THE CITY OF DEVILMAY-CARE

Hokitika Guardian, 11 January 1929, Page 8

THE CITY OF DEVIL-MAY-CARE

(By Sir IVreival Phillips.) NAIROBI. (Kenya). Xov. 13. Xaiiobi defies classification. How can one calalouge a community that inixi-s Surbiton with Saskatoon on a landscape like Dartmoor burnt brown i’jv a tropical sun and blanketed with red diet? A town that displays ita cheerful people in cowboy kit against the sedate background of a country club? A suburban colony of pleasant English gardens with hungry lions lurking behind them? There is: the usual hotel rendezvous with a lounge like a railway station, and as feverishly alive, .and a bar where Goanese cockail mixers try to eope with the rising thirst of the youn - ger generation of settlers. Long rows of parked cars skirt the pavement. Noise, dust, sun helmets, and coloured spectacles everywhere. England am.: Africa inextricably .mingled under a brazen sky, a devil-may-care atmosphere and a comfortable feeling ol prosperity and novel adventure. Interesting blit misleading. Ibis is not the real Nairobi. The two lively thoroughfares, with poor relations of si:li’ istrects, all native bazaar and tumble down .shells, hanging on their Hanks push resolutely for a few hundred yards in four directions, and then die out abruptly in open country as though suddenly weary of pretence. They do not sustain the social life of this youthful capital. Unlike Piccadilly and Regent-street, they arc busy only when people are buying. For hours on end they are as dead as the reclaimed streets of Pompeii. .Even a cinema and a Theatre Royal do not give them a semblance to gaiety after nightfall. To find flic real Nairobi you must wander over the surrounding hills. It is there, spread in a spacious way across many miles of country. A clubhouse on one far eminence, a clubhouse on another, solid English homes of stone and' timber and of attractive designs dotted about between and around them, all loosely knit together by a network of motor roads of surpassing excellence. Journeys about this rambling reproduction of an English suburb may be complicated, by adventures such as no English suburb can offer. The wild beasts of East Africa decline to accustom themselves to the inroads of European progress. Two lions strolled through a portion of Nairobi a few nights ago looking for dinner. The motor-ways in and around it are still crossed by herds of game. It is not an unusual occurrence to run down a zebra while motoring to a dinner-party Only recently a car so injured a bewildered eland that it had to bo kill ed.

For tin* dignified servants of Government. housed in rows of hutments recalling the temporary headquarters of an army in the field. Nairobi is a place of hard work. But for the settlers. who regard themselves as lords of the land, it is a playground, and when they come in from tlicir estates they make it so.

They take their amusemons lavishly. Red shirts (red because they are protection against the deadly sun) arc supplanted for dinner jackets. A jazz hand and a ball-room second to none compensate for the hum brum existence up country. Champagne at 3os a bottle is none too dear.

It is not a. poor man's town. The cost of living is exorbitantly high. Prices stagger the new-comer accustomed to London standards. Shopkeepers charge relentlessly, no oniy because of heavy import duties (the principal source of revenue in Kenya) but also owing to the pomloivnoe of l)ad debts. The man with money to spend, who likes mi open-air life plus the distinctions of life at home, finds Nairobi an ideal place. Money and the right introductions ensure a holiday without a single flaw. But life is at high tension for many who make llieir home here. The high altitude and the tropical sun, if given free play over ton long a period, work havoc with the nerves. The victims are abnormally irritable, and inclined to magnify trifles, quicker to take offence where none is meant, and less tolerant of alien opinions that may reflect a widei outlook. T have seen three men. the Lost of friends, suddenly blaze into fury over the most trivial incident which, had it happened elsewhere would have been demisved with a laugh. When I asked the reason for this extraordimuy outburst the answer was: “Oh they have been in the country too long without leave.” In some aspects Nairobi reminds me of a precocious child. Take oilier precocious children born in the tropics its menial outlook olten expresses amazing self-assurance, impatience under criticism, profound belief in ils right to he free from all external discipline and petulant resentment against the restraining influence of its ciders. But it shows also unwavering loyalty, unsliake.n faith in its own future, and the determination to make for itself a high pince in the family of nations Vi liirli is called the Finn ire.