Tuesday 27th January 2026
We have panties to buy for a group on the coast and this means a trip to Eastleigh. Which is another world where Somalia and Ethiopia combine to create a place of terrifyingly dodgy high rise buildings and great coffee. I still get the mild WTFs when I see a woman (one can only assume it is a women) in this (currently) 30 degree heat with only her eyes showing. In the rainy season the whole area floods so, David tells me as we motor over huge piles of rubble and earth that fill the road, they are digging drainage. Open ditch drainage – worryingly close to the already terrifyingly dodgy high rise buildings. One hard rainfall and I can see these monuments to the quick and illicit buck falling. We take a panya route (a rat run) to the main road and David points out places of interest – like the street where the twelve year old Turkana girls sleep after working a 14 hour day as a house girl. No one really knows how they are herded up and brought to Nairobi, but it happens. A lot. It is basically slavery. “And they are very small” says David. All the more to pack into the van, I suppose.
Driving anywhere with David is quite the gallop through the ills of the world on wheels. He ‘hates’ pikipiki drivers, matatu drivers, lorry drivers, women drivers, older drivers, learner drivers, drivers who go too slowly, drivers who go too fast, drivers who change lanes, police in every capacity but especially traffic police and REALLY especially older traffic police. He gets splenetically enraged about people doing all the things in traffic that he does himself. I start to explain the concept of ‘the pot calling the kettle black;’ but realise, too late, that it is probably not apt here. I quickly go biblical. With “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.
I descend into the circle of hell that sells acrylic panties imported from China and buy a load for a group on the coast and then up to see Mokono and get some really rather lovely designs at excellent prices. I cannot buy much at all, given the new shop (still minus electricity) is rammed like vegans at a Coldplay gig with everything from the original Emporium of Loveliness.
Similarly, at the market in Kijabe Street I leave pretty much everyone disappointed by buying almost nothing. I feel really rather guilty.
I get dropped in the city centre to find the little stall that sells Shea Butter. Crossing the road – any road – here is absolutely pant-wettingly terrifying. But I get to the (as usual) completely unmarked building. No Shea. So back across the life-threateningly chaotic horror of crossing Kimathi Street. Busses and matatus, cars and vans, lorries and pikipikis all crammed in so that you can barely see tarmac beneath you. I am considering investing in a jet-pack for such trips.
Now the most terrifying thing of all. I am meeting Felista at Corner for “a chat”.
I have told her that if she asks for money for anything I will leave immediately.
I also tell her that three out of Mama B’s 5 Trustees are in favour of stopping any funding to DECIP at all. You can see the cogs of the old Felista machine turning and this just does not compute.
Any full on discussion with Felista is a bit like crossing Kimathi Street, but when you look at the work she has done, all by begging and bullying, guilt tripping and relentless beseeching, she is most certainly a passionate force for good. And, call me an old softy (don’t you fucking dare) but I like that.
One of the old Decip kids (“Little Felista” – now all grown up) has come along too and we are discussing how sad it is that she – as a Kikkuyu – has grown up without learning her mother tongue. Then I learn one of the most shocking things I have heard in all my years in Kenya. The middle class and expensively educated Gen Z here are not only growing up without their mother tongue, but they do not even speak Swahili !!! English is their language with full blown nasal ‘tendence Lord Haw Haw’ pronounciation. It seems that Colonial Power has triumphed.
I go back to my room (now with electricity) and count out 150 bras (a surprising mound) which will be a business for a group of maasai women we are seeing tomorrow. Thank you to all bra donors and especially Harry Kemp and his ladies.
