Dr Wangui Kimari

Caitlin Morrissey

So, we wanted to ask you what the DNA of Cities means to you. And just as a bit of context to set that up, when Greg and I use the DNA of Cities we use it as a metaphor and a starting point for exploring what it is that makes every city unique and as a sort of entry point to understanding how cities accumulate their difference and how that is expressed and how we experience that. What does the DNA of Cities mean to you?

Wangui Kimari

Thanks for that question. I need to say that I actually have rarely thought about that question. I mean Nairobi for me the city where I was born, the city where I do research, is often-- I just always capture it as all my dreams and all my nightmares. But I’ve never really tried to think through what the strata of those nightmares are or what the strata of those dreams are. And thinking about DNA makes me then want to look at, what are the foundational elements of this city? And certainly, there very many histories and peoples and ecologies that shape Nairobi, but I would say that the DNA broadly is what propels a city, the strata. But this is certainly histories, this is certainly ecology.

To try and relate this back to my city, Nairobi, I would say that the DNA of Nairobi is three things. First, water. Because, really, if it wasn’t for water that was necessary for this Lunatic Express, this locomotive that was trying to connect Uganda and Kenya. Nairobi was chosen as one of the key train stops because it had a good constant supply of water not only for the locomotive but for the workers. And so if it wasn’t for water, we would not have Nairobi. And in fact—Nairobi, the colonial iteration of Nairobi, I should say that. And Nairobi, in fact the name derives from a Maasai expression which is ‘Enkare Nairobi’ or ‘place of cool water.’ So I would say one critical element of the DNA of Nairobi is water.

In thinking about the histories of the city, especially this iteration because obviously the term city also has its own baggage and its own histories. But if we think about what we call Nairobi, this city I would say key expressions of life are shaped by two other things that I think are critical to its DNA or when I think about its DNA. So we have water, which is part of ecology and the morphology. But if we think about the economics and politics and sociocultural movements, then I would say the other two components of the DNA of Nairobi are both coloniality but also disobedience. Because the city of Nairobi I think-- and in my own research I talk about how it’s shaped by outlaw expressions and outlaw communities. These are for me, people who are certainly criminalised on the margins: Africans who are not meant to be in the city, the descendants who live in these places that we call slums, four generations of people dwelling in the same place. So I would say coloniality is a key component of its DNA and it’s certainly many-- it’s entangled in many articulations.

But I would also say disobedience because Nairobi, partially why I like it is because it’s disobedient and the people are disobedient. And certainly, it’s important to say that it’s how the people who live in the city interact with water and coloniality and disobedience that shape it. So certainly, the DNA is for me, it’s these three things water, coloniality and disobedience. But it’s certainly animated by how the people, and I would say that those who are outlawed or the outlaws of this city, interact with those elements of the DNA.

Caitlin Morrissey

What a fantastic starting point, Wangui. Thank you so much. It’s been incredible to hear your perspectives on the DNA of Nairobi and to your articulation about the DNA of Cities through that. I wanted to ask more broadly what an urban anthropological perspective reveals to us about the way that cities evolve and also the relationship between cities human evolution and also human experience both as an individual, so our individual experiences of cities and then at the group level so that can be the city or humankind. As far as you’d like to go in terms of the scale of that question.

Wangui Kimari

Thank you, Caitlin. I need to say that I mostly use the term urban anthropologist when I want to be fancy and I want people to take me seriously as a kind of reluctant academic. But I do find utility in the toolbox that anthropology has given me and so I use anthropologist also to signal this toolbox. It’s a toolbox that builds on ethnography. It builds on long stays in community. It builds on participant observation. So I draw heavily from that toolbox because I would really like to get an emic perspective, what we call in anthropology, an intimate perspective of the city.

