Nairobi: A Night Guide through the City-in-the-Sun

by Tony Mochama, Tom Odhiambo (Editor)

Nairobi is fascinating. It is a vibrant, eccentric and extreme city made up of different and contradictory worlds. Nairobi is also an elusive city; difficult to comprehend and fully penetrate. What a better guide can there be than Tony Mochama, the notorious and popular chronicler of Nairobi’s urban life? Haunted by his doppelganger the Night Runner—a naked, mad and mythical being who, in popular rural Kenyan imagination, runs from house to house casting spells - Mochama will carry you along on his journeys through Nairobi. His is a declaration of love for the ‘city in the sun’, after the sun has gone down.

"How can I describe how it is to Night Run; to step of the precipice of dusk and into the dark? Or how, in the dim lights of a club, the eyes of strangers always look mysterious, giving people a depth, a danger even, of which they are devoid of by day?"

156 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 10, 2014

About the author

Tony Mochama is a senior writer and popular columnist at The Standard Group, a leading media house in Kenya.

Reviews

[D · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a collection of newspaper columns about nightlife in Nairobi. Some reveal the interesting aspects of the city many do not. The book could have been a lot better if some of the more interesting ones or connected columns had been reworked into longer pieces (every piece is about 2 pages) exploring the topic in greater detail. Nevertheless this is a view of an urban, prosperous, modern Africa we seldom see portrayed in the West. I'm not sure I would recommend these but I am intrigued enough that I'll explore Mochama's other writing

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

So very contextual and specific to Nairobi - I understood some portion of it from my own glimpses of the city, while other bits I just...didn't, really, perhaps because my Nairobi was almost always a daytime one. I couldn't fall in step with the rhythm of the tiny chapters, though there were certainly moments I smiled at.

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has an awesome concept: Tony Mochama adopts the guise of the Night Runner - the naked magic-worker of urban (and village) legend - to take us on a tour of Nairobi's clubs, pubs, dives, raves, and wedding evening parties. The book is full of stories about the places and the drunkards and desperadoes he encounters, but...

But Tony's erratic writing is way too loose and unstructured to convincingly execute the book's premise. At one point there's a completely night-life-free guest chapter about a girl cooking a meal for her in-laws, at which point the random vibe of the book hits free-jazz levels, and I was so confused that I think I was won over (in a kind of perverse way)... This one's for the hardcore Mochama fans.

[Wade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Presumably from (or styled like) a serial newspaper column, these short entries don't seem to have a core or center beyond the writer himself and his exploits and thoughts. Much of it went over my head, given the highly contextual jokes and wordplay involving Swahili, Sheng, English, and Kenyan politics and popular culture. And yet there is a something like a twinkle in the writer's eye that shines through. He clearly loves and delights in Nairobi, his friends and networks, and the people who populate his ramblings (literal and literary). It's work not meant to be read and understood by everyone, but an entertaining look at a rarely featured part of the city and country in general. Not a single elephant makes an appearance, but Tusker is everywhere.