Blame It On Don (DON SANTO), Kingpheezle, Jilly Beatz, Tonnie Tosh, Kenny Rush, and many others came together under Klassik Nation, a record label that would change the face of Kenyan music forever. The Klassik Era was also marked by a sense of community and camaraderie, with young people from all walks of life coming together to support each other's art and creativity. It was a time when collaborations and features were the norm, and when artists and producers worked together to create something new and exciting. But the Klassik Era was not without its challenges and controversies. It was a time when the Kenyan music industry was dominated by a few powerful players who controlled the airwaves and the mainstream narrative, and who were resistant to change and innovation. It was a time when artists and producers had to fight tooth and nail to get their music played on the radio and to gain recognition and respect from their peers. Despite these challenges, the Klassik Era left an indelible mark on the Kenyan music industry and on the cultural landscape of Africa. It was a time of creativity, passion, and rebellion that inspired a generation of young people to dream big and to believe that anything was possible. This book is a tribute to that era and to the artists and producers who made it all possible.

The progressives pose as the champions not only of fairness and social justice but also of compassion. They are the ones who insist on our obligation to those from whom we have allegedly stolen. Let’s leave aside for the moment whether they are right about the theft. What we do know for sure is that progressives assert there has been a theft. They further acknowledge that they are among the beneficiaries of it. Based on this, they would seem to have a clear obligation to return the stolen goods that they are currently enjoying. We might expect, from this analysis, to discover that progressives are the most generous people in America. We can anticipate that they contribute the highest portion of their incomes and time to help their wronged and less fortunate fellow men and women. The truth, however, is that progressives are the least generous people in America. I saw this personally with Obama, who unceasingly declares that “we are our brother’s keeper” even as he refuses to help his own half brother, George, who lives in a hut in the Huruma slum of Nairobi. I met George in early 2012 when I interviewed him for my film 2016: Obama’s America. A few months after that, when I was back in America, George called me from Kenya to ask me to give him $1,000 because his baby son was sick. Surprised, I asked him, “Why are you calling me? Isn’t there someone else you can call?” He said, “No.” So I sent him the money. I guess on that occasion it was I, not Obama, who proved to be his brother’s keeper. And besides George, the president has other relatives in dire need—his aunt Hawa Auma, for example, sells charcoal on the roadside in rural Kenya, and desperately needs money to get her rotting teeth fixed. Although Obama is aware of their plight, he refuses to help them.

Today, Ushahidi, headquartered in the iHub building, is a global nonprofit, crowd-sourced emergency mapping system available in 30 languages and 159 countries. It has been deployed in thousands of international events and crises, including the Haiti earthquake, the Japanese tsunami, wildfires in Russia and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Louisiana. In the aftermath of Nairobi’s horrific Westgate Mall terrorist attack in 2014, it mapped out donor blood drive locations in the city. Juliana Rotich jokes wryly, “If we had known it was going to become so international, we would have given it a more user-friendly name.

Another game-changing project is the BRCK, pronounced “brick,” created by the same team behind Ushahidi and iHub. On a flight back to Africa from the United States some years ago, Hersman looked down on our vast, rugged continent and wondered why it was that most routers and modems were built for the first-world comfort zones of, say, New York or London, whereas most Internet users actually live in the harsh, far less comfortable environments of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The team sketched out a design for a rugged portable connectivity device that could work in remote conditions where electrical power and Internet connections were a problem. The result is the BRCK, a sturdy, brick-shaped, cloud-enabled Wi-Fi hotspot router from which you can access the Internet from anywhere on the continent that is close to a signal. It has an antenna, charger, USB ports, 4 GB of storage, a built-in global SIM card and enough backup power to survive a blackout. The device sells for $199 online and is already being used in 45 countries around the world. Consider the provenance: designed in Nairobi, Kenya; manufactured in Austin, Texas. This is a complete reversal of the standard manufacturing paradigm. Again, an example of African technology going global.

Paying for a taxi ride using your mobile phone is easier in Nairobi than it is in New York, thanks to Kenya’s world-leading mobile-money system, M-PESA.’1 This was the opening paragraph in The Economist’s article of 27 May 2013, ‘Why does Kenya lead the world in mobile money?

Nairobi

i DO NOT WHY BUT i KEEP THINKING OF YOU, WHAT DID YOU EVER DO TO ME? I have tried na nikashindwa kukudelete from my system, IMEKATAA. i KNOW YOU HAVE TRIED TOO, IT LEAVES ME WONDERING WHAT IS THESE. It can only be explained by the gods.

