Never go Back. Should I revisit Nairobi? Or not? [13 Jan 2023]

 Never go back. I’ve been given that piece of advice plenty of  times, by lots of different people, but always with reference to one particular place. Nairobi. The city where I was born. Where I went to primary school. Where I went to prep school. Where I lived until I was seventeen.

Never go back.

I get it. I do. I understand why you should never go back. Memories are fragile enough as it is, why spoil them? Everything will have changed. I left Nairobi in 1971, and when I did, I felt as if I knew every street corner, every shop and bar and café and market stall. I knew the bus routes, and the clubs, and the museum, and the National Park. I was a regular at the Impala Club, and at Dam Busters, and the Snake Park, and the animal orphanage. I knew my way unaided around the city maze. I used to sit at a table in the Thorn Tree Café at the New Stanley Hotel and spot celebrities with my big sister. I was on first name terms with the man who ran Top Ten Records on Kimathi Street, and with the Sikh who ran the camera shop next to the market, and with several owners of second-hand bookstores all along Bazaar Street. I knew the best stall to buy mealies and the best place to get cut pineapple.  My little brother Paul and I used to take the lift to the top of the highest building (then the Hilton Hotel) and climb the service staircase to the roof and we’d sit there watching the whole city at our feet. It was our city. That was how it felt.

Me at Kenton College in around 1966. I'm the miserable looking one - second to the right on the front row. 

There is still a city called Nairobi, and it still stands in the same place - midway between Mombasa and Kisumu on the great railroad - but it isn’t the same city. I understand that. I look at the city on Google Streetview and nowhere is recognisable. I try to find the several old colonial bungalows where we lived at various times between 1958 and 1971, and I can’t find them. The houses all have high walls now. Nothing looks familiar.

Never go back.

But should I? Won’t I get a frisson of pleasure from recognising the occasional place? Surely my old school won’t have changed very much. Surely the Impala Club is still there. And the hippo pool in the National Park. And the museum. And the Stanley Hotel …

Well it’s a moot question. I’m going back. Next month. With Sue and with our good friends Graham and Jenny.  Feel free to send me your advice. Places to see. Places to avoid. I will blog about the trip and let you know how it was. But I can tell you this already. Four weeks to go and I’m already ridiculously excited.

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