KENYA: THE CITIES

NAIROBI is one of Africa's major cities: the UN's fourth 'World Centre', East Africa's commercial and aid hub, and a significant capital in its own right with a population of one million (and growing). Nairobi came into being in 1899: an artificial settlement, created by Europeans at Mile 327 of the East African railway line, then systemati-cally being forged from the coast into the interior. It was initially a stores depot, shunting yard and camping ground for the thousands of Indian labourers employed by the British; the site, bleak and swampy, simply the spot where operations came to a halt whilst the engineers figured out the next move - getting the line up the steep slopes that lay ahead. The name came from the local Swahili term for the valley, Ewaso Nairobi, 'Stream of Cold Water'. Unplanned and unexpected, the settlement took root, undergoing a total rebuilding a few years on, after the outbreak of plague and the burning down of the original compound. By 1907 it was so firmly estab-lished that the colonisers took it as the capital of the newly formed British East Africa. Europeans, encouraged by the authorities, settled in large number. The Africans, meanwhile, were forced by tax into employ-ment or out to specially created reserves: the Maasai to the Southern Reserve, the Kikuyu to their own reserve in the highlands. The capital, lacking development from any established community, was, and is, somewhat anonymous in character. The original centre preserves an Asian influence in its older buildings but is today shot through with high-rise blocks, indistinguishable from any western city's. Surrounding it are thousands of acres of suburbs: wealthiest in the west and north, to the east and south increasingly poor and in parts out and out slum.

Looking around Central Nairobi, Kenyatta Avenue is an obvious place to start and a good initial overview of it- and much more - is to be had from the vertigo-inducing glass paneled elevators in the ICEA building at the corner of Wabera Street on the north side. If an excuse for entrance is needed by the guards at the bottom, tell them you're visiting the Japanese Embassy on the seventeenth floor; they may even be persuaded to escort you on to the roof. Kenyatta Avenue was originally designed to allow a full turn of a twelve-span of oxen. Broad, multi-laned and planted with flowering trees and shrubs, it remains (along with the Kenyatta Conference Center) the capital's favorite tourist image. The avenue is smartest- and most tourist- on its south side, with would-be moneychangers and itinerant souvenir hawkers assailing you from every direction, and shoe shiners inspecting each passing pair of feet from their stands. The focus of it all is the New Stanley Hotel's Thorn Tree cafe opposite Woolworth's at the avenue's eastern end on the corner of Kimathi Street. The Thorn Tree is Nairobi's one proper pavement cafe and despite irritatingly slow service ('we are stock taking') an enduring meeting place. Around the imposing thorn tree in question is a message board, intended for personal notes but always worth scanning for vehicle-sharing deals, unused air tickets for sale and so on.

Proceeding to the other end of Kenyatta Avenue you come to the GPO and just before it Koinange Street, named after the Kikuyu Senior Chief Koinange of the colonial era. Here too is the peculiar Galton-Fenzi memorial, a monument to the man who founded, of all things, the Nairobi branch of the Automobile Association. Fenzi was also the first motorist to drive from Nairobi to Mombasa - in 1926. Head down Koinange Street and on to Kaunda Street, passing the Intercontinental on your right and, crossing City Hall Way, you enter City Square. This is Nairobi's front room. Jomo Kenyatta's statue sits benevolently, mace in hand, on the far side of the wide, flagstoned court; his mausoleum, with flickering eternal flames, on the right as you approach the Parliament building. When the flags are out for a conference it all looks very bright and confident. Like Westminster, Kenya's Parliament is open to the public. Talk to the guards at the gate who will tell you when the next session is taking place or, alternatively when it's not in session, how to get a tour of the building. To sit in the public gallery you first have to register at the gatehouse on the corner of Parliament Road and Harambee Avenue. You must leave all belongings with the attendant outside, and, once seated, be on your best behavior. The gallery tends to be full- of very well-behaved school children; which of course is more than can be said for the house - or the MP’s. Don't expect any startling revelations - the tone of debate is aptly suggested by the legend over the main doors, 'For a just Society and the Fair Government of Men' - but try to get hold of a copy of the Orders of the Day, there may be a juicy question or two worth anticipating.

