Nostalgia: ‘Duf mpararo’ was swimming uchi wa mnyama

Untreated brown waters somehow made your body resemble someone who had been washed with jivu! Photo: Courtesy

There’s no childhood worth it that had no contact with the earth as British philosopher, Sir Bertrand Russell, told us in, Portraits from Memory. Today’s urban kids hardly have childhoods worth remembering. What with indoor video games, manufactured toys and kuchungwa kila saa?

Back in the day, Saturday was not Saturday without going to Nairobi’s Gitathuru River — that snakes behind Utalii Hotel — for a splash in its brown waters which commuters sneer at while stuck in traffic along the Thika Superhighway.