Westlands Rd in the Nairobi’s conurbation is fast becoming New York’s 5th Ave. New money. GTC, JW Marriott, tall and sleek apartment buildings coming up on both sides of the street.
Everywhere you look– Kilimani, Upper Hill, Ngara… the smell of opulence and its skyward rising is jostling for space with human traffic in a city that’s growing faster than bamboo forest.
This new money comes from outside. China, Somalia, Turkey, India… It is not a product of the indigenous people’s own innovation of wealth. It is the wind of global invasion looking for a soft landing.
Of course you will find indigenous wealth in the cities and in rural areas, and it is inspiring, but the intensity of invading new money is loud, mysterious and untouchable.
It comes through deals signed in boardrooms, daggers pulled out in political duels, chess pieces moved in global high stakes games that target the fall of kings who stand in the way.
New money seeks to move and multiply in places without impervious walls of regulation or moral considerations.
New money is beautiful to look at, clean concrete, sanitized sidewalks that go no farther than the stretch of the building, leafy lawns, to-let signs that a local passer-by knows never to ask- how much per month?
You see the hawker selling second-hand clothes along Westlands Rd? The cooks running the stretch of mabati food shacks with the irresistible waft of chapati and nyamachoma? The bodaboda guy leaning against his motorcycle waiting on a fare?
Are they really interested in renting an apartment at the high-end Misty Springs, or in acquiring one of GTC’s lofty living spaces a block down?
Perhaps they are, but I’d say, if they achieve it, they’d keep it only if it feels like home. Only if their skin doesn’t shrink with unbelonging when they ride those elevators to the sky. Only if the smell of their smoked omena does not offend the next door neighbour. New money is a culture.
I think ordinary people just want to know that what they do – be it the sweaty pursuits of self-employment, the certainties of salaried opportunities, or the windfall of construction work gigs – they just want to know that what they do helps them build a place of their own beauty and belonging.
They want to know that they can feed their children and take them to school. They want to feel the excitement of saving up to buy a car or a piece of land with their own toil.
They want access to decent social spaces and libraries, sidewalks they can stroll swiftly on without getting an ankle stuck in the ugly pile of broken cabro.
And oh.. the dangling cables of electric wire at every corner, carelessly strewn across the sidewalks, exposed ends vomited out of their insulation like the forked tongues of snakes, just waiting to trip you and dispatch you to an early grave, another statistic killed by common disregard.
Neglect of local concerns is often the price the people have to pay for the influx of external new money. It is as if decent sidewalks, regularly maintained, are a nuisance to local governments sworn to protect the interests of the people who pay taxes.
Addendum-
The global structure of nations is a space that has everyone interconnected. So outside money really is just the same water that flows through the global pipes we all drink from. What appears as foreign new money often has its origins from the wealth of unstable countries. Sometimes it’s your own money, stolen through extractive plunder, recycled back to you as foreign investment. In essence, it’s not so much where new money comes from that matters, it is the fact that it pushes local people out and continues the cycle of economic imbalance. You cannot fault dreamers and their towers of babel. If the people don’t rise with the new money, it’s the fault of incompetent local governments sworn to protect the people’s interests and their humanity.
