ILLUSTRATION | JOSEPH NGARI
NATION MEDIA GROUP
It is time that someone wrote a book about the names of the
streets of our capital city! Certainly I am curious about the fact that
we have a Short Street and a Slip Road. I am still searching for the
Skirt Avenue and the Vest Lane that will complete the picture.
You
do not have to be a professional statistician to notice a few other
curious realities about this city. For example, a stroll down any of our
boulevards will reveal that one in four persons has a phone in their
hand. Of these, two are talking, one is texting and the other is
massaging the screen.
Whether this latter person is
playing an Internet game or is just in love with the gadget, I did not
dare to get close enough to confirm. I don’t know what conclusions you
may be drawing from my informal count, but I think it says something
about a vast improvement in the security on our streets.
POPULAR COLOURS
Perhaps
the Kenyans fondness for all phones mobile is not something to write
home about - but here is another curious statistic – every second person
is wearing something blue. Dull browns and black are also very popular
colours on the city streets.
According to some
websites about colour psychology, our liking for the colour blue may
also be a very positive sign since blue is the colour of peace,
tranquility, trust, honesty and loyalty. Nairobi males are particularly
fond of the colour blue, more so when it is arranged in stripes.
However, the jury is still out when it comes to deciding whether we
chose the blue, or the blue chose us because it prevails in the batches
of mitumba clothes arriving in the country.
When we are
not dressed in cool colours and stroking a telecommunications gadget,
we love to cross roads; and even though our mathematics teachers insist
that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, a
Nairobian always crosses the road at a diagonal. This is a very
important piece of information for newcomers to our city because anyone
who tries to cross a Nairobi street in a logical manner is on a
collision course with a hefty, crab-walking man wearing a striped shirt
and blue jeans who is texting on a phone.
Okay, I
hadn’t yet explained the hefty-ness. Nairobians love to eat and drink.
For some reason, if the eating is done indoors we love fried foods with a
“ch” in them: chips, chicken or chapati. If the eating is done
outdoors, we want our friends to know that we are healthy eaters so we
like to suck yoghurt or fruit juice out of a carton with a straw.
WEIGHT ISSUES
The
end result of all this feasting is that everyone weighs 75 kilogrammes,
regardless of their height. (Okay, I admit that there is a group of
whipcord-slim young girls, usually dressed in yellow leggings, and a
group of traditionally-built matrons who dream of appearing on a
television slimming show, who do not quite fit into my general mould.)
In
a departure from African traditions, only one in two Nairobians will
willingly shake hands. This may be due to a concerted advertising
campaign targeting hand hygiene. The depiction of a magnified palm with
harmful blue microbes crawling over it has worked powerfully on our
psyches. When you offer your hand, the typical Nairobian flinches and
looks down.
If you force the issue, the hand will be
reluctantly shaken, but the limb will subsequently be held stiffly and
withdrawn from circulation until it can be washed. (Politicians,
however, have accepted handshaking as a necessary evil, so they handle
the whole thing with admirable panache.) The hand-washing craze is also
very evident at our traditional eateries which are all well-equipped
with rows of hand basins, or alternatively, svelte young ladies ready to
hand you a fragrant, hot towel with which to wipe your hands.
Count our peculiar habits this weekend
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