By MOHAMED SHARIFF
My tripe to East Africa was, to say the least, thrilling, and full of eagerness. My first in ten years, I expected an immense change. Nevertheless, I thought I was coming home. My longing for a place like was enormous. Since home is in endless chaos, anywhere in Africa would do, or I thought. Among other places, I visited Eastleigh, a Somali enclave that thanks its origin on the British colonial masters of Kenya. In the 1990s, with the arrival of thousands of wandering Somalis displaced by the civil war, the place transformed to a mixture of Somalis of every region in the horn of Africa. I even ran into some folks from Djibouti. It became a home away from home. My thinking was that I would not be a stranger to the norms of my culture. I was, however, bitterly surprised, and pleasantly awed. Perhaps, I was blinded by the glitters of North America, but the place appeared unfit for human inhabitance. There is bizarre relationship between its lawlessness, and riches.
As the pilot announced the descent to Nairobi’s Kenyatta International Airport, tension gripped me, and my heart pounded. My immense nostalgia was a bout to be satisfied. My thirst for home, or a place like it was about to be quenched. My first destination was Eastleigh, or little Mogadishu. I was cautioned about the roughness of Eastleigh, but I was not equipped for my encounters in it. As it held me in angst, Eastleigh pleasantly surprised me. Rather than satiate my nostalgia, it evoked in me, that seeming anarchy that ubiquitously follows Somalis. Eastleigh has many faces, and it presents those faces simultaneously. It is Somalia and Kenya, Mogadishu and Nairobi, a vast dumping ground, and a giant shopping mall. The streets are teeming with various goods, and every space is occupied. The busboys are maddeningly noisy, and the handcarts run you over if you happen to look the other side. The loud and infuriating matatu music mingles with the calming call for prayer. Hijaab glad women announcing the dominance of Islam, jostle space for half-naked men hauling goods. Eastleigh is a place of disarray, confusion, unattractiveness, and peculiarly, a pricy neighborhood.
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To call Eastleigh a neighborhood of any city, is to do injustice to the place. Eastleigh is a city in itself; or rather it is the city. If it were not the wrecked infrastructure and the lawlessness, Eastleigh would have claimed the center of Nairobi. Kenyans come from all corners of the country to shop in Eastleigh. It is arguably one of the most unruly, overcrowded, and unorganized real-estate in the world.
The relationship between Eastleigh’s invisible business society and the city administration appear precarious, and extrajudicial. Their affiliation is absurdly comparable to that of disorganized merchants and organized crime ring. Eastleigh is supposedly administered by the City Council of Nairobi. Evidently, though, there is no tangible social contract. Everything is haphazardly laid, and violently in motion. In relative to its small size, Eastleigh has high proportion of businesses. Ideally, it should be able to pay for the restoration of its infrastructures, welfare of its inhabitants, and maintain order. On the contrary, the place is choked in plastic paper. In that case then, the city administration must be either unabashedly guilty of high crimes of fraud, hopelessly incompetent, or both. Whatever the case maybe, the place is woefully disgrace to all those who do business, and reside in it.
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Walking through the streets is a challenge, since they are either horribly muddy, or agonizingly dusty. Due to the smell coming from the fumes and the heaps of trash, people spite continuously. The dust swirls directly into your mouth, and nose, giving you an unbearable odor of human spite and urine. The vehicular traffic battles space with sea of humans, and infuriating human-pulled handcarts. In any second you brace of collusion of two cars, of a car and a pedestrian, of a handcart and a pedestrian. Cars honk, and do not stop for the pedestrian to get out of the way. Whatever is left of the side walks are overflowing with people, goods and litter.
That unsightly place, however, hides gigantic treasures, diversity and complexity. Beside the mud, dirt, noise, pollution, disorder and anarchy, lie untold riches. There are comfortable lodges, modest “malls”, and you can find almost anything. The lodge I slept in was relatively an oasis. It had hygienic feel, a self contained rooms, and hot water. Outside was another story. Right in front of the lodge seemed a battle front, a no man’s land. Refuse, people, goods, and cars shared one tinny space. Paradoxically, the place is filthy, as it is wealthy. Evidently its wealth is not equally distributed.
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Nearly everyone in Eastleigh is a businessperson, but the interaction between the consumer and merchant is seemingly one of antagonism. I thought my presence always angered the shopkeepers. They seemingly frowned instead of receiving me eagerly as a potential buyer. More than the smile of the shopkeeper, any savvy shopper, however, needs to master the art of bargaining. I always lost in that game, nearly always overpaying. The restaurants were, in my view, the worst. The waiters insult their clients, the tables have dried food on them, and the cashiers would give you a piece of newspaper as a napkin. The cashiers would throw the balance at you. Lunch time was the most terrible. The restaurants were overcrowded. There were always shortages of, even rude waiters. Since many in Eastleigh are unemployed, why there are shortages of workers, I could not fathom.
But then, that is Eastleigh, all seemed to happen in impromptu, unrehearsed and chaotically. But then, perhaps, there is nothing wrong with Eastleigh, but my perceptions are tainted in the superficial flash of North America.
MOHAMED SHARIFF
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