Whoever named this part of Ruaraka fell short of giving his uncle’s name. My first roots in
Nairobi were spread one year shy of the millennium, right here in Babadogo. I am that crop of
urban-to-urban migrants who came to the Big City in the Sun to visit relatives. Can you imagine
the dreamy-eyed gaze of a child mesmerized by this concrete jungle? There was tapped water in
your house all day, more than one television station, matatus that looked like art galleries and
boomed like discos, chips and chicken joints round every corner, a town with so many streets
that they named some after other African cities and leaders!
The name BabaDogo stretched beyond the tarmac that led into an industrial complex of factories
and distributors of toiletries, medicaments, fish, processed foods, roofing materials, steel,
brushes, vehicle spare parts, beauty products, trailers, seeds, shoes, clothing and agrochemicals.
Like ants onto sugar, thousands of Nairobians work there and call BabaDogo, neighbouring
Huruma, Kasarani, Mathare and Kariobangi home.
This complex mushroomed in the 1980s and
has since grown to house several multinationals. The nearest housing complexes to the industries
form the greater part of Kasabuni and Riverside. Here one finds stories of apartments that stand
shoulder to shoulder like giants at war; consider them Nairobian wonders because of how every
rule in the urban planning book was overlooked.
The children have BabaDogo and Chandaria primary as their public schools, right opposite the
matatu terminus that occasionally parks buses travelling upcountry to Western Kenya. Evenings
at Kasabuni, Kariadudu or Riverside are very noisy with hordes of people treading streets where
peddlers sell various factory products at prices cheaper than supermarket ones.
Some of the
wares were discounted staff purchases while others had failed the factory quality test. Some
factories held sporadic sales that sold wares at gate price while others had cheap gate prices all
year long- a Nairobian hustler’s secret. Nearby was Kariobangi where counterfeiters could
reproduce every single product and give these manufacturers a run for their money. Quality in
BabaDogo is a spectrum based on price.
There are wage-earners who scuffle for the limited casuals slots at the factory gates from dawn.
This hand-to-mouth life grew the Ngomongo shanties to a collage of stone, mabati, concrete and
mud houses. Like I said, quality in BabaDogo is a spectrum and landlords here generally demand
less rent than adjoining neighbourhoods.
The “plots” as they are called, are enclosures of one or
two-roomed partitions with the common lavatories and limited personal space that always sparks
a spat between occupants. A foreigner in Ngomongo is easily noticeable as a resident would be
at ease with the maze of houses that is devoid of landmarks. I can only recognise the
entrance/exit which is the red metal bridge that links BabaDogo to Ngomongo, as it passes over
the green waters of River Mathari.
Beyond the tarmac of BabaDogo, there once existed an expanse of scrub and riverine reeds. This
was not a game park and Nairobians’ appetite for land had not yet swelled. Far-sighted investors
like my relatives marshaled their Sacco savings (bank loans were for the rich back in the 1990s)
and dared to build. The vendor of this land was said to be an old man, closely knit to the first
president of this country. The rumour mills spoke of a different ownership that perhaps the Truth
Reconciliation and Justice Report will reveal one day. In the Nairobian spirit of weird naming,
some fellow that was high on his luck decided to name this peri-urban estate Lucky Summer.
Lucky Summer or Lucky in short, grew from the infrastructure of BabaDogo, at a snail pace. My
relatives spent a whole six months waiting for electricity connection; it was laughable that they
lived in the capital city. The matatus’ final stop was BabaDogo, therefore getting to Lucky
Summer safely at night meant paying a Maasai moran twenty to fifty shillings to be escorted to
one’s gate. Despite there being a police post next to the abattoir at the furthest end of Lucky
Summer, robberies abounded. These morans were paid monthly by the neighbourly watch which
marshaled every household to contribute 100 shilling per month for night patrols. Unlike other
well-established residential areas of Nairobi, Lucky Summerians were frontiers of their own
paradise.
There was and still is the dust that never forgave us for encroaching on riverine territory.
Lucky’s dust made any efforts to clean your house futile, especially when the children played
outside. However, for those who lived in Upper Lucky Summer, the dust was nothing compared
to the stench and eye sore that was the Dandora dumpsite. Lucky housed all of Nairobi’s poison
and this was so unbearable that opening one’s window for fresh air beyond five p.m. was
unthinkable. By dusk, the incineration produced a giant dome of smoke and a field of orange that
evoked my imagination of Grecian Hades. Dirt and dust made land very affordable but Lucky
Summer was competing with places like Mwiki, Kiambu or Kahawa Sukari which had more
appeal. River Mathari’s green waters carried effluent all the way from Mathare and sometimes a
miasma of raw sewage hung about until your nose established equilibrium.
Childhood games in Lucky Summer were nothing short of adventure. We chased hares through
thickets of Lantana and Aloe, raced paper boats on the tributaries of River Mathari, shouted
down our echoes at the three-metre deep quarries and spent hours searching for Mimosa plants to
touch as we watched their leaves cringe. The worst luck was being the seeker all morning only to
see one’s playmates return at lunchtime, sucking and chewing all variants of candy from their
hideout at the confectionary in BabaDogo. The typical Kenyan entrepreneurial spirit kicked in
and by and by we had shops, churches, mosques, schools and apartments come up.
Upper Lucky
Summer(found uphill) had Biashara Central with bars, fishmongers, a carwash at a remnant of a
swamp, clinics, a dirt-field called Kiwanja where children played soccer and cyber cafes. Lower
Lucky Summer was sparsely populated and thieves had a headstart before the call for help was
sounded.
I left Nairobi as a child at the end of my holiday and returned as vicenarian eleven years later, ten
decades into the millennium. Nairobi was on a growth spurt and economic tides heralded a
property boom.
There was not an idle parcel of land that was given a mere single glance: land
agents sprout all over and the price of land was skyrocketing like those zealous joggers heading
uphill towards Kasarani. There were towers of apartments all over, gated and named as courts.
The most important way to secure one’s land was to build anything on it; you would get tenants
even before you embarked on finishing touches. Otherwise Somali herders would be grazing
their large droves of sheep in your plot or you would constantly be warding off squatters and
their mabati shacks as they complain to journalists how they have been there since independence.
There were more people, getting cosmopolitan by the day.
One had their choice of mama mboga
for the latest gossip and groceries, their butcher who swore the meat was fresh after the blackout,
their tailor that got the kitenge design right and their cobbler/keycutter/ who always had a roasted
maize stand or a smoked sausage trolley nearby. At strategic corners were motorcycle bases
where from thirty shillings you could get a taxi ride faster than any route twenty five matatu. The
morans were now grocers and rampant as insecurity was (we twice had a shootout and street
roundup), each corner of residential quarters was gated and sirens placed at specific houses. The
thieves from Lucky raided Muthaiga or Kahawa while those from Dandora and Kariobangi
raided Lucky-that was the word on the street.
Noise could be Gor Mahia fans marshaling their
green army, pupils at assembly or break, spectators at a sports event, worshippers praising or
people squealing at the nieghbourhood camels.
BabaDogo is spreading fast beyond its ward boundaries. LuckySummer is the offshoot that was
once a sleeping and holds much promise. As the Dandora landfills are closed, the allure of green
lawns testifies to this. One can hope that the roads will be tarmacked and the rivers cleaned just
as the citizens keep the fire to do better for their survival.