Nairobi is the capital of Kenya, and the largest city between Johannesburg and Cairo with a population of 1.5 million. Like many other African cities, Nairobi has its share of bustling markets, skyscrapers, alarming matatu (taxi bus) drivers, dusty shanties, and leafy suburbs with sweeping gardens.

In fact, we spent a lot of time in one of these suburbs. On the outskirts of Nairobi is Laganta which is where a lot of the wealthy live and there are many schools in this area. A lot of our sightseeing excursions were located here.

Nairobi is a city of contrasts. We saw smartly dressed office workers, huge mansions, and expensive shopping centers, as well as shamefully overcrowded slums with the most basic of manual labor paying less than $1 per day.

The first thing that struck me was how very polluted the air is in Nairobi. The exhaust that's expelled out of every vehicle is disgusting. There's definitely no emission controls here!

The traffic was really bad, but it was "organized chaos" when compared to our experience in Uganda. You most definitely want to hire a driver to take you around as you would probably get into an accident quite easily. Plus the streets in Nairobi aren't marked so it's impossible to navigate.

The roads were full of potholes, and our driver was constantly navigating around them. There are roundabouts which are extremely busy, but the right-of-way was respected. We saw very few new cars. Most of them were very beat up, and it looked like they had been in an accident or two!

Public transportation is either by foot (there were constant streams of people walking everywhere) or by matatu. A matatu is a taxi bus that's always packed to the bursting point. Because of their overloading, excessive speed, poor maintenance, and driver recklessness, they aren't the safest way to get around. Look at the pictures under the Ugandan PEOPLE link to see what matatus look like.

Another form of public transportation is by bike. These bikes have large flat seats attached to the back, and a passenger would sit sideways on these seats for a ride.

When were sitting in traffic jams, people would come up to us and try to sell us things through the minivan window. We saw everything from newspapers and cheap toys to fruit and satellite receivers.

There were lots of roadside "shacks" that sold all kinds of goods. Furniture is even displayed right out on the road with all the dust flying everywhere. There's nothing wrong with any of these things, it's just very different from what we are accustomed to in the United States.


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