DAILY DISPATCHES
Daily Dispatches: Nairobi is an innovative exploration through photojournalism of a fast-evolving 21st-century African city, unfolding day by day in real time. We will spend each day of April searching out stories from all corners of Kenya’s capital, stories which will paint a compelling, informative and surprising portrait of the city, and the lives lived by those who call it home. Each day, we will send our images and reports back to a series of US universities and colleges we’re working with, who will in turn print them and mount them in an exhibition which grows day by day.
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Food costs double as Arab crises hit Nairobi’s markets
Hundreds of traders descend on Wakulima Market early each morning
Staple foods are twice the price they were at the start of 2011. Mike Pflanz hears how this is hurting traders and customers alike.
CITY CENTER, April 26, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – It is not yet dawn but Wakulima Market is chaos. Bystanders duck as men carrying 150lb bags on their shoulders hiss past. Handcart pullers jostle for business in the fluorescent half-light. Vegetable trucks reverse blindly.
This is Nairobi’s largest wholesale farmers’ market. Suppliers who have often driven through the night from their fields strike deals with traders who then sell goods on to the city’s supermarkets, restaurants and small-scale market stalls.
But here, those deals and those trades are in trouble. Soaring food costs caused by increasing international oil prices driven by revolutions in North Africa, and Kenya’s weakening currency, are hitting these businessmen and women hard.
Elsewhere in Africa, this has caused riots. There are fears Nairobi could be next.
Bernard Kihanda comes here every morning to buy 110lb of watermelons, which he then loads into his truck and sells in the city’s upmarket suburbs. Prices at the wholesale market are up 29%.
“I have to pass that cost on to my customers,” he said, haggling for better prices as dawn began to lighten the sky. “Watermelons are not corn or milk, they are not essential foods. I know people will start to complain, and then where is my business?”
Three stalls down – the traders sit on crates with their wares spread on cardboard on the floor – Margaret Mwaura, selling mangoes, is already feeling the impact.
Mangoes on sale at Wakulima Market, where customers struggle to pay new high prices
“This stock I’ve had since Friday, and it’s still here now, it will go to waste if I don’t sell today,” she said. “Prices used to be 8¢ for each mango, now it’s 11¢. I am not able to charge my customers more, they have no money in their pockets. I am the one taking the loss.”
As the sun rose and immediately slipped beneath a blanket of low cloud, trader after trader came back to this common theme.
Mary Njeri, Jane Wanjiru and Elizabeth Nyambura, grandmothers all aged over 60, rise at 4am each day and come to Wakulima to buy a variety of goods to then sell door-to-door on housing estates ringing the city.
“Our customers complain, they cannot afford the high prices we have to ask, but we cannot buy the food here unless we pay those prices,” Njeri said.
“We are the ones making the loss. Especially because people are no longer buying exotic vegetables, they want only the basics, and they refuse to pay the new prices,” Wanjiru added.
Kenya’s staple food is corn, usually ground to flour and boiled into a kind of dense cake called ugali. On this, Kenya survives.
But the wholesale cost of a 250lb sack of green corn has risen from $40 in February to $70 today, a 75% increase, according to figures from Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture.
Prices for potatoes, another staple, have doubled. Beans are up 34%, tomatoes by 20%. In a city like Nairobi, where the majority of households struggle by on less than $5 a day, such price hikes are crippling.
A man hangs on in the back of a truck delivering onions to Wakulima Market
The Consumers’ Federation of Kenya, a watchdog protecting buyers’ interests, has planned demonstrations to protest at what it says is the government’s failure to help the country’s poorest.
“Fuel and food prices are fast becoming unbearable for the majority of Kenyans,” said Stephen Mutoro, the Federation’s secretary general.
Several excuses had been advanced, he said, from a weak Kenya Shilling, the high inflation rate and the Northern Africa and Arab world crises and their impact on oil prices, which trickle down to gas pumps across the country.
