But then there was me. I was just another bumbling expat foreigner here.
My father served in the Indian army. Every few years we would get transferred to some different corner of the country. You went where the military sent you. My early memories are all about traveling between places –wind, dust and soot beating against my face, pressed against the dull metal bars that still adorn Indian railway compartment windows.
Friends, relationships and memories in permanent transit, packed into great wooden boxes, painted black and stenciled with destination names.
‘Meet Ashok, (always) the new guy in school.’
I was exasperated, I was restless, and I was never bored.
While most kids had nightmares of ‘the creature under the cot’, mine were inhabited by a particularly vengeful Indian railways long drop W.C.

Meanwhile, Nairobi is a city in flux.
Transition is a leitmotif for life in this young African city.

Not far away in the “bundu” the great animal migration is on -- an annual exodus of wildebeest, over a million head strong that stomp their way into Kenya from the Serengeti plains – providing fodder for gaping tourists and carnivores.

Then there are the Somali and Sudanese refugees who line up in great numbers outside the local UN offices clutching sheaves of loose documents and wailing children. Many will go on to become janitors in some first world country in dire need of blue-collar workers.

To the outside world, the word “Safari” evokes exotic images of expeditions into the bush: lions, dancing tribals, zebras and jaunty Abercrombie & Fitch outfits. But when Kenyans go on safari they simply head upcountry to meet relatives, and to slaughter a goat and make a feast of “mbuzi choma” (roast goat).

Then there are the congested urban villages -- which we all know as slums. These are filled by young and hungry immigrants from the outlying districts -- hoping to tempt fate and strike it rich. A city within a city, built along the old railway line. Where market women sit on the tracks and sell fly-blown vegetables and groceries all day long -- except when the train rumbles through, twice in a day.
Onions for 5 shillings, blowjobs for 50, hair braids for a 100 or a hit-man for 2,000 bob. You name it, we’ve got it.

Expatriates perpetually come and go; for many Kenya is at most a couple of years of hardship and dearness allowances. A hop step and jump to a better place someplace else.
In what can only be called a contradiction of sorts, many young Kenyans do their best to run away from the country – frustrated by its litany of problems and lack of opportunities – and run away to become ex-pats in other countries – ‘Time to shit out and ship out’.
Yet foreign ex-pats are a perpetual growth industry in Kenya - 'My country is your country and your country mine' - that in a country whose leaders have auctioned it off in pieces to the highest bidders.

Finding a house to rent in such a place should have been easy.

An Indian acquaintance tells me, “you must stay in parkland or westland…where else?” By “where else?” he means that these places are full of Indians, Indian mithai shops, unlicensed mujhra dance halls and illegal international call offices. I have a creepy feeling that I am back home.

I am directed towards a vacant house near the Theosophical society. It’s adjacent to a small cubicle shop that sells trinkets and antiques (which are basically obsolete knickknacks manufactured in the 1970s).

The courtyard of the house is encased in a fortified steel grill. Various kinds of underwear have been hung out to dry on the painted lattice, all under the watchful and airbrushed gaze of hanuman the monkey god.

I am buzzed in, and find myself being sized up by Mr.Pundit -- a tall gangling man with a vulpine gaze, and his family – wife, mother, and teenaged kids with wolfish dental braces.
His wife appears to be weeping; she is slicing onions on the sofa. I am interrogated amid frozen smiles and hot chai:
Are you a vegetarian?
Do you smoke?
Do you keep late nights?
And from the wife, waving the knife about like she wants to cut my ears off -- Are you getting married soon?

I leave them with vague promises.
Yes, what a wonderful house. Nice kids. Thanks for the vada pav. I will call you soon.

Then through a friend’s friend – I am given Mrs. Matilda’s telephone number. She is in the real estate business, and will most certainly sort me out in a jiffy.

Problem is I can’t get her on the phone, whenever I call the number:
“Is Mrs.Matilda there?”
A scratchy beleaguered voice:
“Yessss….<long pause>….memsaab yuko….”, and the line goes dead.

It dawns on me that everyone says “yes” in Nairobi. In fact, it’s a euphemism for “no”.

“Do you have the grilled vegetables in garlic sauce?”
“Yes”
After a while….
“We cannot make grilled vegetables in garlic sauce….sorry…”
“But you said yes…”
“Yes, we have garlic sauce but no vegetables…”

“I am looking for rehema towers…”
“Mmm”
“Is it there….?” ask pointing left
“Yes, its ovar there…”
“But someone told me it was over there….” ask pointing right.
“Yes, its ovar there…”
Frustration.
“So where is it?!!???”
“Sijui…(I don’t know)” shrugs.

“Yes…”, “Ndio…”, “Haaiya….” -- a perfect piss-take pastiche.

Finally, I drive to Mrs.Matilda’s place in the suburb of Karen.

Karen is an old white locality now overrun by chic urbanites and greasy plutocrats. Winding lanes lined with eucalyptus and bougainvillea lead to sprawling town houses. The occasional jersey grazes in a fenced meadow. Alarm response security trucks prowl about instead of ice-cream vans.

The house is a sloped roof, mortar and pebbledash affair. Filigree of creepers along the cracks and a loud Jack Russell terrier chained to the gate. The garage doubles up as a Land Rover workshop, run by someone called “Jake”.
I press the impressive looking brass buzzer.
A forlorn looking houseboy answers the door; not really a “houseboy”, but an old man wearing a thread bare uniform of a butler – “yes saa…memsaab ako hapa”– the memsaab is here – I am sent towards the back, into the garden.

Mrs.Matilda is a weathered looking old bag with cloyingly quaint manners.
She is wearing what looks like a tent made of tartan. The garçon is sent dashing away on some mindless errand.

“I know a few houses, but you wouldn’t like them…” she sniffs, as we sip orange pekoe out of giant teacups.
“Why not?”
“They are not …er…suitable for you...”
“Why is that…?”
“How do I say this…they don’t have…er…your kind of…er…bathrooms….” nervously fiddling with the tea-cozy.
“What’s my kind of bathroom?” I say a bit incredulously.
“I mean …the…the…uh…turkish style of toilet….” she says – blushing, irregular nicotine stained teeth, some missing – it looks like a house with yellow walls and square windows.

I know of Turkish toffee and Turkish coffee, but what’s a “Turkish toilet”?
And then it dawns on me, “Aaaah…you mean a squat toilet….the one where you sit down like this…” I say standing up, and miming a quick half squat. Mrs.Matilda looks petrified, for I am standing on her Persian carpet.
And that’s the end of it.

But my search would soon be over.