Where in Nairobi can you find a very spacious three bedroom house, with an extra Sq, in a gated community that has 2 private schools, a top performing international school, a state of the art hospital, a mall and everything else In between within it’s gate, and pay a meagre 27k? Please do tell. Throw in a few added advantages like having a woke community that understand their rights and are always ready to fight for them and will do whatever it takes to be heard?
The only reason great wall gardens in Athi river is always in the news is because the residents will not hesitate to protest about the issues affecting them, unlike most fake middle class neighbourhoods that would rather die than uniformly address the issues affecting them. Ndio waitwe poor lower middle-class? I’ve never understood why when it comes to gwg people have to add poor lower middle class. As in, isn’t “lower” enough by itself or “poor” sufficient? Must they be paired? Like Generation Z like to say, your estate could never. The same reason why even suburbs are trending of late because of noise pollution but no one has the balls to do anything about it.
Kenyans are always eager to sink their fangs on their next victim with absolute fury and that’s why they went after Emma Too and started hurling insults at her when she dared to stand up against the club that was noise polluting in her neighbourhood. I say next victim because best believe there will always be one at any particular moment.
You have foreigners committing crimes in areas like kilimani and everyone turns a blind eye because no one wants to be the first one to talk against it. But alas! Woe unto gwg residents if they dare come together to talk about their ridiculously high water bills, or the salty water, or a transport monopoly system that doesn’t favour them. Then suddenly it’s comments like “the ghetto,” “hii estate iko na mashetani,” “you cannot raise your children here,” or like someone pointed out loudly, “it’s a vertical kibera.” I mean, how can you be so loud while being so wrong? The people who live there love it because they know the benefits they get from there like affordable spacious housing and all the amenities within the gates. I might be wrong, but this is the only place in Kenya that you can get whatever it is you need delivered to your doorstep, even if it’s a packet of salt or a matchbox. No hustles, and as someone that works from home, apart from dropping and picking my child from school, I could go for days on end without ever seeing the sun eye to eye. The introvert in me absolutely loves it. They have a dial a delivery for anything. Not to mention that the whole estate, 3000+ units, support each others businesses through the 20 or more WhatsApp business groups. So many people have acquired clients and expanded their business through these same groups. To say that the people there support each other is an understatement; they are a whole movement that uplift each other. 3000+ units. Ofcourse it’s only logical that the number of issues would be more than other smaller estates. It’s scale of numbers, good people. The probability of having a thief in a village (yes, it’s a village at this point) of 10,000 people would be higher than finding one in a place that has 300 people.
As for the issue of it not being a safe place to bring up kids, do you know that 75% of those living here are families? So who exactly are these evil people doing illuminati businesses being talked about when almost everyone has a family? Also, most of the people living there have lived there for so many years. If it was that bad, pray, how come these people aren’t moving out? For an estate that has a high sense of community policing, and a nyumba kumi type of arrangement in the form of block unity , y’all outsiders sure have alot to say about it’s way of living. I feel I also need to point out that residents here have co existed peacefully irrespective of tribe, religion or nationality. From the clips doing rounds of how the April 15th protests went down, you can clearly see Muslims, a few Indians and Christians all fighting for a common goal. We also had a Nigerian as one of the leading protesters. And why wouldn’t he be there? Just because he is a foreigner doesn’t mean he isn’t weighed down by the hefty water bills being dished out for subpar salty water. Granted, not all foreigners have the best intentions at heart but making it seem like, say for example, Nigerians living in Greatwall are devils and the ones living in roysambu or kilimani are saints reeks of hypocrisy. Granted the estate does have a few rotten eggs but to be sincere so does the rest of the world and I assure you it would be difficult for foreigners to pull off any monkey businesses because if there is an estate whose members are vigilant about their neighbors then it is great wall gardens. Here everyone knows everyone. Personally all my neighbours have families and everyone is polite and minds the business that pays them. I have to add also that they are hardworking respectable members of society. My immediate neighbor is South Sudanese and the rest are from different tribes with the downstairs one being a Ghanaian that married a Kenyan lady with whom they have 2kids who school in the same school as my daughter.
Everyone has lived with everyone else peacefully apart from the occasional “can so and so please turn down the volume the kids are trying to sleep?” Or the occasional block bachelor that announces in the group they will be throwing a party where all and sundry are welcome ; every Friday lol. To bundle the whole estate together as being of devil worshippers, angaa drug dealing foreigners mara full of single mothers is quite unfair. Single motherhood in Kenya is currently a nationwide pandemic that is rampant even in remote villages. Like I mentioned up there, hypocrisy.
If the rest of the country wants to sit on their high horse and label GWG as poor middle class as they do love to do, well and good. Continue receiving mediocre services in the name of being good tenants. Also, enjoy your rich neighbourhoods with club noises putting you to sleep and church trumpets being your alarm every morning like clockwork while you complain in WhatsApp groups miserably and do nothing about it – we don’t do that here. I guess greatwall has become an easy target for being the butt of jokes and even the residents themselves are used to it and are always bantering about it in their numerous WhatsApp groups. With the tough economic times currently being experienced, any joke at all is welcome, even if the joke is at your own expense I guess. It is what it is.
