Of Potemkin villages.

Nairobi, formerly the Green City in the Sun, is green in some parts, concrete in others and muddy elsewhere. It is an eyesore for the vast majority of its residents: filthy, smelly, crowded, noisy, and, of late, flooded. At the heart of its problems lies civic lethargy the likes of which have never been seen before. Municipal facilities have been degraded by decades of neglect, mismanagement, graft and self-conscious and defensive selfishness. Nairobi, more often than not known as Nairobbery, is a pretend city. It is a Potemkin village. It is a true reflection of the Kenyan, his leader and their politics.

If you are an expatriate, especially a mzungu expatriate, ensconced in Gigiri, Kileleshwa, Lavington or Karen, you are unlikely to experience the true horror of being a commuting resident of this city. The flooding over the last two nights does not count. You may be victims of crime, but only when the criminal elements are truly ambitious. Your water runs just fine. There are green spaces available to you. Few of you seem to walk so you don't seem to mind that there aren't pavements but that's OK because your choice of transport is frequently a three-pointed star, a four-ringed Panzerwagen or the newest ad shiniest SUV out of Yokohama. I am yet to hear horror stories of three-day blackouts in your neighbourhoods. 

Yours are the Potemkin villages, the veil we have pulled over your eyes so that Mukuru, Korogocho, Githurai Kimbo, Kayole, Sinai do not become part of your slum tourism circuit that only has Kibera and, for the truly determined, Mathare Valley. Between your mad dash from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and Urban Eatery, you get the five-cent tour that reveals nothing of this city except what the City Fathers and their sugar daddies want you to see.

You would think that with the proliferation of acronymic institutions we would have handle on things. You would be wrong. There is the National Environment Management Authority. Since it began seriously enforcing the Environmental Management and Co-ordination Act in 2003, the total acreage of wetlands and riparian reserves in this city has reduced by ninety per cent and flooding has become a common event every time we have heavy rains. There is the National Construction Authority. It's still finding its feet while dozens continue to be maimed and killed when faux skyscrapers crumble on their clay-like foundations. I can go on and on.

The worst, though, is that we, the ones who live and suffer in this chaos, do not have a smidgen of civic pride. Rich or poor, educated or unlettered, employed or job-hunting, young or old, hoity-toitty or hoi polloi - all of us - we have a tendency to litter with impunity, encouraged by our retailers and vendors to amass a massive mass of plastic with which to do our littering. Whether riding on one of our deathtraps disguised as public transport, a cut-rate grey import, a straight-from-the-showroom limousine or a GK-emblazoned monstrosity, we all have a rabid desire to chew, stuff the litter in a plastic bag and then dump it out of the moving vehicle without a care in the world. Drains and sewers are clogged with this litter. Not even Baba Kidero can get it all if all of us are determined to dispose of it without care.

Those who were wringing their hands about the children trapped for eight hours in their school bus best ask where their parents were and what they were waiting for and what they have done to hold their fellow city residents, their children's school and their city government to account. I fear the answer is nothing. Meanwhile, our appetite for plastic-wrapped fare has not been sated and the mountain of trash on our roads is set to overwhelm even Ann Waiguru's National Youth Service.