WWW in Nairobi (by Karen)

Nairobi, and Kenya in general, was a breath of fresh air. It was great to be on a “real” vacation – no laptop! – and to be at cooler, higher elevations. Though Lubumbashi is pretty high at nearly 4,000 feet, Nairobi is higher, at 5,500, and Lake Naivasha even higher, at 6,200.

We had a great home base in Nairobi at Margarita House, a guesthouse tucked away on a back road in the upscale neighborhood of Karen, where Karen Blixen, the author of Out of Africa, lived for 17 years in the 1920s and 30s before returning to Denmark after her farm business failed. 

"Our" room at Margarita House -- fittingly, the honeymoon suite!

The Karen Blixen Museum

Karen is where many upper-class Kenyans and ex-pats live. It has pretty streets – even some with sidewalks! – malls, coffee shops, and restaurants, including a sushi restaurant where we ate one night.

We were ready for some small indulgences, and the first of these was to walk around. We end up taking the car (R’s taxi, usually) so much in L’shi that it was a treat to get out on foot. Not too much traffic, not too hot even in the sunshine: good prep for our upcoming Mt. Longonot hike! We also had a somewhat eclectic list of consumer items to hunt down in Nairobi’s malls – yarn for me, a watch, measuring cups and spoons, new jeans for Eric – and hoped to meet up with a couple of my old friends.  We spent a day there before heading down to Maasai Mara for our safari and had a day and a half between Maasai Mara and Lake Naivasha, as well as one final night before flying out early in the morning.

With most of our errands and a visit with a friend I’d known when we both lived in Cairo 13-14 years ago completed on our first day, we had time to be tourists on the in-between day after Maasai Mara. While Nairobi – aka “Nairobbery” – is known for being unsafe everywhere at night and some places even in the day, Karen is generally acknowledged to be quite safe in the daytime. 

The morning was sunny and clear, perfect for walking. Fresh from the Mara, we had our eyes peeled for birds. We set off from our hotel to walk to the Karen Blixen Museum along the well-traveled Karen Road, along which a couple of matatu and boda-boda (motorcycle taxi) drivers honked to see if we wanted rides, but we were happy walking. 

Kazuri Beads necklaces -- also available in the US
photo from http://www.spurwingkenya.com/kazuri.html

We took a side trip to the Kazuri Bead factory, a project that helps women earn income by making pottery beads, and walked past sweeping driveways that led to large estates. We nodded to a couple of security guards and a trash collector we saw along the way, and at the Kazuri shop, we each picked out a hand-painted coffee mug to bring home to Lubumbashi.

Mug shot.

As we headed back to the Karen Road, we continued to marvel at how green and peaceful it was. I was pretty blissed out, strolling along, just the two of us … though I did point out to Eric the menacing signs advertising security and alarm systems on each of the gates we passed that belied the tranquility. Along this stretch of road, we didn’t see anyone else, until we were about 20 yards from the Karen Road, when a boda-boda turned off the Karen Road and came toward us.

I thought I recognized the motorcycle and the driver as one I’d turned down a ride from earlier. It was odd that his passenger was another guy dressed like a boda-boda driver, also with a faded reflective yellow vest and a helmet, and I was wondering whether the second guy’s bike had broken down or whether he was just a passenger the driver had given extra safety gear to. A few seconds after they passed us, I heard the bike again behind us, and before I had a chance to turn around or to process that this was Not Good, it had pulled up in front of us. 

"X" marks the spot

As they pulled up, we could see that there was another unhelmeted guy on the bike between the two I’d seen before. We each thought that it seemed a strange place to drop off passengers ...

Those of you who are on Facebook know what happened next.

Three Guys, Two Guns, and One Motorbike

The guy on the back of the bike slid off, taking off his helmet, and lost his balance for a second. I didn't see him recover, because suddenly the middle guy was in front of me, patting me down, shouting, “money, money, money!” in heavily accented English. He put his hand on what looked like the handle of a gun tucked into his waistband – it was covered by his shirt and so I never actually saw it – and said, “I will kill you!”. 

I could see out of the corner of my eye that the other passenger was patting down Eric, pulling things out of his pockets. A dark van turned the corner off Karen Road coming toward us, and stopped beside us briefly. Oh great, I thought, here come their henchmen. But then the van was gone, and “my” guy was commanding my full attention. All I had on me was my phone; Eric had the only cash we’d brought. I had a debit card, which the guy wasn't interested in, and a shoulder bag, which had only a map and a few other items that weren't valuable, though the guy didn't know or believe that. I had my hands up and turned to see what had happened to the van – perhaps not a good move to take my eyes off my attacker, but I was wondering why, if the driver wasn't a henchman, he wasn't trying to help. I saw that the van was stopped down the road a ways, and it may be that my attacker followed my gaze then and saw it, too, because about then, the guys were in a pretty big hurry to leave. Eric’s guy tried to pull off Eric’s wedding ring, but it wouldn't go over his knuckle, and my guy kind of tried mine but either decided it wasn't interesting enough or that it was time to go, because he just pulled my bag off my shoulder and got on the bike. 

