Nairobi, I see you – By Mutua Matheka
Ever gone to the topmost floor in a building and looked out into the city landscape. If this is towards the evening and you’re standing somewhere like Hazina towers then your view is so beautiful that you curse yourself for not having bought a camera last month. This especially applies to the jam and streetlights and the lighting on billboards and the lights.
However, do the same downtown but slightly earlier and you will notice very different things. For instance, there are old-type fire escape spiral staircases outside some buildings which do not make sense really. If a fire broke out on second floor and you used the spiral staircase while on fourth floor, how would you pass by the window by the second floor?
Other than that you also get to notice how downtown is becoming cleaner and cleaner by the day. Streets/alleys that were a no-go before have now become fledgling business centres and legal businesses at that. You also get to see some of the dirt people sweep under the rug, like repair materials dumped on top floor, bricks on rooftops, chimneys and pipes that are not working among others.
If you were to try the same experiment somewhere in between downtown and university way, especially at night, you would find young people snuggling in some buildings. In fact, rumor has it that some buildings are used by commercial sex workers for clients who don’t want to get a room and/or have no cars.
As a side note, Collo released his album last year at the KICC rooftop, Anto Neosoul shot one of his videos at Kimathi house rooftop and a couple of other videos have been done on rooftops in town. With the security measures over the last couple of months though, entering most buildings in the CBD has become a tad bit tricky so make sure you are not caught, maybe unfortunately, on camera.