This is how a Donholm man’s dreams are now in tatters

Residents walk in a market, at the New Donholm Estate in Nairobi. The estate has become a slum with mushrooming of unplanned structures and markets in every corner as church crusaders play loud music over the weekends.

NAIROBI, KENYA: The filthy, murky stream meanders and bubbles its way through the southern part of the new Donholm estate before it joins the main Nairobi River towards Ruai in the wee hours of the morning.

Along its course, residents are waking up to another day with the smell of a sewer that has become part of their lives. This has become ‘normal’ and they are trying to cope.

Out on the street, potholes and sewer lines mar the landscape.

Donholm Estate is the oldest amongst Umoja, Kayole, Greenfields, Savannah , Bururburu and Tena all along Outer Ring Road.

It was built in the 1980’s and initiated by James Kerr Waston, a white settler who christened it Donholm in the early 1900’s.

 Origin

The estate was initially a 4,600 acre farm in the 1900s, stretching all the way from City Stadium towards to where it now stands; history has it that it was the first place in Kenya to host a cattle dip that was built as part of the battle against East Coast fever.

It was also the place where the first Ayrshire cows - named after Watson’s birthplace, Ayr - were first bred in East Africa earning him many trophies including the prestigious Gold Cup given by the East African Standard.

Its has undergone tremendous changes over the years, with tightly spaced multi-story apartments mushrooming all over the place.

Town houses that were to be the beauty and tranquillity of the Donholm and Savannah have been sandwiched between the tall, story buildings forcing original owners to leave the area. Moreover, every free space has been turned into a market.

 Taxed for nothing

Today, music from church crusades booms from loud speakers right in the middle of the estate.

If Watson arose from his grave at City Park to see what has become of his famous Nairobi farm today, he would probably go back to his grave in protest.

Home owners in the Old Donholm estate pay land rates of Sh14,000 for a neighbourhood with no streets lights and blocked drainage that results in flooded houses and roads.

The estate now stands between the sprawling Mukuru slums to the south - which stretch all the way from South B along the banks of the Nairobi River - and Kayole and Soweto to the north.

 Passion

Watson is said to have been one of the few architects who had a passion to build roads and houses to make Nairobi a unique city.

He’s the man who laid the foundation for Nairobi’s Kenyatta Avenue, then Sixth Avenue.

It is interesting to consider what has bedevilled Donholm as an estate today, despite its place in history.

As a great farmer who was the only supplier of milk in the city, Watson built the murram road that would become Jogoo Road, to link his farm to the city.

His farn bordered African estates like Kaloleni, Makadara and Jericho, estates that were built to accommodate the African labour force.

Donholm is now inhabited by people that Watson would, perhaps, have fenced out.