[Note: today is Madaraka Day, commemorating the day Kenya attained internal self-rule before full independence from Great Britain in 1963.]

A friend asked me before I left Denver what I would miss most about home once I got settled in Nairobi.  My first answer?  My independence. 

I knew coming back here would mean having to negotiate with others to do things I am used to managing on my own:  getting to work and to the grocery store, going to a cafe, leaving the city for a walk or a change of scene.  It is not only that the places I need to go and the things I want to do are far apart here—it's that they are enveloped in a bizarre geography of racial and socioeconomic divisions so entrenched that they have generated different economies, with different norms and patterns for each resident group.  Sure, people cross over the lines all the time, but those who do so have the means to gain acceptance into multiple societies:  language skills, money, and a certain comfort with chaos.   

Now, I revel in the unfamiliar, for sure, and I am not averse to walking long distances or flagging down a matatu (minivan public transport) when that makes sense, but I am also someone who likes to get where she is going in a reasonable amount of time without undue trouble, and without worrying too much about what she is carrying in her shoulder bag.  So, in this divided city, I succumb to the “wazungu” (white foreigners) economy and call a taxi driver when I need to go just about anywhere.  Since arriving two weeks ago, I have spent nearly 10,000 Kenyan shillings (about $130) on taxi rides, and that’s only to get around within the wealthy western boroughs of the city.  Before I move into a house within walking distance of work  in two more weeks, I will have spent at least another 10,000 shillings to get where I need to go—likely more. 

It’s no wonder most people who live here for any extended length of time buy cars.  Although they’re involved in all kinds of conservation, earth-saving and recycling campaigns, most of those who work on the UN campus are not into carpooling with their SUVs, so they become part of the reason that getting around in this city can be such a scary and unpleasant experience.  The black clouds of diesel exhaust, crumbling roads, terrifyingly aggressive Kenyan driving style, incessantly clogged traffic, and labyrinthine street patterns collide in a chaotic mix of inadequate infrastructure and individual priorities.  It’s every person for herself here, street lights, stop signs, and pedestrians be damned.   

Embittered by the absurdity of the taxi trap and frustrated by my lack of independence, I set out on foot yesterday toward the shopping center nearest the area in which I am staying.  As I slogged through the red mud by the side of Thigiri Ridge, I felt distinctly unsafe and conspicuous; the shoulder was narrow and uneven, and I couldn’t avoid the attention of almost everyone I passed on my way to my destination.   

Muttering to myself about the stupidity of walking so far in such an environment, I thought about the ease and anonymity I am used to—the simple ability to get where I am going with a minimal output of cash and very little stress.  In Minneapolis for the APA conference last month, I walked for miles late at night with no fear; I could catch a bus or the light rail for $1.25 ($2.75 during peak hours) if I needed to, no questions asked, and the clean, safe transit ran on a reliable schedule.  Even in Izmir, Turkey, where I lived in 2002, getting from one side of the city to the other was easy on foot, or by ferry, dolmuş (Turkish version of the matatu), bus or light rail, all of which I could (and did) catch at almost any time of day or night.  With the help of friends, I was able to decipher the system there and use it to my advantage.  Here in Nairobi, matatus are the only real alternative to taxis for me, at least during the day, but I have yet to figure out any of their routes except for the straight shot downtown from Limuru Road by the UN.  That’s something I’ll have to learn again, along with the Kiswahili numbers and acceptable phrases for “stop here!”    

I see Nairobi through a planner’s eyes now—much more than I did three years ago when I wrote with a kind of romantic haze about the shape of the city and its indecipherability.  This time, it’s clear to me that there’s nothing romantic about being trapped inside a walled and guarded compound, like the Lady of Shallot, only to be rescued by a taxi driver charging exorbitant fees.  Nairobi’s planning problems are deep and complicated, predicated upon a dearth of regulation, road maintenance, public transit investment, and law enforcement.  A major problem is a lack of connectivity.  Many areas have sidewalks, but only along part of the road; matatus go downtown, but not around and through the various boroughs in predictable patterns.  The larger issue, however, is safety.  As long as wazungu and other residents fear for their safety when walking or riding public transit, the taxi drivers will continue to make a killing and people will continue to buy private cars to avoid those fees.   

I met a Kenyan planner at the APA conference.  I think it’s time I sat down with him to hear his perspective on the growing issues with Nairobi’s decaying roads and terrible traffic.  But what is a planner to do in a place with so few enforceable regulations and such divided populations?  Maybe the Chinese are offering some incentives for positive change … they recently built a new road from the airport through the main part of the city, which has significantly improved the efficiency of that trip.  In the meantime, however, I’ll continue to call my taxi driver to ferry me around this circuitous city, until I figure out how to regain my lost independence.

"The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture, without error or confusion, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention."

- Francis Bacon

For the last several months, the Denver Child & Youth Friendly City Initiative has asked Denver residents what they think makes the city work best for young people and what they would change if they were in charge. The answers have described a wide range of assets and issues, from parks and after-school programs to gangs and the need for better crime prevention.

In my work with the initiative’s Youth Executive Committee, I became curious about how young people actually experience the kinds of places described in the survey responses. How often do they go to parks? Do they use recreation centers regularly? How are their daily lives influenced by safety issues in their communities or the modes of transport available to them? Where do they spend their free time and how satisfied are they with the choices they have?

