Before we propose geographical and historic explanations for the situation, we have to hold the current leaders accountable. Some have brought up the fact that this flooding is a cyclic problem to classify it as an act of nature and exonerate Sakaja’s name. To that, I raise my special finger.

To expect floods every year at the start of the long rains, and not do a single thing in preparation, is a testament to the incompetence of the incumbent regime and, more specifically, Johnson McDimple Sakaja.

On 6th February,, rivers in and around the CBD burst their banks as a heavy downpour fell from the skies. A typical Friday night in Nairobi would be filled with drinks, dancing and debauchery; instead, we got death and destruction.

The main channel of the Nairobi River swelled in several places, from as high upstream as Riruta and Kawangware, then flowing down Riverside Drive and Museum Hill, flooding Uhuru Highway and Park, but it did the most damage right in the CBD, especially along Grogan Road. Here, cars were swept over meters, kiosks were destroyed, entire buses were flipped upside down, and there was considerable loss of life.

Mbagathi River swelled up causing damage around T-Mall and flooding into South C. Mombasa Road was also impassable as a result. Ruaka River’s entire course was flooded. The Embassy section of Limuru Road or Diplomat Drive as I like to call it due to the red plates that go back and forth on it was waterlogged. Further downstream, the rivers passing through Karura Forest all flooded simultaneously.

Kiu River, Thiririka River, Ndarugu River, Mathare River and Getathuru River all burst their banks, flooding various points along Thika Road and the eastern side of Nairobi.

We experience a special brand of bad governance in this country, one that doesn’t respect geographical location or class boundaries. It will find you in your shop on Grogan Road or in your residence in Kileleshwa. The fate of a pedestrian on Uhuru Highway is also shared by someone whose car was parked in the Yaya Center basement parking lot. The same river that flooded Kawangware will carry all the filth down to Lavington. The irony is diabolical. Yet some believe their lifestyle or income shields them from participating in politics.

As I write this, the death toll has risen to 23 as rescue efforts save 29 others. The property damage cannot even be quantified at this point. People’s businesses have been destroyed and over 70 vehicles have been totaled. The fury of the water was enough to break down walls and intrude in homes. Imagine a flooded house- all that furniture damage, losing your laptop, phone, tv, sound system, etc., in one night.

How can we attribute all this damage to ‘a natural act of God’ when it happens literally every year? We expect it to flood because it flooded the year before and the one before that. Yet, in the scorching dry season that we just emerged from, not a single thing was done to improve drainage in Nairobi. Not a single thing to prepare us for a certain impending disaster.

Sakaja will burn in hell. No government personnel showed up in person for the rescue efforts yesterday. How could they?. It is so unfortunate that Kenyans live and die in the consequences of Sakaja’s incompetence. The ballot is the constitutional way to deal with individuals in the municipality management, but it feels like voting them out is better than they deserve. All those deaths on your hands, and all you get is demotion. The world is unfair, but kama hauna kura, please do the necessary.

Flood Plain

Nairobi’s location curses the city to this cyclical flooding. At the foot of the central highlands and the beginning of the vast Athi plains, it is a natural flood basin where rivers descending from the Aberdare Ranges settle to a flatter motion. The thin layer of topsoil easily gets waterlogged when the surrounding rivers flood.

The Nairobi River, of which all these others are tributaries, formed the boundary between the Kikuyu and the Maasai. According to the Southern Kikuyu Before 1902, the Kikuyu name for the swamp that formed after heavy rains was Kîînuinî.

The Maasai romanticised the place a bit more, calling it ‘Enkare Nyirobi’, which translates to ‘the place of cool waters’. Having a natural swamp where they could bring their livestock to drink from, outside of Kikuyu territory, meant a lot to this pastoral community. Their alternatives were Ondiri Swamp at the source of the Nairobi River or Manguû Swamp near Limuru, both of which were dangerously close to the Kikuyu fortified villages.

As we’ve discussed before in previous articles, the Maasai did not like raiding during the rainy season. Crossing flooded rivers made transporting looted livestock near impossible.

In the dry season, the swamp would disappear altogether, creating a natural ford right after the confluence of the Nairobi and Kuruchwa River, where we have the museum hill roundabout today. Maasai troops would cross over and raid unsuspecting Kikuyu frontier villages.

When the railhead reached Nairobi on 30th May 1899, it was in the 3rd year of a drought that had left its mark on the topography and even the oral literature of communities in East Africa. As the railway buildings mushroomed, Nairobi appealed to the settlers more and more as a headquarters over Machakos. Its centrality and availability of water were key factors that encouraged this decision.

Two main streets, Station Street, which later became Government Road and then Moi Avenue, and Victoria Street, which is Tom Mboya Street today, were founded and grew considerably. Maasai’s grazing their livestock, watched silently from Upperhill at the foolishness of the visitors who had set themselves up for a disaster.

When the rains fell the following year, they fell heavily. Just like it does today, the long spell of drought was broken by an even heavier rain. As usual, the rivers swelled and broke their banks. Many of the flimsy structures of the early city were swept away altogether. It was a hard lesson learned, but unlike the current useless regime, they actually did something about it.

