How Nairobi has defied plagues and poor planning

Kenyatta Avenue previously Delamere Avenue in 1960s. [File, Standard]

Nairobi's true name ought to have been resilience. It is like that unwanted love child that defies the circumstances of its birth, fights off diseases and catastrophes, at times walking out of its predicaments to confront the very guardians who dismissed it as an outcast.

For 136 years, Nairobi which started off as a collection of workshops and yards has been testing the patience of the city fathers with its mountains of garbage, army of rats, shanty houses as well as landlords who build, then plan later.

There was a spirited campaign, led by parliamentarians Herbert Samuel and John Burns, between 1902 and 1906 to relocate the city but this flopped.

Then came the Williams commission, dispatched from London in 1906 to untangle the mess. The chairman, Bransby Williams, was overwhelmed by the spirit of Nairobi and concluded that "the question of relocating the city was outside the bounds of practical politics, the intention now is to endeavour to make the best out of what has undoubtedly been considered a bad job."

Winston Churchill, then an undersecretary in the Colonial office, was more practical when he wrote; "It is now too late to change and this lack of foresight and of a comprehensive view leaves its permanent imprint upon the countenance of a new country."

The colonial office recommended a PS23,000 funding to improve drains, roads but ironically, no money was set aside for water since the old Maasai watering hole still had sufficient water.

At the time, the city was guaranteed a million gallons of water a day even in the driest month.

In 1902, the city was ravaged by a plague that killed 20 people. The plague returned two years later, prompting the local authorities to advocate evacuation. There were similar operations, including burning large parts of the city to get rid of rats and disease but Nairobi shrugged off the challenges.

In 1948, when the colonial government seriously considered giving Nairobi, which had become the capital city, a facelift by crafting a master plan, the population had grown to 100,000, making it the biggest in East Africa.

Some of the colonial settlers had mastered the art of coercing the government into allocating them huge swathes of land where they would build structures without planning. Some would later offer portions of the land they had obtained free to the authorities so that critical amenities such as sanitation could be set up. Nairobi is still choking from these missteps more than a century later.