NAIROBI IS TOO VIOLENT FOR THE YOUNG AND OLD.

Nairobi is not conducive for a cohesive cognitive development both for the young and old. 

What comes to my mind- if ever anything comes to people’s mind when they think of a name- when I hear of Nairobi, is a traditional firewood place whereby the half-dried wood splits emit dark solid chocking smoke that you can touch, a dark skin characteristic of the rural folk, I do not know the name of the bursting and hissing sound normally produced by barks of trees, but I understand it is a tragedy for a Nairobian woman to adapt to that environment. Nairobi. Violence.

Violence in this case is not the activities of Al-Shabaab or the real cause of unproductive ICC entrance in Kenya. It is the stress of mind, the denial that it exists and the ignorance to propagate.

Synethesia is a neurological phenomenon where stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to the stimulation of another. People can taste the rainbow! Nairobi is a hot wet-wood burning fireplace for me. I first met this word in Dean Koontz book, Intensity. Edgar Vess could taste one’s blood in their way of talk. How does this apply here? Wait a second. While I was interviewing a woman to have her children in the free education program, not that of NARC, I asked her to fill in the name of the child’s father. She wasn’t willing. I insisted.  Then tears flowed. Why?  I had made her remember a batterer. Someone who if the neighbours had not heard her wail, she would be long gone. This is how people look at Nairobi. Some do differently.

Ageing in Nairobi I can say is as a result of poor planning during the most productive days or being rich to manage your end years in the capital. An old man paying rent for housing is a curse to the land. How does a 60-year old board a running bus? Survival has been for the fit that bought or grabbed colonial houses and lands in the capital and afford loaned locomotives. Nairobi is not yet a place to walk in with a Homo sapiens kind of posture, balded head, dragging legs, conservative values and travelling diseases. There is a lot of stress in town.

If you have been a consistent reader of my writings, you know that I have grown up from the countryside. You may call me a traditionalist. The first time I stepped in Nairobi, not that I had never been to Nairobi, by then I was too young to comprehend much, I hated the place. So far I have not liked it either though I continue to stay. I do not expect to age here folks. Maybe it was the kind of place my dad lived. The dirty dusty roads full of nylon papers, the crowded multi-lingual faces, rowdy men by the look of their eyes, unroadworthy  vehicles, women in trousers, noise, culture clash and all sort of innuendos. Chaos! Chaos! Chaos!

As some retire and get back to the rural side before dying within a short time, few trace their bad luck in the city. It is the city that manufactures one’s agony. Look at it from this way. You stepped in the capital in search of resources to improve your social status, then came the least preferred fate, you managed to rent a house as per your earnings in case you are wise, married, had kids and there was no excess to remember those in the rural side, comes the day to retire and only meager NSSF savings maintains you, with children lowly educated before packing back to the rural land that your father sliced for you in case your future wasn’t bright. My solution is at the maybe ground. Maybe if you did not go to the city un assured life would be different!

Nairobi leads in Hiv/Aids infections. You got the virus in the capital. It leads in job opportunities, you managed one. It leads in investments grounds, you had no enough cash to invest. It harbours the most intelligent minds that cherishes contemporary unending discussions, which you participated unwillingly. The environment gave you friends from different places, who later could not help you much since water hasn't  become thicker than blood, politics rose and fell, on either side you fell. Still you stayed because it is better than the rural side. A rural you ran from. Who will build it when all you takes back is a body to bury?

Rural urban migration is caused by the inequalities of access to resources, technology and desire to run away. Really? Ask a Nairobian if he can go and live in the rural area for the rest of his life. A Nairobian who tunes to classic FM and dreams of buying land in Kileleshwa. This migration becomes a disadvantage when the so-gone-for resources are under pressure. For you to come to Nairobi at now, what are you coming to do? All jobs have fixed employees. If it is leaning, institutions are full. Kenyatta University does not guarantee you accommodation. Of course you will not afford the needs in the city. You will only be a disgrace to live in the slums and beg from relatives and friends. It could be that the world if full as God had promised Abraham. Why couldn't you have mudded the thatch of your Lion house and lived happy thereafter? If only we were the masters of our destiny.

If all factors were constant, and humanity worked as per the literal meaning, all African men would prefer their children to learn their mother-tongues first before learning about the language of the white man. This would mean that all married women would be required to live in the countryside. What a traditionalist? And the men required working in town in the day and sleeping with the women in the countryside daily. Impossible! Didn't I say if all factors were kept constant? Like flying to work and flying back?

Children who are growing in the city as a result of poor and cursing grandmothers in the rural area and not really because their parents would want them to be near for growth, values and discipline input, because they are not disciplined and have microscopic values, tend to miss out the better part of a child’s peaceful environment of growth and be indoctrinated by noise, violence and the value of idling among others. There are small or no playgrounds in the tight block-fenced compounds. Other playgrounds are charged. No neighbours to cross the fences to. The working class parents are so busy for the children. It would be better to keep the children occupied by ensuring the Bamba Digital boxes are prepaid on time for more and more cartoons. An equivalent in the rural will be in the next blog.

Schooling is 25% a teacher. More than half of schooling expectations is left for the child. A good parent can only buy books. A good student studies them and seeks for clarification. Life is not about that. A child should be least of a book worm. Learning should be highly necessitated by the environment and people in association with. But in the capital, private schools want to bulk assignments to make sure that the child least idles for it is the only activity. Ever encountered a parent who blames the teacher for offering least assignment to a grade four child? The parent is too busy to teach that child anything in and out of the books at that time. There is no grandmother to tell stories. There are no friends to spend time with. There are gates to control in and out movements. It is an inversely busy world for the kids.

Poverty in the rural cannot be as intense as poverty in Nairobi. Being poor in the rural area do not necessarily mean lack of money though some rural areas have modernized. It is lack of basic needs. But at least there are no beggars in the communities that talk one language. There are no landlords to knock at one’s door with threats. There is traditional medication to handle simple and unscientific infections. The authority is still not full of corrupt leaders. Christ is not rationalized yet innocently known. Being poor in the rural is associated to the love of liquor, laziness and ignorant to cultural values. It is not the amount of scheming and hustling witnessed in town. It is only in Nairobi where you can die as a result of hunger when the neighbour is feasting.

Though I am proposing the youth and any violent minded human like sex worker for this environment, I would exclude the youths who live not in their age. I know they exist. Access to technology, education, information, resources and people that matter keeps them in the congested capital. They can be productive to design new ways of eradicating violence but let them never forget that they can be victims just by a small amount of ignorance. The world is too big to change that you can only change yourself before you die.

The violence exhibited in the transport sector-noise and traffic, social breakups and change of lifestyles, crimes and deviative behaviours are not desirable to any peaceful soul that wants to grow to cherish life or the one who approaches death. I should die in peace, I think. The continual growth of tall buildings without expansion of roads and sewer system only predicts a rather violent environment. May I find my treasure in town, find a piece of land far away in the capital, build a small house of a small family, plant hedges for fence, adopt neighbours and plan for my end days.