I’m really tired also of very abstract and removed descriptions of Nairobi whether it’s-- if you look at our government PR, they’ll sell Nairobi as the Silicon Savannah. So at once we are happy to be this terra nullius of where zebras and giraffes will have a cappuccino with you. That’s really what the government wants. But then we also want to be this techno city with all of these innovations which, to be honest, are good, although they have sometimes contentious articulations. So I would like to go beyond that not only because I draw from this anthropologist toolbox but primarily because I’m a resident of this city and I would love it to be more just. And so I try and couple this toolbox, the learnings that I get from the discipline of anthropology, with my ambitions for this city. A city that is really, and I should have checked the Gini coefficient of Kenya before I came here, but it’s really one of the most unequal cities in the world. But also one that I’m so inspired by all the time of people making – despite the very asymmetric power relations in the city – people trying to claim a space and belongings in it in very novel ways.

For my PhD research, I was interested in looking at how oral histories or social histories of very marginalised spaces were in tension with formal planning documents. Whether it was planning documents from 1899 or 1948 or 2017 or ’16, actually ‘14 that was the last master plan. Just thinking about how actual lived experiences of people were very different from what was pronounced in these documents. So as an urban anthropologist –which I’m happy you’re introducing me as because it makes me seem a bit more professional than I am usually in my daily life – I’m very grateful for that toolbox. But also for the time it’s given me to really dwell in questions that I have about my own city.

Caitlin Morrissey

Thank you so much, Wangui. And so from that toolbox and also the combination that you said of your ambitions for Nairobi to be a more just city and then using the toolbox of methodology theory from anthropology what would be your starting points for thinking through the individualities or cities or places beyond what you’ve already told us about how you identify with the DNA of Nairobi itself?

Wangui Kimari

You know, I actually, I was trying to think about the specificities of Nairobi. Certainly, if you compare it with its neighbours whether it’s Dar es Salaam or Kampala, we’re probably more brash and I would say unruly, but this is also my perspective. But unruly in many senses. Unruly in ways that allow us to have all of these different cultural expressions. But unruly also because we have building code that’s not followed and this allows perhaps for more urban dysfunction or urban disservice. I should say disservice to the majority of the population. For example, I went to Kampala recently and I heard that citizens don’t have issues with water provision. And I was stunned because in my mind, I just assumed that most African cities were struggling with water. And so this is in some ways how we’re different. I mean, certainly they have the lake close by, but there’s also perhaps more intention to provide this service there than in Nairobi. And so I would say in some ways you can distinguish Nairobi from these other cities, but also in its very hypermodern aspirations. We just want to be a mini Dubai, rather the county just wants to have big expressways and large roads.

But at the same time, I actually don’t know if we can think of cities without other cities. For example, there would be no Nairobi without cities in India where lots of indentured South Asian labourers were brought to build the railway. And it’s them who are working on this railway and who have shaped the city in so many ways, whether it’s in the landscape, whether it’s immaterially from religious practices. There’s lots of South Asian descendants here. There’d been no Nairobi without decisions from London.There’d be no Nairobi in this iteration without Whitehall, without labourers, Italian prisoners of war who were brought here during periods of the war, without Jewish refugees in the Second World War. So Nairobi has been shaped by the labours and the bodies from many cities. And so sometimes I find it hard to highlight the specificities of it, not only because of these different migration histories but also because of policy mobilities. Everyone wants to become a world-class city. And so we now adopt these vernaculars in big planning documents. So everyone wants to become a 15-minute city or a sustainable city. So it’s hard to think about Nairobi outside of these other global dynamics, even when certainly it has its specific history of becoming an urban centre because of a colonial railway.

Greg Clark

Wangui, I’m really looking forward to having a very long lunch with you if you have time one day because there’s so much here to discuss. But I suppose what I wanted to do was to start by just inviting you to take a little bit more time if you don’t mind to talk about the urban anthropology toolbox because you started to talk about oral and social histories and you started to talk about, you know, investigating inequality in a very particular way. And you started to talk a little bit about contrast and how that becomes fascinating. But why don’t you say a little bit more? Because not many people get a chance to listen to an urban anthropologist very often. So what are the key tools? And what are you trying to discover or to reveal or to learn when you’re an urban anthropologist?

