Losing the anti-pollution battle in Nairobi

Posted: Tuesday, October 02, 2007 11:24 AM
Filed Under: On Assignment

Here’s what travel books don’t tell you: If you come to Nairobi, bring a surgical mask. It stinks.

Driving bumper to bumper, with your car enveloped by black smoke pouring out of the exhausts of other vehicles, a blue-gray, throat–scratching pall hanging over the traffic, you can almost see your lungs turning black. It feels like smoking four packs of Russian cigarettes a day.

Between the dust and the pollution, I have never coughed, sneezed, cleared my throat and blown my nose so much. My companions quite lost their patience with me. The soundtrack of much of Jeff Riggins’s video sounds as if it was recorded in an infectious diseases ward.

The pollution, which I don’t remember existing at all when I visited Nairobi regularly until about 10 years ago, is in complete contrast with the signs sprinkled through town: "Tree-planting campaign, make your city beautiful."

It must be so frustrating for conservationists and environmentalists, who are doing genuinely great work in reforesting Kenya, to see such a noxious advertisement for their work in the capital.

Trying to recreate a forest with a few trees
About three percent of Kenya is forested, while it is recommended that 10 percent of a country be covered by trees to sustain the land and the air. Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan professor, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for "her contribution to sustainable development, democracy, and peace."  Her organization, the Green Belt Movement, has planted more than 30 million trees in Kenya. They have an ambitious international goal, too: To plant a billion trees worldwide to protect the planet.

But to a casual motorist in Nairobi, it’s clear who’s winning, and it isn’t the good guys.

Infant trees line the middle of the main road into town from the north. The little saplings stand proudly the whole length of the drive. But pollution-belching trucks, matatu taxis and private cars overwhelm their promise.

And now, because there are so many cars and so many traffic jams, the municipality is planning to turn the four lanes into six lanes. And of course, to make room for the cars, the baby forest in the grass median down the middle will have to go, even though the trees have only just been planted.

The police say they’re cracking down on the worst offenders, the matatu taxi drivers, who charge around the city in their ancient cars causing more pollution than everyone else put together.

But in one police report announcing a crackdown, fines were levied on the drivers for driving vehicles "in poor mechanical condition, overloading, not wearing uniform, tampering with speed governors, lacking licenses, missing seat belts and failing to display drivers photographs and fare." Not a word on smoke-belching exhausts.

But, book soon!
On a separate note:  if you do want to go on a safari, hurry.

It’s already expensive enough to visit a game park: $40 per person per day. But the Kenyan Wildlife Service is planning to increase that to $100 a day.  So that would be about $500 a day for a family of five to look at animals. Admittedly it’s a fabulous adventure, but is it really necessary to charge so much?

Nearby Rwanda certainly thinks so. The little central African country must be home to the world’s most expensive tourist spectacle. Looking at the gorillas in the forest costs $500 an hour. Yes, per hour.

Now Kenya is jealous. "Rwanda charges $500 per hour to see its 13 families of gorillas," the wildlife director thundered in Kenya’s "Daily Nation" newspaper, "while we charge only $40 for a visit to Nakuru National Park, which has many more animals." He attempted to temper any sticker shock by saying that the increase from $40 would be implemented incrementally, reaching $100 a day in 2010. So book your flights soon.

Kenyan citizens, incidentally, pay either $3 a day, or $1.50 a day, depending on which park it is.

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