I have many fond memories of Nairobi and my fist experience of visiting a place that I had read about all of my life. Nairobi means “cold water”. The name comes from a Maasai word because they had found a place there to water their herds. Nairobi is a mile high which surprised me. It is about the same elevation as Denver Co.
We stayed at a quest house there that had a roaring river running through the property. I remember talking to some folks that said Nairobi was prone to flooding because the rain comes so fast and runs off so fast that drainage was not able to keep up with it. In the wonderful book “Out of Africa” the heroine tried to make a small damn to irrigate her farm. The head man helping her run the farm told her it was a mistake because the water wanted to go to Mombasa and he was right.
So many people are coming in from the country to try and find a better life in the city. There is much construction taking place trying to keep up with the demand and often the construction is shoddy and built in places where the build actually damns the flow of the drainage. The water wants to go to Mombasa and if a building is in the way something has to give. Yesterday a building collapsed. No word on casualties. There has been a lot of suffering in Nairobi again this week because of floods. People are getting mad at the public officials. Africans, like Americans are starting to get the idea that maybe politicians cause more problems than they have solutions. The county government in Nairobi is getting the angry voter treatment. Someone said that they are idiots and offered up this marvelous bon mot – “Shame of the highest grandeur!”
Pray for our missionaries and friends and for all the folks here in the States that are getting the savage weather treatment.
