Hectic Nairobi

Nairobi, crude synaesthesia with talkative disorder, is a salad of voices seasoned with dense powder.

Traffic imposes itself on the streets, the horn of the matatu reigns over lost souls, arriving or departing for who knows where. Feline arms stretch from these ramshackle little buses, hippie style of yesteryear. Everything always ends with a handshake and a pat on the back.

Small and large congested streets often end up with overflowing markets along the sidewalk, and vendors singing like enchanting sirens as you pass.

Nairobi is the city of a thousand eyes, surrounded by the bubble of gossips, of lurking scams, of the danger of walking without running around in a continuous state of alert.

The label that a city sews on itself with time and events often sticks tightly, like a bite of a soporific poison, both in truth and in the exasperation of chance. This doesn’t just apply to Nairobi.

But in the labels, by nature, no one mentions people’s goodwill, resilience, innate sense of equality, elegantly mocking shrewdness, smiles on happily dark faces, even when thin because of hunger.

National Museum of Kenya:

Ticket cost: 1500 shillings per person. Opening hours: 9:00 – 17:00
Guide cost: starts from an offer of 500 shillings and up.

Luggage storage at the entrance: it is not possible to bring them inside, so a guard will let you leave them in a locker at the entrance (that’s why no photos).

Getting lost is nice, sometimes, especially in a time that was. This time, however, let yourself be guided on this intriguing time-travel by a good museum guide, who will first introduce you to a jungle of stuffed animals, with eyes so crystalline and languid that you can hear the echo of their cries, from whatever era they come from.

The most interesting pearl of the museum contains one of the oldest hominid finds. After being convoluted with the imagination up to homo habilis, feeding on your wild spirit, continue on the vein of history crossing ethnic groups and traditions.

You have plenty of time to identify yourself until closing time, when the museum keeper will bring you back to the present and everything will return to the way it was before, just like it happens to Cinderella. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the magic is over.