Restoring Nairobi’s iconic libraries

The Kaloleni library [Paul Munene, Quaint Photography]

In 2019, something that pulled at the heartstrings of the people who witnessed it happened at Nairobi’s oldest library, the McMillan Memorial Library on Banda Street. A film called Operation Legacy had just been screened there, after which an old man in the audience stood up to talk about what he had just watched.

The film documents the story of a group of Mau Mau veterans who had sued the British government to reveal the atrocities they had committed against them in Kenya between 1952 and 1960.