One evening in March 2021, five of us were sitting in Patrick’s kinyozi (Kiswahili, ‘barber shop’), which was one of the main meeting points of a group of male Luo migrants informally known as jo-pap (Dholuo, ‘people of the playing field’, see chapter 4). After a ja-pap named Paul had bragged about the size of his girlfriend’s buttocks and teased me by saying that he would have brought her along had he felt sure that she would not elope with me, he stood up and made a clicking sound:
Clack, clack, clack. Have you ever woken up because you hear coins being dropped on the ground? Those are landlords trying to make more money. The sound is heard throughout the plot. Then there was this dead boy they found in front of a plot. His skull was cracked open, but no blood, there was no blood. So, let me ask you, how come that in that plot, you are not allowed to slaughter a chicken?
I had brought a bottle of rum with me, and the alcohol eased the conversation. While we debated whether Paul’s stories about coins used in money making rituals and dead bodies without blood were true, Patrick, who was shaving a customer, smiled at me as if to tell me not to worry about witchcraft, Satanism, and sorcery, and expressed his scepticism: ‘How can someone living on the first floor hear the sound of a coin being dropped on the sixth or seventh floor? Those are just stories, my friend.’ Intrigued by Paul’s remarks, however, I asked him who he thought was responsible for these strange practices and who might have consumed the dead boy’s blood, to which he replied: ‘Witchdoctors sacrificing blood. Let me ask you, how can a man younger than me possess five plots here in Pipeline?’
Scholars have observed rumours juxtaposing witchcraft and the economy in rural and urban areas across sub-Saharan Africa (De Boeck and Plissart 2014 [2004], Geschiere 1997, Sanders, 1999, Simone 2002) and Kenya (Schmidt 2022b, Smith 2008, White 2000: chapter 5). In Pipeline, interpreting economic success as resulting from witchcraft or satanic practices often involved a critique of forms of capital accumulation based on individualistic behaviour, an unwillingness to redistribute wealth, or fast and easy ways of making money (see Elliott 2022), which were contrasted with honest and ‘hard work’ (Dholuo, tich matek) that involved sweat but would not lead to wealth overnight. As most of my male acquaintances and friends were students or employed in Nairobi’s formal economy and earning less than 20,000 KSh per month despite working often more than eight hours a day, it was not surprising that rumours about blood-sacrificing landlords gained traction.
Peter Kipsang, a migrant in his 40s from around Kericho, was one of those landlords who had decided to try to make a fortune in Pipeline’s booming real estate sector. A friend had introduced us when I had expressed my wish to talk to a landlord. After I had seen and greeted him a few times in one of Pipeline’s bars or nyama choma places (Kiswahili, ‘roasted meat’), Peter invited me to his spacious three-bedroom house in one of the gated non-high-rise estates in Imara Daima, which was within walking distance of Pipeline. Peter had recently moved out of one of Pipeline’s rare three-bedroom apartments. With four children and enough money – the monthly profit of his plots was over 500,000 KSh – he had concluded that Pipeline, which he jokingly called a ‘manufactory of children’, was not the right place to raise his family. They deserved better.
After eating pilau, a popular rice dish from the Kenyan coast often served at weddings and funerals, Peter began to narrate how he, a mere employee of a real estate company, had decided to invest in a plot in Pipeline with a friend over twenty years ago: ‘Back then, it was still a lot of mabati houses, but I saw how my company was making money, and I decided to try my luck. It is good to invest in things that you know.’ He bought land not far from the Kenya Pipeline Company housing estate and constructed one of the first plots in Pipeline around the year 2000. Since then, he had managed to construct another plot and was in the process of acquiring land for a third in Mukuru Kwa Njenga ward. When I asked Peter about the paved roads that had replaced most dirt roads in Pipeline ward some years ago, he told me with pride that the landlords had organized this upgrade and that they were also responsible for the connection of the sewage lines, the water supply, and the rubbish disposal. Instead of connecting their plots to the city’s water distribution network, most landlords dug a borehole or rented one nearby. The estate’s few public dumping sites were notoriously overflowing, and without the private rubbish collection, the estate would otherwise be inundated with waste. The state’s near total absence in the area was also demonstrated by the fact that, despite having over 200,000 inhabitants, Pipeline neither had a public school nor a public hospital during the time of my fieldwork. This governmental neglect opened further money making opportunities for private investors such as Peter, who summed up the situation as follows: ‘In Kenya, the state doesn’t care, you need to take care of everything.’
Peter did not at all strike me as a cold-blooded capitalist. He was welcoming and I felt that he cared about the well-being of this tenants. However, it would be a mistake to romanticize Pipeline’s landlords, some of whom owned more than ten plots, and consider them benevolent philanthropists serving the public. Politicians and businessmen, and high-ranking civil servants such as a former commissioner of the Kenyan police, had invested in Pipeline for personal profit. Many of the private clinics and schools were run by people who lacked the necessary qualifications. Nor were landlords and scrupulous quacks specializing in illegal abortions the only actors who viewed Pipeline as a space offering money making opportunities. Police officers took bribes from illegal open-air pool halls and bars, and sex workers from neighbouring estates capitalized on Pipeline’s pressured men. Rich Kenyans opened bars and restaurants along Airport North Road that attracted wealthy Kenyans from nearby Kitengela wishing to initiate sexual encounters with newly arrived young female migrants. While the goals of landlords and tenants, police officers and businessmen, as well as sex workers and clients, often clashed, these individuals were equally pragmatic and considered the estate a catalyst for their personal and professional urban plans and careers.