“But those are just excuses not because they are not valid but because there is little Kenya can do about them,” Mutoro said. “On the contrary, no one is talking about the internal factors of the high prices, from lack of political will, to outright corruption and institutional gross inefficiencies.”
These are potentially fighting words. Similar sharp statements in neighboring Uganda prompted mass demonstrations which led to police firing tear gas on protesters, many of whom were arrested.
In Wakulima market, few thought that Nairobi was yet ready to revolt.
But Rosemary Nyambura, who sells bundles of used plastic bags (prices up 50%), conceded that “we are all getting very frustrated”.
“Corn flour is almost double what it was only a few short months ago,” she said. “It’s just mathematics – I have the same money in my pocket, but food costs twice as much, so my family can eat half what it used to. Now we are taking only one meal a day. This is the reality of today.”
Slideshow
Related: Brendan’s full-size images from Wakulima Market
Stories from the streets
One of Nairobi’s street-children walks through Westlands’ traffic
Uncounted hundreds of children and young men live rough on Nairobi’s streets. They tell Mike Pflanz their stories.
WESTLANDS, April 25, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – It used to be worse, people tell you. The kids would swarm around your car, ready to launch a handful of faeces straight at you should you fail to pay. Keep your windows up, doors locked, that was the only way to drive through Nairobi.
Today, that doesn’t happen anymore. The government, in operations with questionable motives and methods, have moved many of the city’s street children to ‘homes’ on the outskirts.
Many, however, remain, struggling to find the money even for a cup of tea, constantly fleeing authorities, homeless and with fuzzy futures often devoid of opportunity. Too often ignored, each, however, has a story. (more…)
Faith, hope and charity?
An overflowing crowd watches Pastor David Adeoye at Nairobi’s Winners’ Chapel on Easter Sunday
Congregations are growing across all beliefs in Nairobi. Mike Pflanz explores what faith means to religious leaders and their followers in a fast-changing world.
WOODLEY, April 24, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – The main hall, brick-built with a high tin roof, is packed. The tents outside, three of them, are packed. And still people are streaming in.
Welcome to Winners’ Chapel, early on Easter Sunday morning. As the choir, smartly dressed in white shirts and black skirts, take their seats, a compact man in a charcoal suit jumps to the stage, beneath a sign promising “Financial Fortune Is My Heritage: Deu 8.18”.
This is Senior Pastor David Adeoye, a Nigerian ministering here in Nairobi to what claims to be one of the fastest growing churches in Kenya, an evangelical mission preaching prosperity through sacrifice to Jesus. (more…)
Faithfully reporting Nairobi
Muslims gather for Friday prayers at Nairobi’s Jamia Mosque, the largest in Kenya
CITY CENTER, April 23, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Nairobi, cosmopolitan city that it is, hosts people of pretty much all faiths and religions you can imagine. By numbers, the most prominent are Christians, then Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and a plethora of traditional belief systems.
This weekend, as the city shuts down for the Easter holidays, Daily Dispatches is taking a little time out from the hustle of turning around a story a day. We’ve not stopped the work though – far from it. We’re talking to religious leaders from the three main faiths, and to their congregations, about what faith means to them, and how it is changing as the city modernizes and expands around us.
We’ll post the Dispatch we hope late Sunday or early Monday. We’re really keen to hear what kinds of questions you would want us to put to these leaders: an evangelical Christian preacher, the Imam of Kenya’s largest mosque, and a Hindu priest at one of Nairobi’s many temples. Please leave us a comment here, or on our Facebook page, and we’ll do our best to feature their responses in the Dispatch.
Happy Holidays to all, if you’re lucky enough to be off work this weekend.
A city, stalled
Future movement? Rebuilt roads aim to ease Nairobi’s infamous congestion
Mike Pflanz discusses Nairobi’s notorious traffic jams, and sees the efforts being made to break the bottlenecks
THIKA ROAD, April 21, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Let’s think of this city as a body. Let’s think of its heart as its businesses, pumping vitality and sustaining circulation.
