×

Nakuru’s K-Street boasts of more than 200 drinking joints that operate day and night

By Steve Mkawale

NAKURU; KENYA: To the South of Nakuru Town, there’s a 1.5km street lined with bars, nightclubs and lodgings.

Welcome to Nakuru’s Kanu Street. This is a place where professionals and the low lifes will be found sharing a table in the spirit of brotherhood.

It is also here that men and women, in the oldest human exchange, meet to trade in sex. K-Street, as it is known to residents, boasts of more than 200 drinking joints that operate day and night — making Nakuru County’s ambitious 24-hour economy a reality before its time.

From illegal brothels to sex shacks to lodgings, Kanu Street is the county’s ‘red light district’ and leaves nothing to the imagination.

It is also a collection of happy-go-lucky people who have escaped from their places of work to quench their thirsts. Towards evening, it teems with drinkers of many persuasions.

Like Amsterdam’s red light district, women in skimpy dresses strut their ‘wares’ for the benefit of lusty revelers. Many are ready to offer more than a schoolboy peepshow in a private cabin.

Law enforcers

For as little as Sh200, you are assured of a steamy evening so long as you pay for a room next door.

On a typical day, a good number of cars will be parked in front of the bars. The locals boast that it is the only place in Nakuru where you can drink without fear and at an affordable price. Revelers drink in total disregard of the Alcohol Control Act, the so-called Mututho law.

Most drinking joints have restaurants that are allowed to sell alcohol during the day.

We established that some owners of the drinking joints on the street are law enforcers, and therefore the last people to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

On weekends, K-street is a place to be for partygoers. Blaring music emanate from the entertainment spots, as the skimpily dressed girls position themselves strategically at the entrances of the club to attract the attention of male revelers.

The scene goes on until the wee hours of Sunday morning when a smartly dressed man enters one of the clubs. He introduces himself as a pastor with an evangelical church. He had a vision, he says, to come and save the sinners from Satan’s jaws.

Mututho free zone

 In the next bar, there is a portrait of President Uhuru Kenyatta. Next to the portrait are words; ‘This is a Mututho free zone.’

The street is named after the impendence party Kanu that ruled the country for four decades before it was dislodged from power by the National Rainbow Coalition in the 2002 General Election. According to the onetime Nakuru branch Kanu chairman Kimani Ngunjiri, it was named so after some party officials were settled there.

“The group was the first people to settle on land in the area and that time Kanu was a powerful political entity and it was important to acknowledge it in everything that went on then,” said the Bahati MP.

It is likely that you have heard about this neighbourhood and to be frank, everything you will have heard is probably true, but to really put rumours to rest, you have go to check it out yourself.