I love that you call me when you are agitated. I am honoured by your trust. I find, too, that I can be imperfect with you. Such a relief."(65)

I fell in love for the first time... I know now what it is to be giddy, laugh at silly things with someone, cook together and look after another person.

The carcass was still warm - barely a few minutes dead, with the blood clotting on the ugly wound on its head where Pinchez had bashed it in with a brick.

THE DOORYARD OF NAIROBI falls into the Athi Plains. One night I stood there and watched an aeroplane invade the stronghold of the stars. It flew high; it blotted some of them out; it trembled their flames like a hand swept over a company of candles. The drumming of the engines was as far away as the drumming of a tom-tom. Unlike a tom-tom, it changed its sound; it came closer until it filled the sky with a boastful song. There

The next morning at Nairobi Station we climbed aboard the train that would take us to Mombasa, and then onto the ship that would ferry us to India for our honeymoon. I was Beryl Purves—and still a virgin.

Now come get some champagne before Denys swills it all.” Denys. Though I’d only met him briefly on the street in Nairobi, for some reason my heart jumped at the sound of his name.

Pastor Oscar Muriu of Nairobi Chapel openly invited North Americans to join the African church in reciprocal service. But he exhorted us, "Don't come thinking that you are coming to fix Africa. You cannot fix Africa." Isaiah Lawon from Nigeria echoes a similar caution. He writes, "You Americans are problem-solvers. Every time I come to the U.S., I like to spend a couple hours in the New York underground and at Walmart and driving around your road system! I find solutions to problems that I never thought of! I like to watch your TV advertisements! We in Africa tend to live with our problems. The negative when it comes to North Americans coming to serve in our world is that Americans don't easily live with a problem; they want to solve the problem and move on. Here we tend to live with the problems, and we'd rather not have an outsider come in to fix us."8

Relationships are important. A pastor from Nairobi, Kenya, was explaining to me the biggest difference between meetings in the West and meetings outside of the West. People from the West tend to be strategic, and they approach meetings with agendas, schedules and lists of follow-up items. Many people outside of the West, who prioritize relationships, first want to know if they can trust us and if we can do good work together. The relational aspect and getting to know each other is so important. In my relationships, I can ask myself this question: how are we building trust with each other, and how are we growing in our relationship as we work together?

The megacity of Kinshasa, with a population fast approaching 10 million, has no waterborne sewage system at all. Across the continent in Nairobi, the Laini Saba slum in Kibera in 1998 had exactly ten working pit latrines for 40,000 people, while in Mathare 4A there were two public toilets for 28,000 people. As a result, slum residents rely on “flying toilets” or “scud missiles.” as they are also called “They put the waste in a polythene bag and throw it on to the nearest roof or pathway.”62 The prevalence of excrement, however, does generate some innovative urban livelihoods: in Nairobi, commuters now confront “10-year-olds with plastic solvent bottles wedged between their teeth, brandishing balls of human excrement – ready to thrust them into an open car window – to force the driver to pay up.”63

Justice without mercy is tyranny, and mercy without justice is weakness. Justice without love is pure socialism, and love without justice is baloney. JAIME CARDINAL SIN speaking at a Prison Fellowship International conference in Nairobi, Kenya, 1986

Erroll’s remains lie in the Kiambu churchyard beside those of the Countess. St Paul’s, fifteen minutes’ drive from Nairobi’s upmarket suburb of Muthaiga, is a small pinkish-red stone church, English in style with its stout wooden door adjacent to its bell tower.

On July 20, 2000, Karzai testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations about the terrorist organizations flourishing in Afghanistan. He warned that the Clinton administration’s response to the August 7, 1998, suicide car bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania—firing cruise missiles at terrorist training camps—was not enough. “Bombings or the threat of bombings,” he said, “will not remove terrorist bases from Afghanistan. Such actions will only add to the problems and prolong the suffering of our people and, worst of all, solidify the presence of terrorist groups. I call upon the international community, and particularly upon the government of the United States…. [T]he time to watch is over and the responsibility to act is long overdue.

the Nairobi method.

It was Lavender who drove us to the Norfolk Hotel in Jock’s yellow Bugatti. He sped through the streets of Nairobi, throwing me across the leather backseat towards Jock, so that I nearly bruised myself against his clenched thighs.

Several editors speculated about the causes, and the Nairobi Leader even published a jeering little poem: They speak of a trainer named Clutterbuck Who enjoyed the most absolute an’ utter luck, Now he’s turning his tables, And selling his stables, In fact he is putting his shutter up. My

Something is rotten in the Republic of Kenya.

Nairobi’s the best in Africa, you’ll see. Only you need to be a millionaire to enjoy it. And there are too many Indians.

