Discovering Nairobi - Week 1

We’re Friday, my first week in Kenya is almost completed. And I have kept myself busy. Thanks to the help of some friends, I am in contact with many people here. I have started moving around the huge and spread out Nairobi with a driver or a taxi. On my first day, this allowed my to discover the town, from the West part, Brookside, where I am living, to the city centre where the BBC Office is, as well as most government’s buildings, ministries and the parliament.

 

Monday I met the lovely and hard-working BBC editorial team, working for the World Service, the World News Television, the newsgathering department, the BBC Trust, and the Swahili service. They welcomed me in their wonderfully equipped bureau downtown Nairobi. I also met the freelance correspondent for the Great Lake Service, who is also based in the office. Laurent Martin is a French speaker from Burundi and has been working with the BBC for more than 8 years, with a break of a few years spent in IRIN, the UN radio program. We have quickly become a sort of team, since we are both freelancers and French-speakers.

On Tuesday, I went to the Ministry of Information to ask for my press accreditation. After a two-hour tour of Nairobi to meet the Press Accreditation Advisor in the city’s biggest economic fair in the Showground, my accreditation was ready. I got a Kenyan press card and a letter to give to the immigration allowing me to get my work permit.

It is a lot of work to get all this paperwork done by myself and at the same time starting working and covering a country I am just discovering, while I also have a lot to do to settle down. But it is the freelance journalists’ fate, and this first busy week turns out being very exciting. It isn’t easy for instance to cross the city centre in the afternoon when the traffic jams are terrible. It is pretty tricky to get our house connected to internet; the provider keeps telling us he is about to come and it has already been a week that we have not seen him coming. Getting to a press conference can take you up to an hour and a half if you are stuck in traffic. Nevertheless, I have felt all this is part of my introduction to Kenya. And in the middle of my numerous appointments, I still managed to realise my first interview, at the Consultation on the responsible exploitation of mines in the Great Lakes region. I then sent my first radio package to BBC Afrique on Wednesday evening. It was broadcasted on Thursday evening in BBC Matin, our 1 hrs 30 edition, and again in the Midday edition, BBC Midi.

I also had to meet the French Embassy’ press officers to introduce myself and register as an expatriate. I was finally invited on Tuesday evening to a party at the French Ambassador’s house, in Kibera. Kibera is one of Nairobi’s biggest township; one million people are reported to live in the slum. Strangely, the French Ambassador’s residence is located just at the border with the township. A splendid villa with a tropical garden at the door of the highest poverty on the country… Nairobi is really a diverse and complex city. Very “developed” as expats like to put it; the roads are for instance impeccable, the city centre is full of skyscrapers and shinny big cars from Germany or Japan are everywhere.

Yes, Nairobi has everything the big cities in this world promise to provide. These past few days, I have been taken to at least three huge malls. I was surprised by the size of those places and by all the choice of shops and restaurants. There’s no Western product missing in Nairobi. The country is full of advertising signs and the capital has at least 5 big malls, meaning more than Miami. You can really feel that the 3.5 million residents capital is a regional headquarter and economic lung.

Of course, the other side of this shiny prosperity is the huge social inequalities. And while millions live in slums, a few enclose themselves in beautiful mansions secured by high walls and electrified barriers. The tensions between diverse communities are high, and security has become an obsession. For better or for worst…

So here is a first introduction to what I have experience in Nairobi. It’s a modest view on a fascinating and wide country that I have hardly really begun to explore. But I hope it might interest a few readers. To conclude, this week is really fulfilling all my expectations. I already met Kenyan journalists, local drivers, UN workers and British and Indian Kenyan. The decision to move to Kenya proves to be the best I made in a long time.