Wangui Kimari

Thank you, Greg. You know, I think I’m still learning what I am trying to learn. But I’m very grateful to people who have given me the grace to keep learning. And often it’s people who don’t have the time who are trying to sell a loaf of bread for 20p or are-- so I’m very grateful to the time that people have given me because I think I’m still learning about the city.

How I will elaborate on what I think an urban anthropologist does or can do is perhaps through my own experience. And I don’t want to make it the Wangui show because it’s called The DNA of Cities and not the Wangui Kimari talk show. But I will try and say maybe in my life how it’s been instructive this role as an urban anthropologist and differs perhaps from other approaches. To do this, I will talk about the entry points I’m able to begin with, the themes I’m able to engage with and also the connections I think I’m able to make as opposed to perhaps the connections that urban planners make.

So, for me, it’s very interesting how I ended up, for example, writing alternative histories about Nairobi because what I was really interested in when I embarked on a PhD-- I won’t tell you how long ago because then you’ll know why I have so much grey hair. But my entry point actually was why are there so many police killings in certain settlements? And I was not satisfied by answers that, ‘Oh, here’s where all the criminals live.’ For me, there was something particular about that space that congregated so much inequality. So really, it’s my interest in police killings that made me start researching particular spaces. And so I was lucky in terms of being an anthropologist to have these varied entry points. I was not looking at-- I think urban planners maybe will, and I don’t mean to generalise them, but maybe will look at zoning issues, maybe will look at density issues. But I was interested in the question of violence. And I was lucky to have that entry point as an urban anthropologist. And so in terms of entry points, I’m grateful that that entry point allowed me to start thinking about spatial qualities and how spatial qualities are infused with power that stems from long entangled histories. And then I think with that entry point I was then able to make diverse connections.

So in my work, I make three broad arguments. So I say Nairobi is still a colonial city because it’s invested with these, not only in the layout of the land but even in how we govern it, is shaped still by a colonial urban planning. The second thing I argue is that this form of exclusionary urban planning is held up by increased policing, so an increased militarisation of the city. And you can see-- and I say this militarisation of the city because it’s the same police who they act as de facto urban managers because if you’re disconnecting people’s services whether it’s water or electricity, whether you’re evicting people, whether you’re governing who can and cannot get on the expressway, it’s the police. So this entry point in thinking about violence also allowed me to make these connections that the police are actually really critical urban actors and have powers that is not recognised in regular urban planning scholarship.

And so I would say being an urban anthropologist has allowed me these varied entry points, has given me the privilege to think about different topics. But above all, and I think this is very critical, especially when you want to convey the intimacies of people’s lives and lives that you don’t experience, so experiences that you don’t have, I think it’s important to make these connections whether it’s connections between the lack of water, the incidence of the lack of water and high incidence of cholera and police violence in one space, but also these scalar connections. Why is it that we can-- where did this world-class city discourse emerge that now has bearing on evictions in this particular space?

So that’s a very, very long-winded way to say that I am grateful to-- being an urban anthropologist really is due to the people who’ve given me time, and it’s usually people who don’t have time. But I’m grateful that it-- besides the tools, besides being able to dwell in questions for a long time, having long periods of field work. I did field work for about two years. I was also running away from Canadian cold but don’t tell my supervisor because I was doing my PhD in Canada. But it really allowed me to dwell in questions through varied entry points that are not I think often available to planners, but also to make connections. To make connections and to valorise for example, expressions like oral histories, songs, walks with people that are not a habitual method of the planner.