Let’s think of its brain as its universities, schools, and policy panels, all – in theory – scheming for a brighter future. Its soul, let’s imagine somewhere in its pubs, clubs, churches, mosques and temples, and in its family homes.
Its roads, then, are its arteries, veins and capillaries, keeping the whole system alive. Here, today, in Nairobi, they have became so clogged that we are slipping into coma. (more…)
Wheels of fortune
A new Nissan SUV on sale in a downtown Nairobi showroom
Mike Pflanz charts the rise of car ownership in Nairobi, and sees how what were once toys of the few are now available to the many.
INDUSTRIAL AREA, April 20, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – It was once the ultimate symbol of power in Africa, a car which gave its name to the continent’s often crooked elite: the ‘WaBenzi’.
But the Mercedes Benz is losing its position as the only car to buy to boast of your success, as sales plateau, overtaken by Japanese SUVs and muscular 4x4s.
“You cannot overestimate the importance of cars as status symbols here,” said Gavin Bennett, director of the Kenya Motor Industry Association. (more…)
The bone collectors
Dr Emma Mbua examines Turkana Boy’s jawbone at the National Museums of Kenya
In the vault of Nairobi’s National Museum lies one of the world’s most important fossil collections. Mike Pflanz hears why it is so precious, and why financial struggles might delay fresh finds.
MUSEUM HILL, April 19, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – The steel cabinet looks little different from the other 22 here in this chilly, climate-controlled strong-room.
On its door, sticky tabs printed on an old hand-held labeller cryptically say W. Turkana Hominids, 85S, Eliye Springs, Nariokotome. Inside, seven compact wooden cases with black metal clasps lie on shelves, all marked KNM-WT 15000.
Dr Emma Mbua reaches straight for the second one down, “85S/B Cranium and Mandible”, pulls it out and gently sets it on a foam-covered table in the middle of the room. (more…)
VOX NAIROBI | 3
Mary Cherop Maritim buying raw corn just after sunrise at Nairobi’s Kangemi market
Name – Mary Cherop Maritim
Age – 44
Work – Entrepreneur, Cherubet Company
Lives – Westlands
DONHOLM, April 18, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Mary Cherop Maritim launched her frozen food company by going straight to the managing director’s office at Kenya’s biggest supermarket chain with 11lbs of sample produce in a borrowed cooler. Four years later, now shipping 2,000lbs a week, she talks to Mike Pflanz about starting out, expanding her firm, and why financial independence is important for Nairobi’s young businesswomen. (more…)
Friends in our night
P.O.P. heads out into Nairobi’s fast-changing night-time party scene
Nairobi’s character changes after the sun’s gone down. P.O.P and Richie Rich, hip-hop musicians with the city’s Ukoo Flani collective, tell Mike Pflanz how past midnight is not as you might imagine.
WESTLANDS, April 16, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – It’s way into tomorrow already, and the DJ at the Skylux club, on the 3rd floor of a nondescript office block, has packed the dance floor.
It filled up late – the Barcelona vs Real Madrid soccer game kept most of the partygoers in the pub longer than usual. But now the beats deepen, and the dance-floor darkens.
RICHIE RICH – Something new’s coming to Nairobi in the last five years. You know there’s a lot moving in this city, there’s construction, there’s new apartments everywhere, guys are feeling that there’s a hype about the place, it’s picking up. Money’s moving around. People have it, or they’re chasing it. (more…)
The karate grandmothers
A grandmother practices a palm strike against a punch bag during self-defense classes
Mike Pflanz meets Korogocho’s Gender Defenders: grandmothers in self-defense classes learning how to fend off attackers amid a surge in sexual violence
KOROGOCHO, April 15 (Daily Dispatches) – First a prayer, then a stretch, then a hammer-fist blow.
Two dozen women, none younger than 60, were gathered at a school for disabled children for their latest lesson how to fight back against an epidemic of violence sweeping this Nairobi slum.
