Eastleigh: dynamic economic hub - not terror epicentre
Feb. 24, 2017, 12:30
am
By JOE ADAMA
Eastleigh./FILE
Neil Carrier of
Oxford University has written a landmark study of Nairobi’s Eastleigh Estate.
Carrier gets
off to a flying start with his Preface, which opens, “This book seeks to
understand Nairobi’s remarkable Eastleigh estate and its transformation into a
Somali-dominated
commercial hub
packed with shopping malls. It tells the story of how Eastleigh became a
‘Little Mogadishu’, offering urban refuge to thousands of refugees, and linking
Kenya to both
the worldwide Somali diaspora and to vast global networks of trade.”
This portrait
of Eastleigh, an important retail and wholesale centre, is a powerful antidote
to the prevailing media myths and Hollywood ballyhoo about the estate being an
epicentre
and safe haven
for the militant alShabaab. Instead, it brings out Eastleigh’s Eastleigh’s
characteristics as a transnational economic hub that has risen from the ashes
of the fall in neighbouring Somalia of the Siad Barre regime of 1969-91, a
quarter century ago.
Carrier is both
an anthropologist and a journalist, and Little Mogadishu, Eastleigh, Nairobi’s
Global Somali Hub is both scholarly and journalistic. Of the five rave review
blurbs on the back cover of the Hurst paperback edition, four are by fellow
anthropologists, the exception being Yusuf Hassan’s, MP for Kamukunji
constituency (of which Eastleigh is part), Nairobi.
Hassan has this
to say, “Carrier’s brilliantly researched and skillfully crafted book
challenges the widespread negative perceptions about Somalis in Kenya. He
unearths the
deep historic
roots of this entrepreneurial community in Nairobi’s Eastleigh neighbourhood
and how, against all odds, they have overcome barriers and transformed this
sleepy
place into a
dynamic global business hub”.
China's sites
of production and Dubai's sites of consumption
Catherine
Besteman, Professor of Anthropology, Colby College, and author of Making
Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine, says, “In this compelling
and breathtakingly thorough account, Carrier documents the vast reach of
Eastleigh’s ‘refugee economy’ throughout Kenya and across the world, from
China’s sites of production and Dubai’s sites of consumption, through Somali
financial diaspora networks in Europe and North America. The superb review of
Eastleigh’s historic dynamism takes the reader
through
colonialism in East Africa, Somalia’s collapse, the intersection of diasporic
networks and global finance, contemporary security worries, and anticipatory
views of the city of the future. A terrific read”.
In his
Introduction, under the crosshead ‘Displaced Development?’ Carrier writes:
“Eastleigh is a place of much ambivalence and ambiguity. It is a place people
want to leave,
yet to which
others want to return; a place where the upheaval of war has brought
opportunity and development, a place where great wealth is made out of low-end
goods; a place
of shiny malls
and hotels sprouting from muddy decayed streets; a place of refuge that can be
a place of danger; a place where the state is both all too absent and all too
present.
This ambiguity
and ambivalenceruns through how the Kenyan state and the wider Kenyan society
have viewed a l l its recent changes; at times praising Eastleigh’s development
and entrepreneurship, at others condemning it as an economy built on dubious
goods and capital”.
Little
Mogadishu, written as part of a project examining the Somali-dominated
Eastleigh estate for the Oxford Diasporas Programme, is divided into seven
chapters followed by
14 pages of
Notes, a 22-page Bibliography and a 10-page Index. Eastleigh estate and its
internal dynamics and international outreach have been the subjects of
scholarly study and keen media interest for decades. Perhaps only the Kibera
slum area, the biggest in Africa and one of the biggest in the world, has
received as much research and media attention in Nairobi as Eastleigh estate.
Eastleigh is
more than 'little Mogadishu'
In a paper
written before the book was published last year, Carrier said, “However, while
nicknamed ‘Little Mogadishu’, Eastleigh is home to a much more varied
population than
this name
suggests, and among the other ethnicities (and nationalities) who live there
are Oromo, a refugee community from Ethiopia. This paper highlights their lives
in the estate, from their journeys to reach it, to their incorporation into
Eastleigh’s economy and the sense of moral community that aids this
incorporation. It also contrasts their relationship to the estate and its
economy with that of Somalis: while Eastleigh is a place in which many Somalis
in the wider diaspora invest and return, for Oromo, Eastleigh is generally a
place they hope to survive before leaving for greener pastures, rarely to
return”.