Greg Clark

Wangui, thank you so much. I’m really glad you took a little bit more time to tell us all of that because I feel really enriched by what you’ve explained. And I want to ask you another question and I realise it might be a silly question so please tell me if it is, okay? That I’m wondering if this approach to urban anthropology has allowed you to generate some insights or some observations about pre-colonial Nairobi, colonial Nairobi and post-colonial Nairobi? Does that way of looking at time make any sense to you? You’ve already told us that post-colonial Nairobi is still colonial, right? And I’ve got that. But you’ve told us that in a sense the nature of the colonisation is changing, I think. But I wonder do you have insights about pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial? Or is it a silly question?

Wangui Kimari

Thank you, Greg. I think I shared my first two arguments in my PhD which was that Nairobi is still a colonial city, but it’s also-- de facto police are urban managers and infrastructure. But the third argument that I had that I don’t think I shared and which I see perhaps across these times, even if these times are very fluid is that it’s the people who are on the margins who will always shape the progression of this city. And I see that more-- you can see how if you look at colonial records and the colonial office kept great records, although it burnt quite a few. But you’ll see in the reports of the council about being annoyed at all the natives who are driving handcarts down the road the wrong way selling milk without a license, having parties when they are not supposed to, brewing beer on the road. These contentions come alive as well. And you can see them in various forms. They’re echoed in the complaints of our current post-colonial council, who are always displacing hawkers who are told ‘don’t be in the road selling your bananas’ and all of these things.

So you can see that not only are the laments the same and show who the city is meant for in terms of class and previously in terms of race, but also that it’s these people who are disobedient who are really shaping the city. Despite all of these regulations to kick them out, they’re still here driving handcarts down the road a hundred years later. They’re still tapping water. They’re still tapping electricity. And so beyond showcasing the heavy-handedness of the state in trying to control who lives and who doesn’t belong in the city, above all for me, and this was my third argument, is that those who are on the margins despite all of our pretences to being Silicon Savannah, it’s those who keep on the margins. 60% of the city who live on only 6% of the city surface area who shape this city both now and in the future.

I can see that across these times, although I can’t-- if I was to try and connect the Nairobi of pre-1898 before the first town plan and now, I would say what’s evident for me is how water is a very big issue. Because water, I mean not only an issue, but it really shapes the city in many ways. Because initially pre-colonial Nairobi was a trading point. It was where communities met to trade goods, to trade food, to trade animals, to trade practices. And so it was still a trading point because it was this meeting point.

There’s a book I really like, and it was written kind of by an unlikely hero. And I actually really like him, but he was an Anglican social worker from the UK who worked for the Christian Missionary Society. I think his name is Andrew Hake. And he wrote a book about Nairobi but precisely actually mostly about the community where I’ve been working. It’s called African Metropolis, and it’s about this self-help city. He identifies it as a ‘self-help city.’ But why I bring up Hake’s book, not only is it a really great book that has inspired me because he didn’t come from within any disciplinary borders. For him, his writing of this book came from engagements with these same communities on the margins. And I actually think he came to the same conclusion that it’s them who shaped this metropolis because it’s a self-help city. But why I bring it up is because I think if not the first line, on the first page of his book African Metropolis, he talks about how people went across stepping stones in the water. And it’s these sojourns across these stepping stones to meet each other that shaped this space. And so I would say water is critical. Certainly, Nairobi was also a meeting point, but we can see how the different expressions of water, whether it’s in flooding, whether it’s in rivers, whether it’s in rain, whether it’s in name because the name Nairobi comes from the place of cold waters. It really shapes this city in all of these different time periods.

Greg Clark

Wangui, thank you so much. And what you’ve just said I find really enlightening. And if I may say it’s very helpful for Caitlin and I because it confirms some instincts that we have. So we have these three ideas that the DNA of a city is these kind of unique essential ingredients. You’ve talked about Nairobi as a place of good waters, a meeting place, a place of connection. You’ve talked a lot about the social capital of the people. Then we have this second idea of the epigenetics of the city. The things that happen within the population, the disobedience, the self-help, the ways of behaving, the inequality that we think leaves certain kinds of triggers for behaviours that are often not very well understood or recognised. And then thirdly, we have this idea that the city can become more conscious of both the DNA and the epigenetics in order to see what’s really shaping the way the city evolves. Not what we pretend is the way the city is evolving. So it’s more about the epigenetics than the planning or the policy. And in a way, what you’ve described is a perfect example I think of this model. Does that make sense to you?