Then they were gone, and we picked up a few things from the ground that had been in Eric’s pockets. Eric and I were both most annoyed about losing our non-valuable stuff, i.e., Eric’s wallet with driver’s license and bank cards, and my trusty shoulder bag (AR, if you’re reading this, your grey Overland bag is mine no more).

The morning was still beautiful, the sun still bright and warm. I still felt blissed out – maybe it was shock? But I was grateful that this thing that had always sounded so frightening, armed robbery, had happened to us and we were not much the worse for it. It couldn't have been more than 90 seconds from when they got off the bike to when they left, and they had been quite efficient about the whole thing. I wouldn't say gentle, exactly, but they were clearly after cash and valuables, and, except for the threat of the guns – Eric’s guy actually showed his, Eric told me later – didn't seem to want to hurt us. We were lucky. 

We continued walking to the Karen Road, and it was just like before, except that now we had no phone and no way to call anyone, and we had no cash. But we still had our Kazuri mugs! 

As we were walking along the Karen Road, a bit dazed, looking for our things in the hope that they’d tossed all but the money (we later realized that we were on the wrong side of the road, since Kenya drives on the left like the UK), a dark van pulled over next to us. “I’m so sorry that happened to you,” the sweet-faced driver said, and I realized this must have been the van I’d seen a few minutes earlier. I told him that his coming along when he had had probably spooked the robbers off, since they made no real effort to take our jewelry or to rough us up. 

The driver offered to take us to the police post to report the robbery. “OK,” I said, about to get in, but then thinking better of it. “Um – who are you?” He laughed, and told us his name and the name of the company he worked for. He had been taking tourists to Hemingway’s Restaurant when they’d happened on our little scene. 

Reassured, Eric and I got in the van. The driver took us to the Hardy Police Post. He came in with us and made the initial report; both he and the police were surprised that we'd been held up in Karen in broad daylight.

After that, our day was pretty much shot. We were at the police post for a while making the report, and then one of the police kindly directed us to where we could get a matatu to go back to Karen. When we said we didn't have any money, he was surprised. But of course, we’d just been robbed! We had only 3 Kenya shillings between us – and it’s been many years since the matatu fare was actually just mashilingi matatu (3 shillings) per person. So we waited a little longer, and they gave us a ride to the nearby shopping mall, where I used my debit card to get cash, we got another SIM card to put in Eric’s phone which was back at Margarita House, and we got some lunch. Then we went to the Karen Police Post to give them the report and the case number from the Hardy Police Post; of course, all this information was written by hand in ledger books, nothing electronic. At the Karen Police Post, the deputy seemed to recognize the descriptions that we gave and told us that they had been losing sleep over these guys – probably part of the same gang described in this news report:

If the van driver hadn't come along, I don’t think it would have occurred to us to report the incident, but I think it's good we did. While we didn't ever expect to see any of our things again, the response of the Nairobi police was comforting insofar as they were solicitous and professional and seemed genuinely to want to get these guys. 

I can’t say I’m glad to have had this experience, but I’m glad it wasn't worse. It was all over so fast. Although the attackers used guns to coerce us, I don’t think either of us -- being older, slower, and fewer than they -- would have resisted even if they hadn't had guns. We weren't physically hurt. However, it could just as easily have been different. Just as quickly, we might have been shot, or beaten, or kidnapped, or sexually assaulted, and I think if we had felt we were in physical danger, we would have tried to fight them off or run, for better or for worse.

I titled this post WWW in Nairobi – “WWW” for “walking while white”, a play on “DWB”, “driving while black”. By doing so, I don’t mean to trivialize the systemic and systematic racism to which Blacks in the US are subjected. I do think there are connections, though, between the legacies of colonialism and slavery and the racism and inequality that pervade both Kenyan and US society. These guys might target anyone who’s upper-class or a tourist, but our whiteness, and the fact that we were walking, which most upper-class Kenyans of any hue don’t do, made us stand out. 

Because the robbers didn't hurt us, and because we do have resources and privilege, this turned out to be a relatively minor incident for us. But I'm conscious that this was only a flavor of the daily violations and violence that some others are subjected to, whether in Kenya, DRC, or anywhere, and grateful that it is not our everday fare.