In Chapter 3,
entitled ‘More Than Little Mogadishu’, Carrier observes, “… different sections
of Eastleigh have different population ratios. … However, within Sections I and
II, something of a third diaspora exists, constituted by another group whose
roots in the estate were laid before the commercial transformation: the Meru
(principally the Tigania and
Igembe
sub-groups from the Nyambene Hills district northeast of Mount Kenya), whose
cash crop miraa (khat) is hugely in demand in the estate, both for consumption
there and
for onward
export to Somalia, Europe and elsewhere. Khat has been consumed there since at
least the 1930s, and the Meru themselves have come to the estate for decades to
establish khat kiosks”. This book is written as a historical and ethnographic
portrait of Eastleigh and it sets out to answer two questions. In the author’s
own words in the Introduction, How has a once modest residential district of
Nairobi transformed into a global commercial hub in the wake of Somali
displacement? And why has this development met with such ambivalence,
suspicion and
even hostility?
Commercial hub
created by global shockwaves
Carrier answers
his own two key questions comprehensively in the course of the book, observing
at one point in his Conclusion, “… in large part, this is a story of a
commercial
hub catalysed
by the global shockwaves of the collapse of the Somali state and its social and
economic repercussions. In this regard, we explored how in the wake of
Somalia’s civil war Somali networks expanded to form a vast, socially tight
diaspora that could mobilise capital and connections to some of the world’s
most significant trade hubs. These networks coalesced in Eastleigh as thousands
of refugees fleeing the war moved to the estate”.
Little
Mogadishu is not just about adding significantly to the literature on refugee
economies and to the theoretical and empirical knowledge of a complex subject;
it is also about
people and
communities. Chapter 4, entitled “Living the Eastleigh Dream” is full of them.
Heading the cast of real-life characters is Mohaa, proprietor- operator of
Nasiib Fashions,
a gentleman’s
outfitters. A photo of Mohaa at Nasiib Fashions in 2011 is the first of 26
images of people and places throughout the book. The images include an
Eastleighwood concert, Meru in Eastleigh, a number 9 route matatu in a muddy
First Avenue and Burhan, Eastleigh entrepreneur and impresario.
There are pen
portraits of such people as Mama Fashion, a Reer Hamar woman, and Abdi Warsame,
as narratives of the trajectory leading from exile to an Eastleigh shop and a
path to relative prosperity.
Media and
hollywood myths of a dangerous place
Carrier
acknowledges rumours persist in Kenya and around the world that Eastleigh is
built on money laundering of ill-gotten gains (including the proceeds of the
spate of piracy on
the Indian
Ocean a decade ago), and that it harbours terrorists and terrorist
sympathisers, including al Qaeda affiliate al Shabaab. “This impression of a
dangerous place apart has
recently been
given the Hollywoodtrea tment in the 2015 film Eye in the Sky, where US drone
operatives target a house in an Eastleigh overrun by armed-to-the-teeth
militia. For
the people who
live and work there, such representations matter: its population, especially
its refugees, have suffered over the years at the hands of Kenya’s security
forces, including during the infamous Operation Usalama Watch.”
Eye in the Sky
was so ridiculous, it portrayed an Eastleigh in which al Shabaab patrolled the
estate in ‘technicals’ 4x4 Toyota Land Cruisers with mounted machineguns. Shot
in South Africa, it portrayed an Eastleigh and rest of Nairobi with such smooth
roads it was unreal, at least in Kenyans’ eyes. It starred Helen Mirren and
Alan Rickman (in his last role) and the superb American-Somali actor Barkhad
Abdi.
That Eastleigh
can be so misrepresented in a movie with such accomplished stars underlines
Carrier’s description of the estate in this book and in a number of papers as
“a place
of much
ambivalence and ambiguity”. Al Shabaab is undoubtedly present in Eastleigh but
it has nowhere near the power and influence alleged in the media and Hollywood
and by
some
anti-terror police commanders and some in the spy agency NIS.
Little
Mogadishu, Eastleigh, Nairobi’s Global Somali Hub should be required reading
for reporters, editors, National Counter-Terrorism Centre director Ambassador
Martin Kimani
and as many of
his counterparts in the war on terror as there are, as well as anyone who
enjoys a good, well-researched, informative and eye-opening read.
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