Under coach Beatrice Nyariara, a spry 68-year-old, each squared up to the punchbag in turn to practice hammer-fist blows to the head, upward palm-strikes to the nose, backwards punches and strong kicks. (more…)
Rapping a revolution in Nairobi’s slums
Nairobi’s hip-hop sensation Octopizzo, during a tour of Kibera
Octopizzo, a hip-hop artist rising from Kibera, talks to Mike Pflanz about his contempt for US gangsta rap, representing the city’s poorest, and why music must be a business for artists to survive
Arrest this development?
A view of new apartments through the shrouds wrapping one of Nairobi’s under-construction shopping centers
Mike Pflanz offers a personal view on Nairobi’s construction boom, and what it could mean for the city’s future.
WOODLEY, April 13, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – The face of this young city is undergoing radical plastic surgery. In what the media here never fail to call “the leafy suburbs”, 1930s stone-built bungalows behind manicured hedges are being torn down and multistory apartment blocks rising high in their place.
Out on the upgraded highways snaking into the city, red tiled roofs stretch across acres of what was once empty grassland tended only by Masai cattle.
Malls are morphing from charming clusters of family-owned grocers and butchers, where everyone knows your name, into many-outlet monoliths to Mammon.
At well-to-do dinner parties, this is a constant topic of slightly disapproving conversation. Think of all the traffic. Have they upgraded the sewer pipes and the water supply? How will the electricity grid cope with all this extra demand?
Railroad rebirth?
A schoolboy watches from the window as a commuter train passes people walking to work in Nairobi’s outskirts
Mike Pflanz joins commuters on one of a recently doubled number of early morning train services to the city. Does this signal a rebirth of the railroad that helped create the country that is Kenya?
ON THE 06:40am TO NAIROBI, April 12, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – We pull slowly out of Athi River station, leaving behind the run-down railroad shed that is now home to the Jesus Victory Center and a tinshack kindergarten.
Ahead, an hour-long commute, through the Athi plains once swarming with wildlife, beneath final-approach to the international airport, through the smoggy iron-roof slums and the industrial area, and into the heart of Nairobi.
“Ah, we love this thing,” smiles Steve Nyahe, 40, a graphic designer, who like most aboard the train used to have to sit cramped in a 14-seat ‘matatu’ minibus taxi to town, stalled in jams and pollution, for two hours or more. (more…)
A bright future?
Workers correct colors at a Nairobi printing firm looking forward to expanding its business
Economic growth, stalled by the global financial crisis and Kenya’s election violence, is rising once again. Nairobi’s businesses are poised to reap rewards, Mike Pflanz finds.
INDUSTRIAL AREA, April 11, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – With an incessant computer-controlled hiss clack clack, hiss clack clack, a million-dollar machine the size of a bus was churning out 14,000 bank flyers an hour.
Over in the corner, sales pouches for a cellphone firm’s SIM cards were being folded. Nearby, neat stacks of An Introduction to Public Health stood ready for shipping.
This 44-year-old firm, Colourprint, housed in a nondescript factory off a pot-holed road, is one of hundreds of companies clustered in Nairobi’s industrial area. (more…)
Vox Nairobi | 2
Name – Peter Olendo
Age – 59
Work – Photographer, Lens Image Creation Center
Lives – Kibera
KIBERA, April 10, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Peter Olendo talks to Mike Pflanz about his business as a studio photographer – his first camera, the advent of digital photography, and never forgetting a customer’s legs.
(more…)
“We are all in the night together”
Daily Dispatches takes to Nairobi’s streets for two hours either side of midnight on Friday, to talk to people who earn their living during darkness. By Mike Pflanz. Photos by Brendan Bannon.
CITY CENTER and WESTLANDS, April 8-9, 2011 (Daily Dispatches)
Walter Njau, 36, Taxi Driver, Kenya Taxi Cabs Association, Koinange St
“This is a business when sometimes you lose, and sometimes you profit. Weekends are busiest, but people come drunk in my car, I drop them far away then they say they don’t have money. What can I do? Other times, customers drop their money in the car then leave, that’s mine, that’s my profit. Or you are new to Nairobi, you say you want to go to Hurlingham, it’s just here but I tell you it’s $25, and you agree. That’s profit for me, you see, because Hurlingham is only $5.