So, I set out on a journey to capture a sampling of the regular, daily experiences of the teenagers I knew best through the initiative. I wanted to learn the environmental narratives of their lives and witness what they care most about in their own communities. As a group, the YEC does not talk much about the different Denvers they experience every day. They come together to strategize about how the whole city could improve, but their own lives are qualitatively different.

“When we’re apart from each other, it’s like, you stay on your side, I’ll stay on my side,” one of the youth, Isaiah, told me. “But when we’re all together, it’s like, great minds think alike.”

With this project, I hope to inspire the great minds of the YEC to learn more about each other’s communities and the school and neighborhood contexts in which meaningful improvements can be made. If Denver is to become “a city friendly to all,” changes must reflect the real priorities of youth themselves, in the environments they know and love.

When I was a little kid, I often played with a good friend named Kristi Parce. What I remember best about Kristi's house, besides the presence of her family's massive, slobbering Newfoundlands and her long-haired cat named Maggie, is her mother's greenhouse, which attached to the dining room with a sliding glass door.

Paula Parce worked miracles with houseplants. She didn't have a massive outdoor garden, but the inside of her home was a near-tropical paradise. The most moisture-demanding plants filled the greenhouse, and the glass door to that lush conservatory was always fogged. I remember the pale, sandy color of the pebbles that covered the floor of the greenhouse and how it sounded when I walked on them; I remember that Kristi kept tiny turtles there and that I was afraid of reptiles. I still remember the way the greenhouse smelled: like a warm rain in a Hawaiian jungle.

In the Parce's house, light came from every angle. Paula had redesigned the kitchen of her single-story 1950s suburban ranch to include a skylight almost as large as the room itself - a translucent ceiling, with shelves atop the cabinets filled with plants. With the greenish-gold light that filtered through the greenhouse and the plant-filled glow of the kitchen, the house felt inside-out, and I loved it. It was unlike any other place I knew. Paula was unlike any other mother, too. She refinished and upholstered antique furniture, kept a dressmaker's dummy and sewed clothes, and read - and referenced - gourmet cookbooks. She was the perfect parent, and her three children adored her. I came to associate the tropical scent of abundant plant life with peace of mind, total comfort and sensual delight. Perhaps as part of some subliminal craving for those days of predictable happiness, I became a dweller of botanic gardens and glass conservatories, a lover of the lush Northwest ... and a cultivator of carnivorous plants.

If I could create a room of my own - truly my own - it would be a greenhouse much like Paula's, but bigger and filled with all kinds of cloud-tree, rainforesty plants like orchids and ferns and various carnivorous varieties. Carnivorous plants love the humid climes of tropical rainforests, but they can manage pretty well in less wet zones, so I've been able to successfully nurture my little nepenthes (one of the pitcher plants) for the last four years. My friends Dugg and Heather gave it to me for my 31st birthday, and it has survived quite well, growing pitchers every season. I keep it in a free-standing Wardian case - my miniature greenhouse.

The nepenthes, and a thriving succulent that I keep in the kitchen window, are the only other living things in my apartment. I'm craving the crunch of gravel, the hum of a humidifier and the smell of plant life giving off moisture in the sun. This winter, I might join the Denver Botanic Gardens and start spending more time in the big conservatory there, just up the street from where I live. In the meantime, I'll cultivate my glass-housed carnivorous plant and remember the paradise Paula made all those years ago.

In the city - the big, crashing, intoxicated, graffitied, grinding, dense latticework of a city - you can just disappear. And there's always something to fascinate on, some beautiful detail to draw the eye and provoke the mind.

I'm in San Francisco, at the conference of the Association of American Geographers: 6,500 geographers have taken over the Hilton and the Nikko Hotel in the Tenderloin. On a break today, I walked up Taylor Street and found this decal stuck on a parking meter. It's the perfect metaphor: buying time, taking space, writing a new life. I thought about how often I've tried to do just that - to write a new life for myself, over and over again. Even here, as an academic without a discipline, I'm tempted to write myself into the geographers' world - to take up the label and wear it as proudly as they do. "I'm a human geographer!" I want to claim, amidst the cultural-feminist-human-political-land use-disaster-environmental geographers who populate this place. But really, I'm an anonymous social scientist-type - a wannabe intellectual trained in writing, English literature, Montessori education and the amorphous, interdisciplinary literatures and techniques of "urban studies" and "environment and behavior." I'm not an environmental psychologist, an urban planner, an architect or designer, an urban sociologist, or an environmental educator. I'm an observer. And an action researcher; an urban thinker; a person obsessed with space, place and human development. My professional identifications vary from day to day, place to place. Sometimes, I crave the kind of certainty these geographers have - the strong sense of self and purpose. But I've chosen to be a shape-shifter. At least for now.

What's the giraffe about, I wonder? To write a new life, you have to stick your neck out? Put yourself on the line? Stand tall? Show your true spots? 

In a city like this, anything is possible.

fog, with couple and dog, originally uploaded by gwendolyn_true.

It's not quite as Carl Sandburg experienced it, since we're harborless here in the middle of the continent, but in normally dry Denver, the fog-kittens of March bring much-needed moisture and the first whiffs of spring. Yesterday and this morning were blissfully Oregonesque: rainy and foggy, green and gray. My favorite time of year.

On my way home from the yoga studio at 9 a.m., I stopped in Cheesman Park and watched people play with their dogs, listened to the city birds, absorbed the earthy mist until my craving for coffee urged me homeward. Growing up here, I lived for March and April - the only time of year we reliably get rain. Green begins to beat out brown and the city wakes up again.