Wangui Kimari

Completely. And when you was talking, I remember today I called my friend who lives really in probably an area with the highest population density or one of the highest. I don’t know if you use acre or hectare, but she lives in an area where there’s maybe 400 people per acre. One acre. Whereas where I live, there is maybe maximum five or six. So why I’m saying this is when I called her in the background despite this density I was hearing a cow mooing. I was thinking… is she… I know where she lives… I said ‘Is that a cow mooing?’ She says ‘yes, there are so many!’ And ‘why?’ I say. This is because there’s so many by-laws even from the colonial period that talk about how you shouldn’t keep chickens or cows or goats within the city. And no one pays them any mind because they need to figure out their place in the city and conduct industries for community and self without reference to this. And so I’m agreeing with you, really, when you are talking about how it’s the epigenetics that shapes the city and people’s disobedience this is what came to mind because if you look at the by-laws of Nairobi, they’re very explicit about domesticating animals and what animals should be in the city. But in this area of 400 people per acre, there’s also cows. And so it’s those cows and people’s engagement with those cows and the different metabolic movements that keep shaping the city.

Greg Clark

And Caitlin and I are big fans of the idea that nature is re-invading the city as well, which is what you’ve just been talking about. I’ve got one more question I may, Wangui and then Caitlin’s got a very big question for you. And again, please tell me if you think the question is silly. So the thing I wanted to observe is that Nairobi is the headquarters city for the only institution of the United Nations that is based in the global south. UN Habitat is headquartered in Nairobi. And I suppose this could have a meaning on a symbolic level, on a practical level, on a political level, on an anthropological level. And I wonder what meanings you make of that. Why is the UN organisation that’s in charge of cities and housing headquartered in Nairobi?

Wangui Kimari

First I need to say before I offend a lot of them, I need to say hi to all my friends who work at UN Habitat. I hope we’ll still be friends. But we’ve had these discussions before. I need to say that from my understanding and forgive me that I don’t know the exact time period, but UN Habitat has been here for about 40 years. So in the late ‘70s, I don’t know if it was 1977, but it came to Nairobi. And I think that we cannot diminish that gesture. There was recognition perhaps and perhaps there’s always the challenge of reading history in the present, which doesn’t always allow for correct interpretations. But we can’t diminish the importance of that gesture, the recognition that the rates of urbanisation were higher perhaps in the global south. Whether it was a gesture that we needed to look at to remedy some of these injustices in other cities and thus having this UN headquarters in a city that was emerging and was confronting different dynamics. I think it’s also in that period that, it may have been earlier, that informality became really quite popular as a language to capture not only labour dynamics but also housing dynamics. So maybe those kinds of moments and understandings allowed for UN Habitat to be here.

I also understand that UN Habitat works on a global scale so we can’t imagine that it needs to have bearings solely for Nairobi. But I sometimes take issue with the fact that it’s here and this is a city where there’s really great inequality. And also organisations like the UN are partially responsible for depoliticising slums. So they will-- we will talk about, and I use slum only now so that I can convey my meaning. These slums or informal settlements are political and they come from long histories. But I feel that UN institutions depoliticise them and allow them-- reference them, certainly as articulations of inequality. But in perpetuating certain narratives about these communities, and maybe it’s rural urban migration, I think this was quite popular for a long time. Even if, for example, in the community that I work in or where Hake was working, it’s four generations of people. So depoliticising informal settlements but also negating these histories and offering very simplistic narratives about why they emerge. And so that’s why I take issue with it. But also because I really need to be disproven. I’m not sure of the work it has done in the city. Certainly, it’s been around longer than I’ve been alive, but the work that it does is not clear. So I say this not to diminish the kind of-- the circumstances that brought it here, the gesture that that was for a city then of less than a million people, I’m not diminishing that and perhaps the understanding about the rates of urbanisation and the traction that terms like informality had then. But I really need to take issue with how it depoliticises space, how it also offers simplistic narratives. But also, I can’t see the work in Nairobi. But maybe now I think I have to buy my friends in UN Habitat beer to maybe soothe their small wounds. But I really would like to see that.