“When it’s quiet, I’m standing by my car, I’m looking around like a crow looks around from the air to the ground, looking far for something. These people coming, can they be customers? Can they need me to drive them far? I hope so. I ask almost everybody who passes by, need a taxi? On a weekend, I can go home with $40 or $50 after my all-night shift. Other days, sometimes only $10. I buy food for the kids, I save some, I drink some.
“There are some rules we have, there is an association, they arrange for every driver to be posted in a certain place. If a freelance guy comes to my spot, I’ll puncture his tires, I’ll beat him or chase him away. He can’t work here. Sometimes it’s dangerous. Once when I was dropping some customers at their house, in was raining heavily, five guys with guns jumped us, they opened the boot, told us to enter inside. It was like 11pm. They roamed with us to 3am, then they dropped us in a different place. They released us, “get your car and go”, they said. They had taken all our money, our phones. But they did not kill us. The other good thing they did was they filled the car, full tank. They used the car for robberies, while we were inside. The police when I went to them they told us the car was seen in robberies all over town.” (more…)
Fast news day
NTV’s Robert Nagila reports on international court cases against Kenyan politicians
Mike Pflanz profiles one of Nairobi’s fresh breed of TV journalists on one of the country’s busiest news days of the year
CITY CENTER, April 7, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – The red digits on the clock on the newsroom wall climb steadily towards 10:30am. Guys in shirtsleeves thumbing BlackBerrys march past to meetings. Desk-phones peal.
A plasma TV shows a smiling Kenyan politician spilling out of a shiny Mercedes by a smart office block 4,000 miles away in Europe.
He is one six men accused by the world’s war crimes court of organizing election violence here three years ago. He and two others will appear before judges in Holland for the first time this morning. (more…)
Ivory orphans
Elephants play after their morning milk feed at a rescue center in Nairobi
Rescued baby elephants whose mothers have died or disappeared end up in a very different kind of city orphanage in Nairobi, Mike Pflanz discovers
LANGATA, April 6, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Five years ago, Abdi Kashel was a waiter in a safari lodge serving gin and tonics to well-heeled tourists.
The only elephants he saw were those drinking at the watering-hole below the guest cottages, or the occasional distant herd spotted from the bus taking him home for holidays.
Today, he lives with elephants, full-time, in Nairobi. He watches over them as they browse the bush for fodder in the city’s National Park. He feeds them specially-formulated milk, every three hours without fail.
And at night, he sleeps sharing a stable with one. (more…)
Scrap metal market
Dickens Otieno swapped to using recycled metal after paint prices rose and sales fell
Nairobi’s artists are struggling amid an economic downtown and a shrinking market for fresh work. By Mike Pflanz
INDUSTRIAL AREA, April 5, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – Mid-morning Mondays, round the back of Nairobi’s middle-class pubs, you’ll find Dickens Otieno waiting.
He’s after the empty beer and cider cans swept up after the weekend’s merrymaking. For this 32-year-old artist, trash tin is sprung tight with colorful potential, waiting to be reborn.
Otieno is one of the hundreds of painters and sculptors struggling to make a living in a city far from famous for its art, or its art market. (more…)
Old media and new in a revolution reaching young Kenyans
Anonymity assured: “DJ B” records his pirate radio show
By Mike Pflanz
KAREN, April 4, 2011 (Daily Dispatches) – The collection of hipsters, artists and passionate young designers that is the team at Shujaaz.fm has broken many taboos and launched itself into the consciousness of an entire generation of previously ignored Kenyan young people in its short life.
The group is behind the immensely popular Shujaaz.fm comic book, a linked radio show broadcast daily on 22 FM stations nationwide, and a booming online community on Facebook, Twitter, text message and a website.
Together, all these media are used to one end: to boost the confidence, pride and outlook of the 27 million people, 73% of Kenya’s population, who are aged under 30. (more…)
