Nairobi Nightlife

This is something I have been experiencing quite a bit lately so I thought it appropriate to write a little about it. When I first came here, after hearing all of the Nairobi horror stories, I was a little hesitant about going out to bars and stuff. Now, after a little acclimatization to the city and the culture, I am frequently leading the way.

The parties here are awesome. For the most part, the clubs themselves are quite similar to the ones back home. The music is often questionable and the bars are always smoky but more or less the same as back home. The biggest difference is the craziness of the people in the bars. Kenyans are much less inhibited than Canadians. You walk into a bar here and it is wall to wall dancing. Everyone is dancing! Even when you are in a place that is not really a dancing place, like a pub, people will dance. A few weeks ago there were about 8 of us, all wazungus (white people) out on the town. We sat down at a table in this pub and ordered drinks. The entire place was dancing all around us, everyone! We were the only ones sitting there. It was hilarious, this guy was dancing while watching the TV. We must have looked pretty silly.

Bars are open all night here, so the party usually gets going around 2AM. I typically get together with friends before, either at someone’s house or at a pub, and then head to the party spot for 1 or so. There are many nights that we dance till 5. The places here are super cool and usually pretty cheap. My favorite place is Casablanca, you can go and sit outside on a couch, in the sand underneath palm trees in front of a fire and smoke shisha out of huka pipes, or go inside and dance it up. The whole place is super chilled and feels very Mediterranean. We frequently talk about how a place like that would do quite well back home, I have never seen anything like it before.

When a mzungu walks into a place here, everyone looks at you, well that’s the way it feels anyway. Being white is like instant celebrity status everywhere, especially bars. Last weekend this drunk guy came up to me and asked if I was Armenian, to which I replied “no way dude, I’m Canadian…. But that guys Armenian” and I pointed to Peder, my Norwegian friend. There was a bit of an issue in the news the week before and Armenians weren’t exactly the most popular people in Nairobi. It was pretty funny for me, the guy went right over to Peder and grabbed his arm. Fortunately there was no trouble and in retrospect it was a bad thing to do, but damn it was funny.

Last Saturday was the craziest party I have ever been to. It was Ugo’s birthday and they held a party at their house. The place was packed with so many different people. You could walk through the house and hear like 5 different languages being spoken. I met a photographer who just came back from Iraq where he took pictures of the big assault that happened just a while back. Craziness! At its peak I think there was around 80 people, which is nuts for a party in Nairobi. We danced till almost 5 in the morning. They had the music cranked all night long and I’m surprised there wasn’t any trouble. I actually think the cops came and someone paid them off….but who knows. It was wicked, poa sana!
more pics to come...just need to talk to Ugo......(new)thanks for those great pics Ugo. Who let that crazy canadian guy into the party?