Let’s face it; a small dose of real or faked flamboyance opens doors.
And if ostentation is the hottest selling social commodity in Kenya
today, the largest concentration of pretentious people reside in
Nairobi.At a glance, Nairobians deem their tweng, swanglish, grammatical mistakes and fashion sense as a standard that the rest of the country should embrace. And when upcountry, they spare no effort to demonstrate how superior their city life is.
“In Nairobi, we pay only 50 cents per minute to browse!” A city dweller, who in all probability is a technophobe and a dullard to boot but has picked up this jazz from the matatu chatter, will say with authority that only Nairobians can muster!
Often, Nairobi people are patronising to a fault, giving advice to their rural kin that is at odds with common sense and local custom.
Pigs
“Why can’t you people rear pigs instead of planting maize and beans, which is grossly uneconomical?” One such fellow, who is always broke minutes after payday, sneers to a group of people he is buying beer in a village pub.
But Pascal Marete, a banker in a small rural town, argues that many Nairobians are trendsetters to a fault, which is good for the economy.
“Any new adaptation of new technology to local needs, say formatting new computers on the cheap and unlocking mobile phones that come programmed onto a particular network, is first done in Nairobi,” says Marete.
Marete, however, laments that many bad things creeping into Kenya and the hinterland of the East African region often start with Nairobians.
“Where else do new vices like confidence trickery, strip tease shows and partner swinging orgies originate from with frightening regularity? Nairobi!” he poses.
Crooks
In his course of work, Marete has mingled with many city dwellers who go upcountry quoting mind-boggling property value figures and cars, but who are in truth small time crooks in Nairobi.
“‘They have remodeled the Toyota Harrier. I can start the process of acquiring one for you if you can give me a down payment of ‘half a metre’, (half a million shillings),” Marete recalls being told by one Nairobian.
But upon verifying the guy’s claims to being a ‘prominent’ importer of cars, it emerged that he was only a salary away from bankruptcy!
Cecelia Wakonyo, a Nakuru based sociologist, says so addictive is the Nairobi tag that the statement, “I come from Nairobi”, is often abused.
“People from diverse locations like Kilimambogo hills to the peri-urban Konza and Kapiti plains will always allude to this phrase, mesmerising villagers,” she says.
Wakonyo adds that a disconcerting character of most Nairobians is that they rarely invite each other to their homes, giving friendship a new fleeting and treacherous definition.
“In fact, close associates only know of one’s estate when he or she dies and funeral committees are in place,” she says.
Claiming this is a city character the world over, the sociologist says that the high cost of living makes urban dwellers creative.
“All meetings in Nairobi, as in other metropolises, are held in cafes and pubs, which have taken the prominence of shrines,” says Wakonyo. “But unlike people in other world capitals, Nairobians have strong ancestral roots in many upcountry places where they have satellite homes and where they retreat to vote. So we can say the city strictly has no owners!
“It is this cultural detachment with the city that gives it a popular ‘concrete jungle’ tag; a place where hunters come to make a kill and relocate back home with the spoils. Consequently, Nairobians have distinguished themselves as adept at shamelessly lying to each other and hatching little con tricks whenever they meet instead of talking freely and openly as in normal comradeships,” argues Wakonyo.
So how can you tell a dyed-in-the-wool Nairobian from a sojourner? Samuel Ndirangu, an artist, says that a typical city commuter will pretend not to see the matatu at a bus top but will gaze up to the distant clouds, chewing gum with an unruffled ‘cool’ poise.
“He or she may glance at the conductor’s tunic, spot a missing button and decide not to ride in that vehicle regardless of its ‘KBR...’ number plate, sparkling hub caps, latest DVD player and high output sound system,” says Ndirangu.
Stampede
But at the slightest signs of rain, adds Ndirangu, such frauds will stampede into the dirtiest matatu and pay double the price unquestioningly — like sacrificial lambs.
According to Ndirangu, many Nairobians also rarely pause to marvel at the city’s scenic beauty lest they are mistaken for villagers.
“You can tell a Nairobian for his or her perpetual hurry to nowhere and apparent unconcern as visitors ogle at the engineering wonder of the Thika superhighway,” says Ndirangu. Consequently, says the artist, scores of Nairobians can only direct one to a place by habituation of having been there before, and not by mastery of building and street names. Often, a city watchman has no idea that an eatery behind the block where he spends eight hours daily exists.
Pastor Gerry Ikua, who runs a ministry in a rural town, on the other hand, chuckles at the manner Nairobians arrive at rural functions in style.
“They come in matatus adorned with offensive graffiti and bring along their MCs and space age public address systems. They often belligerently rubbish all the prior arrangements and institute their own programme for the day, while we locals are silenced by their stock phrase: ‘This is how we do it in Nairobi...’” says Ikua.
But what irks the pastor most is their manner of dress.
“When not in see-through dresses — without petticoats — or skin hugging panty hoses, women are in their mandatory low waist trousers with their inner wear and butt crack peeping at the back,” says Ikua.
Pastors Ikua’s greatest misgiving is that the Nairobi crowd never has the decency to wait for the customary cup of tea at the end of an event, citing “tight schedules and the fact that they ‘have to be back in Nairobi today’.
“But of course we get to hear of the rowdy drinking parties they engage in at roadside stopovers enroute to the village and back to the city,” says Ikua.
But it is teachers who routinely suffer at the hands of some Nairobi parents.
“Many Nairobi parents bust into my office with the opinion that I’m a dimwit who does not understand their children’s problems,” says Sam Oluoch, a school administrator.
Litigation
And it always starts with the declaration; “Wait till I get back to Nairobi!”
With that salvo, such city parents begin frivolous and vexatious litigation processes that often see Oluoch land in court as a co-accused.
“I remember one school where I taught when a student from Nairobi was caught with a sex toy, something that rocked the entire school community. We summoned her mother to school but this parent apparently saw nothing wrong with the gadget, saying she was glad her daughter was just being careful not to contract HIV or get pregnant!
And in another upcountry school, rowdy Nairobi parents hijacked a meeting with their own agenda.
“Can we be told how much it will cost to provide our children with hot water for bathing?” Their spokesperson demanded, her tone of voice clear that she was spoiling for war.
And that is how an admirable 50-year-old tradition of boys bathing in cold water for spine and character was incredulously discontinued as rural parents, who had never heard of instant showers, cowered.
www.doitadigital.com