Semtex is the best plastic explosive in the world. It feels like Play-Doh, has no smell, and was designed in 1966 to clear land-mines and improve industrial safety. It is also undetectable by dogs and airport security devices, and after it left Mr. Brebera's laboratory in 1968, Semtex became the favored weapon of international terrorists from Libya to Northern Ireland. Since Sept. 11, the Czech Republic and its new NATO allies have become increasingly nervous about the continued production and sale of Brebera's fatal concoction. Over the past two decades, terrorists have employed Semtex in several deadly attacks, including the 1988 explosion of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. And no one has found a reliable way to combat it. Named after Semtin, the village in East Bohemia where Brebera invented it, this extraordinarily stable compound of RDX (Cyclonite) and PETN (Penaerythrite Tetranitrate) slips through airport security scans as easily as a pair of nylons.

According to the FBI, Semtex has an indefinite half-life and is far stronger than traditional explosives such as TNT. It is also easily available on the black market. Semtex became infamous when just 12 ounces of the substance, molded inside a Toshiba cassette recorder, blasted Pan Am flight 103 out of the sky above Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing 270 people. A year later, after the Czech Communist regime was toppled, the new president, Vaclav Havel, revealed that the Czechs had exported 900 tons of Semtex to Col. Moammar Qaddafi's Libya and another 1,000 tons to other unstable states such as Syria, North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. Some experts now put worldwide stockpiles of Semtex at 40,000 tons. Brebera says that with so much Semtex already in the hands of terrorists, and similar explosives being produced in other countries, the Czech Republic can no longer control it. "Semtex is no worse an explosive than any other," he says, defensive at the sight of accusatory headlines in Western newspapers. "The American explosive C4 is just as invisible to airport X-rays, but they don't like to mention that." After the Lockerbie tragedy, Brebera added metal components and a distinct odor to make Semtex easier to detect. But that did not stop terrorists from using it to bomb the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1998, or prevent the IRA, which received about 10 tons of Semtex from Libya, from continuing its attacks.

safaris and jazz bands at the Equator Club in Nairobi, the thrill of airports consisting of little more than a sandy airstrip, the boisterous parties, and the vivid local markets, made Africa competitive. The route was limited to only the most senior stewardesses,

Political conmanship has no place in Umoja, Nairobi, Kenya, or anywhere in the world. Let's avoid politicians and vote for leaders who will work hard and smart to ensure progress and sustainability.

hate Nairobi. It’s dreary and chilly and always rains, and the high crime rate doesn’t help. They’ll pull a gold chain right off your neck in broad daylight and there’s nothing anyone can do. The cops are more corrupt than the thieves. We call it Nairobbery.

The Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunization was created by Bill Gates. STD tainted Tetanus Vaccine was sent to Nairobi which sterilized over 1 million Kenyan women.

While at the hospital, he felt so awful about his fallen life. It was so surprising how someone could change from grace to disgrace. He realized that just as a man was capable of growing physically and spiritually strong, he was capable of growing weak.

Why would I wish to travel through blight and disorder only to report on the same ugliness and misery? The blight is not peculiar to Africa. The squalid slum in Luanda is not only identical to the squalid slum in Cape Town and Jo’burg and Nairobi; they all greatly resemble, in their desperation, their counterparts in the rest of the world. A squatter camp in California is in every detail a duplication of a squatter camp in Africa, and worthy of

After Wangari earned her master’s in science from the University of Pittsburgh, she returned to Kenya to further her studies. She completed her PhD in veterinary anatomy at the University of Nairobi in 1971. This was a time when few women in the United States or in much of the world were studying science at a post-college level—in 1966, only about 15 percent of PhDs in biological and agricultural sciences in the U.S. were awarded to women. Wangari was the first woman in eastern and central Africa to earn a doctorate degree in any subject. If she had continued her studies in the United States, she would have been a pioneer here, too. But Wangari always knew she wanted to go home, to teach and to serve

I am more fascinated by Nairobi than by Africa, just as I am more intrigued by Milan than by Europe. The general is where solidarity begins, but the specific is where our lives come into proper view.

I felt Nairobi's foreignness — or really, my own foreignness in relation to it — immediately, even in the first strains of morning. It's a sensation I've come to love as I've traveled more, the way a new place signals itself instantly and without pretense. The air has a different weight from what you're used to; it carries smells you can't quite identify, a faint whiff of wood smoke or diesel fuel, maybe, or the sweetness of something blooming in the trees. The same sun comes up, but looking slightly different from what you know.