From Parliament, walk down Harambee Avenue along the shady sidewalk and you come to Nairobi's pride and joy - the Kenyatta Conference Center and its tall brother, 'KANU tower', the party headquarters. This, as well as being the tallest building in Kenya, is capped by a spacey looking, mile-high revolving restaurant (a mile above sea level that is). Occasional confusions arise on the ground floor about whether you're allowed up to the twenty-eighth; you are. The restaurant is no great shakes and revolves only on special occasions, but the view of Nairobi has no equal and is a firm reminder of the vastness of Africa. Just 4km to the south you see the Mombasa road leave the suburbs behind and take off across the yellow plains; to the north, hills of coffee and, higher up, tea roll into the distance. If you pick a good day' you really can see Mount Kenya in one direction and Kilimanjaro in the other. The Conference Center restaurant is worth visiting after dark as well - though perhaps only for a drink. There are usually discos at weekends. The American Cultural Center, further along Harambee and right down Aga Khan Walk, on the ground floor of the National Bank building, is worth to look for an idea of the kind of image the USA would like to project to Kenyans. On Thursday and Friday at 1 lam you can see select footage of the previous week's ABC news. A well-stocked library and periodicals room are available for the purpose of letting 'ideas contest in an open marketplace' as the handout prosaically puts it. More palatable are the two or three feature films shown every month (details in monthly programs From this American corner (the Embassy is down here too), cut across to Moi Avenue and up to the National Archives. Housed in the striking old Bank of India building on the bend of Moi Avenue across from the Hilton, they amount to a museum/art gallery which few visitors to Nairobi seem to know about: entry is free and certainly worth an hour or so . The collection, sold to the government in 1966, ranges from uninteresting dabbles to some beautiful drawings and striking collages, but in a city that is not exactly cluttered with art collections it does deserve a look. With a few exceptions, things to do north of Kenyatta Avenue have a commercial bent.

Kenya's second city is the slightly indolent hub of the coast, a faded, flaking, charming city that still despite its gentle sprawl - feels like a small town that was once great. Actually an island - now connected to the mainland west by causeways, north by bridges but south, still, by a ferry - Mombasa is intricate and its streets wriggle deceptively. At its most appealing heart is the Old Town, a lattice of lanes, mosques and cramped, elderly houses sloping gently down to the once-busy chow harbor. Fort Jesus is an impressive reminder of Mombasa's complicated, bloody past, still overlooking the Old Town from where it once guarded the harbor entrance. It's now a national monument and museum.

Within easy walking distance and clustered all around is the whole of down-town, 20C Mombasa - wide streets, a refreshing lack of high-rise and a surprising number of open spaces. Even here, in the commercial center of one of Africa's busiest ports, the atmosphere is relaxed and congenial. Rush hours, urgency, paranoia seem to be Nairobi's problems (as everyone will tell you) not Mombasa's. And the gaping, marginal slums that one expects to find outside African cities are hardly here either. Despite the palms, the sunshine and the happy languor, it's not all bliss and perfection: street crime, though it hardly approaches Nairobi's level, is a serious problem and you should be wary of displaying your valuables or accepting invitations to walk down dark alleys. But as a general rule, Mombasa is a far less neurotic city than Nairobi. There's nowhere in the center that could be considered a no-go area. Indicative of this, the city stays awake much later. Climatic encouragement may be part of it, but at an hour when down-town Nairobi is empty but for taxis and askaris, Mombasans are strolling in the warm night, old men are conversing on the benches in Oigo Road and many shops remain open: the small-town freedoms are still healthy here. All this adds up to a city which is richly satisfying and rewarding to stay in.

Ethnically, Mombasa is perhaps even more diverse than Nairobi. Asian and Arab influence is particularly pervasive with fifty mosques and dozens of Hindu and Sikh temples lending a strongly oriental flavor. Still, the largest contingent speak Swahili as a first language and its the Swahili civilization which, more than any other, accounts for Mombasa's distinctive character As a tourist town Mombasa doesn't go out of its way and indeed its best quality is its lack of pretension.