Biosolution

John Dawson Ainsworth was the sub-commissioner of Nairobi during this first flood. The British administrator had been drawn from Machakos. He had distinguished himself by singlehandedly setting up Machakos as a colonial base, pacifying the Kamba community and creating a foodbank for trade caravans going to the country. Now it was left to him to take care of the flood problem.

In Kenya Diaries, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen asserts that Ainsworth knew what he was dealing with. He had his home where the museum is today, right at the ford. In fact, he constructed the forerunner of the museum hill bridge. It was then known as Ainsworth Bridge.

The first potential solution was moving the city altogether. A move from the current lowlying center to a higher altitude was proposed. It sounded good on paper but the railway officials vehemently opposed this. Instead, new buildings were constructed with only the police moving to the hills.

Swamp clearance work and the construction of proper drainage to service the growing city were prioritized. Ainsworth was a botanist of sorts and always considered planting crops as a potential solution to problems. As he was struggling with the settlement at Machakos, he planted rows of flowers to make the place feel more welcoming and hospitable to his subordinates. Now, he researched a biological solution to the flood problem.

The bluegum tree, a subspecies of eucalyptus, was found to absorb water more than any other tree. It was planted with enthusiasm all along the streets, avenues, and green spaces of the town. It actually got the job done.

This only served the swamping, though. To install a proper drainage system, Ainsworth requested a loan of 10,000 pounds. He insisted that this was the only way to have a permanent solution to the problem, as he had already developed plans for a surface drain system that drew inspiration from towns existing in similar situations in Europe and South Africa. Ainsworth never received this money. To this day, the surface drain system has never been implemented

Apartheid Urban Planning.

While government officials were trying to find ways to make Nairobi work, others were trying to exempt themselves from it altogether. Introducing Ewart Grogan, one of the pioneer settlers who was lured into the protectorate from South Africa. Many know him as the chap who ‘walked’ from Cape Town to Cairo to win his wife’s hand in marriage. To others, he was best known for the ‘Nairobi Incident where he flogged three Kikuyus in broad daylight in the CBD for disrespecting his sister. Today, Grogan Road (or Grogoni) still bears his name. Read all about him in Colonial Villains:Ewart Grogan.

Grogan pitched a tent at the Nairobi-Kuruchwa confluence, an area he considered prime for his settlement. He named it Chiromo and built the first stone building in Nairobi for himself. Grogan House is still standing in University of Nairobi’s Chiromo campus. Grogan ended up being a very wealthy and influential settler in the long run.

His plan for Nairobi was informed by the Apartheid system he had seen in South Africa. From his position in the LegCo, he suggested moving all administrative powers of Nairobi to the Chiromo area so the city would expand westwards. The eastern part of Nairobi would be left to Indians and Africans. Although the suggestion was never formally implemented, Nairobi did grow in the exact way he predicted.

When some actual urban planning started happening in Nairobi, it was at the hands of L. W. Thornton White in 1948. He noticed that the colonial map makers “drew a line down the plain, and on one side only Europeans, on the other only locals”. Europeans lived in Upper Hill, Kileleshwa, Kilimani, Lavington, and Groganville (Westlands-Riverside). By law, Africans could only live on the other side. We saw Argwings Kodhek and his white wife unable to settle in Lavington because of these laws.

Just because Grogan wanted to separate white settlers from the Africans, he still bought into the economy of the main city. On Grogan Road, some of the very first enterprises were set up, right next to the Nairobi River. The area morphed into what it is today. All these years later, Grogan’s greed still haunts the country.

For the settlement of Europeans in the aforementioned areas, the Kikuyus living there were alienated without compensation. A series of pandemics, including the famine we spoke about, had depopulated the area as Kikuyus drifted back north to their kin. Some Kikuyu settlements were there, though and the residents were kicked out. The police station was moved from the CBD to Muthangari, a Kikuyu village whose land was given to missionaries.

In Kenya Diaries, Richard Meinertzhagen talks about the alienation of 5,000 acres at Muthaiga, which was a settled Kikuyu village. It was given to a settler named Sandbach Baker. The Kikuyus were not compensated and the condition of purchase was that Baker supply government offices in Nairobi with meat. Having Richard speak sympathetically about the alienation is so tragically funny to me. This is the same guy who conducted the Muranga Massacres at Kihumbuini and Muruka. He is the same guy who assassinated Koitalel Arap Samoei at a peace meeting.

Conclusion

Nairobi today is a result of decisions made by dead European imperialists. Big bluegums still tower over Upperhill, displaying Ainsworth's whitewashed fingerprints. The flooding issue still persists to this day and there is even more at stake now. It pains me deeply to see how much Ainsworth, a foreign imperialist, was so driven to fix this problem, while Mr. McDimples, who has a wealth of his resources at his disposal and is a son of the soil, has done nothing in his tenure to fix it.

To this day, Nairobi is geographically segregated along class lines. They are relics of the racial lines that existed before. Today, a drive through Riverside, looks like you’re in a different country altogether because of the foreign nationals walking around with impunity. Just like Ewart Grogan projected. Elsewhere, higher-class settlements exist adjacent to slums from which they feed on. Westlands is next to Kangemi, Lavington shares a border with Kawangware, and Kilimani is right across Ngong Road from Kibera.

If there’s anything these floods have shown us, though, it’s that you can’t outgrind your way out of bad governance. Your literal life is still in danger if you entrust it to the government.

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