Miraculous Airbnb in Limuru
Priscilla Muisyo
Limuru is a small town in Central Kenya along the Nairobi - Nakuru highway. It is commonly known for its cold climate, tea plantations and being home to Bata shoe company. The town is populated by a majority of the Kikuyu tribe of Kenya. Here is a glimpse of Airbnb memoires in Limuru.
The town is located 27 kilometers North-West of Nairobi town, the capital city of Kenya. It is the birthplace of the African writer, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (thought you should know).
If you are a traveler driving from Nairobi and you ever happen to find yourself in Limuru for whatsoever reason and are probably planning to spend your night, you better engage your gears and drive by past in the highest speed imaginable in the hope of getting to Naivasha before dusk or even better turn around and rethink your trip somewhere in the neighborhood of Nairobi city.
If there was ever a desert of devoid of hospitality and recreational joints and infrastructure, then Limuru is it. This is a place where the best known hotel serves it’s most esteemed guests food ordered from other establishments and where if you want breakfast in bed you should consider carrying your bed to the kitchen where you have to be extremely lucky to get your needs met.
My buddy who is born and bred in Limuru, always encounters this ordeal when visiting from abroad.
My buddy’s (let’s call him Kush) struggles to find a hospitable private domain, well furnished with all basic amenities including water and toiletries never seems to end when planning a visit to see my folks a situation that leaves Kush with only one incontestable option which entails leaving under the same roof of his old boyhood bedroom. Not that he minds it very much. It is just that when you are at a certain age and with family in your life it just feels and seems funny and even weird having your parents open the door and smell your breath at an ungodly hour of the night coming from wherever the hell you would be coming from at that said hour.
Back to the desert. If you were on this day at this particular hour be somehow tempted to go to the internet and try to locate some place to stay in at Limuru and it’s outskirts through Airbnb, you can be certainly sure that there is no more than three places to find in Limuru. And with that number l am being very generous. It is as if residents of Limuru have something against the idea of opening their homes and entertainment in general and as a business concept. Finding a place to stay in Limuru is not only next too impossible but also miraculous in some sense.
I remember last year holiday man Kush visited Nairobi with his white friend (mzungu) for Christmas. Kush remembers it with some feeling that can only be interpreted and explained as excruciating pain, if not irredeemable embarrassment. It was comedy of errors from the start to the end with not much to smile about.
Two weeks before man Kush and the white friend had flown from Sweden where we were traveling from had booked and secured a place to stay through Airbnb, or so they thought. To be on the safe side they decided to call the contact person to the private place they were supposedly booked in, but alas alas, the phone went unanswered for two days and when the Airbnb lady answered on the third day which was also there departure day was to kindly to ask them to find another place since the house was already permanently let out to a third party who was unwilling to accommodate strangers. Man Kush and his white friend had no choice but to council there bookings and lose a hefty portion of their money.
Since we they were already on their way, to Limuru, they had no choice but to contact family and some people on the ground in the hope of finding another place and within the shortest time possible. Nothing good can ever come from the kind of hurry they were in, this could never have been truer if you were there to see the accommodations that the friend whom man Kush is even ashamed to mention them by name for fear that he could get a glimpse of how much he loathed him since that particular day.
Dear friend, when you take a white friend (mzungu) with you all the way from Sweden and the first place you put him in the name of an apartment looks like it has been hived from a war zone with broken window panes, doors that are threatening to unhinge from the slightest touch, and a kitchen that has nothing but dusty walls and brown water dripping from a rusty copper tap into a plastic bucket on the floor where l suppose a sink stood once upon a time before time. This is when you realize your pants are down and you are so screwed. Probably the devil himself has part of his soft anatomy so much deep inside you.
All in all, some places are just uninhabitable, a few hours of trying to catch some sleep and cure the jet lag ended with man Kush and the mzungu packing their suitcases and asking for their deposit back. The noise pollution from the town streets was just plainly painful. As l pointed out before, it was like this place was surgically hived off from a war zone and placed.
By mid day they had found a new place, this time a couple of kilometers from the town center. The place looked elegant and serene with a beautiful view of the surrounding landscape. It was situated on a hill overlooking the highway. It’s gardens were well kept and living quarters acceptable and in at least the mzungu’s taste. In spite of all the beauty and serenity and all the other beautiful garden hogwash that came with it, by the end of the day man Kush and mzungu had asked for their deposit back in favor of a hotel back in Limuru town. This was after it had been brought to their attention that the place had been invaded by robbers a couple of times, the last time being a week before the landing of Man Kush and Mzungu.
Talk about bad lack. It is like a movie stuck on climax with no ending. If you are looking for trouble, then in Limuru you have come to the right place. If you are looking for a place to stay, my advice is that you should move on and as fast as you arrived. Nenda ukiendanga….
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