CHAPTER XXXI
THE CAPITAL OF KENYA COLONY
Nairobi is the capital and administrative centre of Kenya Colony, one of the most interesting and prosperous of Great Britain’s African possessions. It lies three hundred and twenty-seven miles from the sea in the very heart of British East Africa, about halfway between the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria. It is situated on a plateau at an altitude higher than Denver, with mountains in sight far above any we have in Colorado.
When the sun is just right at Nairobi, I can get a glimpse here of Mt. Kilimanjaro and I can plainly see the peak of Mt. Kenya. Kilimanjaro is about a hundred and fifty miles distant and Kenya, as the crow flies, not more than one hundred miles. It is from Mt. Kenya that Kenya Colony is named. Mt. Kenya is one of the giants of the African continent, and is only three thousand feet lower than our own Mt. McKinley. It is a dead volcano and is supposed to have once been three thousand feet higher than it is now. The great peak, seamed with no less than fifteen glaciers, is a mass of rocks covered with snow, but the lower slopes are heavily wooded with forests of cedar, camphor, and bamboo. Above the woods are pastures fit for sheep, while in and below them are all sorts of wild game, including lions and elephants, and even rhinoceroses and hippopotami.
In some respects Nairobi reminds one of our frontier towns of the West. The high plain upon which it is situated has a climate in which white men can live and work the year around, and farms are springing up almost everywhere.
The city is comparatively new. Fifteen or more years ago it had hardly a house. To-day streets have been laid out over an area ten miles in circumference and hundreds of buildings of tin, wood, and stone have been erected. The chief building material is galvanized iron, which is so prevalent that Nairobi has been nicknamed the “tin city.” There are no saw mills or planing mills worth mentioning, as the forests have not been exploited, and about the only lumber available is that brought from the United States and Norway and landed at Mombasa. The ocean freight rates are heavy, and in addition there is the cost of bringing the lumber to Nairobi by railroad. Hence the galvanized iron, which comes here in sheets from England and Belgium. Almost all the buildings are of iron, put up just as it comes from the factory, giving the whole town a silver-gray colour. The post office is of iron, the depot has an iron roof, and the same is true of the governor’s offices. Many of the houses have iron ceilings and iron walls, and the chief retail business section is a collection of one-story iron booths, open at the front, in which Hindus stand or sit surrounded by their goods. My hotel is half iron. The government treasury near by, a shed not over fifteen feet square, is of tin and has a tin roof. I could chop it to pieces with a butcher knife; and the only sign of policing about it is the Negro who, gun in hand, stands outside guarding the door. The office of the land surveyor is of tin, and so are the police headquarters and the house where the supreme court is held. The more fancy dwellings are now being painted, and some stone and brick buildings are rising.
The Nairobi of to-day is largely cow pastures. It is a city of magnificent distances. All the places of importance seem to be several miles from each other and the patches between are often grazing ground. The houses are of one and two stories, and are scattered along wide streets which run for an indefinite distance out into the prairie. The chief ways of getting about are on foot, on horseback, or in jinrikishas, the last being by far the most popular. The jinrikishas are much like those used in Japan, save that they are larger and wider. I am told they are made in America. They are pushed and pulled by black Africans, two to each vehicle. One man goes in the shafts and the other pushes behind. They are each clad in a single cotton cloth which flaps back and forth as they run, exposing their nakedness. The streets are unpaved and frequently masses of dust. Along many of them eucalyptus trees have been planted and have grown so rapidly that most of the roads are now shaded by this mournfully drooping foliage.
The population of Nairobi is about twenty thousand, of which only a tenth are Europeans. Of the remainder, about a third are Asiatics from Hindustan, and the others are the queerest Africans one can imagine. I speak of them first, because they are everywhere; one stumbles over them on the street; they wait upon him in the hotels; they carry burdens for him and clog his footsteps when he goes outside the town. Many of them wear dirty, greasy cloths not more than a yard wide and two yards long. They hang them about their shoulders and let them fall down on each side, so that they flap this way and that in the breeze. Some wear breech cloths, and not a few are bare to the waist. In the early morning, when the air is still sharp, many of these people, clad in red flannel blankets, go stalking along with their legs uncovered to the thighs. I have already spoken of the ear plugs. Some have the holes in the lobes of their ears so stretched that I can put my fist through them. The loops are so long that when a man takes out his ear plug he hangs the loop of skin over the top of his ear to prevent its catching on something and tearing. The loop looks just like a leather strap about as wide as one’s little finger nail. I have handled many of them, twisting them this way and that to be sure they were genuine.
Nairobi, on a plateau higher than Denver, is the administrative centre of Kenya Colony and a healthful place for white men. Farms are springing up about it, and there are already 2,000 Europeans in this African outpost.