But ultimately, you know, as much as I say this, I actually don’t think it’s for them to act on this city. And I don’t think they can shape it as much as the people who live in this city. So as much as I say that, I really think that this city proceeds through the engagements and the self-help and the disobedience and the visions and the imaginations of the people it mostly excludes. And that’s not really the work of UN Habitat.

Caitlin Morrissey

Wangui, this has been absolutely fascinating and I’m really pleased that we got the chance to speak with you. My final question was to ask you about a city or cities that have been meaningful to you in your work. And if you want I would love to hear more about some of the places or communities in Nairobi that have been really meaningful to you in the work that you’ve done and invite you to say anything about any other cities if you would like to.

Wangui Kimari

Thank you. I really, I think there are a diversity of cities that have shaped me in many ways. Certainly, I have to start with Nairobi. It’s a city that where I was born, and it shaped me in many ways, I think. And I’m grateful that there were events that made me have more curiosity about it. It’s a city that I only want to live in. But it’s also the city that I’m always so saddened by because it really-- people demand their inclusion but they shouldn’t have to demand the inclusion because this city should be for all.

I also am very grateful to Luanda in Angola. I was a postdoc for a project in the African Centre for Cities for a project that focused on infrastructure in Luanda. And it was-- for me, it was very different because it was a post-war city. Certainly, I was not there during the war, but it made me grapple with additional questions about what does for example the afterlives of war do not only on materiality of the city but also in the immateriality in terms of how people feel they belong in the city, what they contribute to the city. It also has great music and great food. So I shouldn’t just pretend I’m intellectualising cities. I really like the music and the food.

And Dar es Salaam. I lived in Dar as an undergrad. And it’s also interesting for me what being a coastal city then how that shapes cities different from Nairobi, which is inland. But one other city that I need to flag, and I haven’t really lived in European cities. I lived in Toronto. I lived in Ottawa when I was doing my schooling. I like them too. And I need to say they also gave me the space to think about cities. So I’m grateful to them. But the city I also want to flag is Salvador de Bahia in Brazil. Which people will never believe it, but Salvador reminds me so much of Nairobi in many ways. But I’m very grateful to that city because for me, like I was saying, it’s hard for me now to think of cities as distinct when the power relations that shape cities are territorialised almost in the same way in terms of exclusion, in terms of who has services and who doesn’t have services. But that city made me think also not in comparisons. I actually don’t like to think in comparisons these days but in terms of relations. How can we relate these cities together and what can we learn from all of them? Yeah. So thank you to not just those cities but the people who animate those cities and who welcomed me and my curiosity and gave me way more time than I don’t know if I would have given myself. So I’m very grateful to the people who animate these cities and those cities for teaching me a lot.

Caitlin Morrissey

So the final thing we’ll ask Wangui is if you have said everything that you wanted to say or if there was anything else we could have elicited from you with a different question?

Wangui Kimari

Now you’ve ambushed me because I really, I should try and conclude with a very like mic-dropping statement. But I really don’t have one. Just thank you. I’m grateful for the prompt because I’ve not been thinking of Nairobi in terms of its DNA. But this prompt to make me think about it has made me want to explore further how water shaped Nairobi, how coloniality broadly has shaped Nairobi and how disobedience has shaped Nairobi. So I’m very grateful for that.