From Fort Jesus, the OLD TOWN is an easy objective. The first impression - of a quarter that seems entirely devoted to gift and curio shops - is none too encouraging. But this turns out to be purely the result of Fort Jesus' adjacent car park and tourist appeal, and the shops don't extend far into the Old Town. They are especially ostentatious down at the end of Ndia Kuu Rd where several emporia are overwhelmingly luxuriant in their displays and multilingual enticements. One or two provide free coffee - which alone is nice. Many of them, it has to be said, are selling a great deal of worthless junk: some deal in shells too and shell lamp-stands, ornaments, etc. - a trade which operates on the fringes of the law in Kenya. Further west, away from the Fort, they're smaller and correspondingly cheaper and less pretentious. Utamaduni, just down Ndia Kuu from the crafts corner, has some interesting bits and pieces worth looking over. The Old Town is not in fact that Old. Most buildings date from the 19C and though there may be foundations and even walls which go back many centuries, you’ ll get a clearer guide to the age of the town from its 20-odd mosques. Officially the oldest (founded in 1570) is the Mandhry mosque on Bachawy Road - rarely open to visitors, it has a striking minaret. The Basheith mosque in Old Kilindini Road, recently repainted in fresh cream and white, is acknowledged also to be very old. Entering the mosques - as long as they're not locked - is usually all right for men who arrive properly covered and bare-footed. Sometimes you may be expected to wash hands and feet as well. Women, however modest, will as often as not be politely refused.

Much of the other architecture in the Old Town is profoundly influenced by the Indian-style as Zanzibar tastes of Busaidi occupation during the l9C. This is noticeable particularly in the elegant fretwork balconies and shutters which are still maintained on a few houses, notably on Ndia Kuu For older relics you'll have to poke around more conscientiously. There are a number of quite ancient tombs along the seafront, especially towards the northern end of the Old Town' some of which have pillars: this is the part of Mombasa considered to be 'medieval' - or in other words pre-Portuguese. Returning south along the twisting seafront road (`seafront' although the harbor’s only glimpsed) you come to a gigantic new mosque of the Bohra Muslims. 'Burhani Masjid for Dawood' Bohra Community' says the sign. In the unassuming setting of the Old Town it's an imposingly massive edifice. The chow harbor is wildly overrated. There are usually a few boats in port but no longer can you guarantee seeing dozens - let alone hundreds - even at the end of the north-east monsoon in April, traditionally the peak time for arrivals. Seasonal variations are less important now the big jahazis have engines. Nor are you likely to have the opportunity of going aboard one of these exotic vessels - a tourist tradition with coffee and souvenirs that's died a death as port officials have become more officious. Instead, try to imagine how it must once have looked, chat to the many policemen standing around and don't, whatever you do, raise your camera. Attempting to travel by chow from Mombasa is, I'm afraid, an equally discouraging story. Lamu holds more promise

Heading up towards Digo Road, you might enjoy calling in at the Jain Temple, whose entry is in Langoni Road, This sublime creation - intricate icing sugar exterior, scrupulously clean and scented inside, decorated in dozens of pastel shades - was built only in 1963. Jainism is a Hindu religion closely related to Buddhism, which prohibits the eating of any kind of animal food: in its extreme form even subterranean vegetables are taboo. The temple interior is ornamentally and substantially magnificent: painted figurines of deities in their niches are each provided with a drain so they can be easily showered down; around the ceiling exquisitely stylized pictures portray scenes from a life, including a familiar snake temptation in a garden.

For a return to earth, visit Mackinnon market- Mombasa's municipal - which has a splendid abundance of tropical fruit including such exotics as jak fruit and soursops. Check out the latest kanga designs in Biashara Street- probably the most clued-up fashion center in Kenya. Some of the home-product patterns are so good they' re beginning to make an impact abroad as well - unusual combinations of brilliant fast colors used to startling effect. It's worth pricing several shops before buying and perhaps bargaining for several lots at once: For the most part, the rest of Mombasa's pleasures derive just from being here.'- Strolling, with plenty of cold drink stops, is a time-honored Mombasan diversion. You'll probably want to see that immortal double pair of elephant tusks on Moi Avenue, To get to them you have to run the gauntlet of curio kiosks which have almost hidden the cool hideaway of Uhuru gardens. And when you get there, you may regret your determination to view the tusks close up - they're revealed as grubby aluminum. More rewarding, if you have time and an inclination for a long walk, is the circuit which takes off around the breezy, seaward side of the island down Mama Ngina drive - Come down here in the early evening and you'll find half of Mombasa doing the same. At the end of Mama Ngina is an extensive and surprising forest of enormous baobab trees, frequently associated with ancient settlements on the coast: and just across the Likoni ferry roundabout is a hut pillar tomb - the Mbaraki pillar. Supposedly the burial place of a 174 mainland sheik, chief of one of the 'twelve tribes', it's some 8 Mts. high but even so is dwarfed by the nearby towers of a molasses refinery.