The Chinese state currently expends considerable resources to establish Confucius Institutes worldwide. Africa is no exception. These government-funded institutions promote Chinese language, culture, and understanding and serve as centers for outreach to local media, with the first Confucius Institute established in Kenya in 2005 at the University of Nairobi. These institutes resemble Western nonprofit educational institutions and find their homes within academic institutions, but they are funded and managed by the Chinese state. Confucius Institute personnel and instructors are selected and paid by the Chinese state.

Find her a good home, someone to take care of her. She’s a little girl, Melrose. She shouldn’t be spending her days at Heathrow, scanning for villains. She should be safe.” The other members who were awake turned wide-eyed stares at Melrose, who was laughing so hard he was doubled up in his chair. “Just what the hell is so funny?” “Take care of her. This is Patty Haigh you’re talking about. The same Patty Haigh who got through Heathrow security on a pinched boarding pass; who wangled her way into B.B.’s good graces and flew to Dubai; who outwitted police in London, Dubai and Nairobi; who carries in her backpack a full selection of costumes and wigs to meet any eventuality; who requisitioned strangers to be her aunts, uncles, parents; who roamed around that godless slum, Kibera, on her own; who got into the Hemingways Hotel without paying a penny; who crossed the dark veldt between Kibera and Mbosi Camp protected only by her wits. This is the person we should keep safe!

Nairobi: la ciudad, vacía, no se había despertado aún de su perezoso sueño de domingo

I had been to Jamaica and the Bahamas, and to Europe a few times, but this was my first time being this far from home. I felt Nairobi's foreigness - or really, my own foreigness in relation to it - immediately, even in the first strains of morning. It's a sensation I've come to love as I've traveled more, the way a new place signals itself instantly and without pretense. The air has different weight from what you're used to; it carries smells you can't quite identify, a faint whiff of wood smoke or diesel fuel, maybe, or the sweetness of something blooming in the trees. The same sun comes up, but looking slightly different from what you know.

What if we were all the same colour, and temperament with the same mother tongue? Croissants in Paris are identical to those in São Paulo. The curry you are regaled with in New Delhi is similar to Nairobi’s. It would be incredibly dull if we were all the same!

There were lots of Barack Obama Freeways across the PR; this naming had honored what had been the 44th president’s official birthplace until 2028, when the People’s Republic government ordered the schools and all publications to list his birthplace as Kenya because it was felt to be more diverse if he had come into this world in Nairobi. The powers that be did not want to tarnish his legend with nativity privilege.

LONGER NONFICTION: RECOMMENDED READING Allison, Dorothy. Two or Three Things I Know for Sure. New York: Dutton, 1995. Bradbury, Ray. Dandelion Wine. Thorndike, ME: G.K. Hall, 1999. Burroughs, Augusten. Dry. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003. Coetzee, J.M. Boyhood: Scenes From Provincial Life. New York: Viking, 1997. Eighner, Lars. Travels With Lizbeth. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. Hamper, Ben. Rivethead: Tales From the Assembly Line. New York: Warner Books, 1991. Knipfel, Jim. Quitting the Nairobi Trio. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2000. Lewis, Mindy. Life Inside: A Memoir. New York: Atria Books, 2002. Millett, Kate. The Loony-Bin Trip. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Rose, Phyllis. The Year of Reading Proust: A Memoir in Real Time. New York: Scribner, 1997.

Mark my words, I will be gone, but my ideas will continue to create hundreds of Subhas Chandra Boses and Martin Luther Kings in every neighborhood of this world, from the alleys of New York to the streets of Nairobi, from the beaches of Miami to the banks of Kanyakumari, from the sidewalks of Ankara to the foothills of Alaska.

Some kitchen. A lot of people could use a kitchen like this. Boys Town, for one. Nairobi. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. AFTRA.

When she turned eighteen, Tara had traveled to India in search of her father. She hadn't found him, but she had spent ten years in a yoga ashram in Jammu. She'd come home with Siddhartha, a four-year-old boy she'd adopted, and joined her mother in running the studio. Two years after that she'd adopted India from an orphanage in Bangkok, and two years after that China from an orphanage in Nairobi. India hadn't known there was anything different about her family until a substitute teacher in her kindergarten classroom had looked at her with an expression India would come to know well as she grew up, and asked, Aren't you one of that yoga teacher's kids? The ones with the cleft lip scars adopted from three continents? When India had told Sid about it on their way home from school, he'd said, But India and Thailand are on the same continent. It's how India had learned that adults, even teachers, didn't always know everything. To India, their family was how families were supposed to be. Many years later, when China was in her rebellious phase, she had asked Tara why she had felt the need to adopt children from three countries. I took a lifelong vow of celibacy. How else was I supposed to have children? That had been Tara's answer.