Spotlight on: Little Nairobi

In her final piece in our communities series, Jessica Lambert meets London’s Kenyan community
Jessica Lambert14 February 2013

Size: 203,000 according to the Office for National Statistics’ 2009 estimates.

Age: About half a century — a large number of South Asian Kenyans moved here in the Sixties and Seventies.

Who’s the most famous British Kenyan? Probably evangelical atheist Richard Dawkins, who was born in Nairobi but moved to England aged eight.

Tell me about a more appetising Kenyan export — like the fine cuisine. Where can I get my hands on some? North Finchley’s Safari Club does an interesting fusion of Kenyan and Indian cooking. I’d try ordering spicy Nairobi Special Chicken.

What if I want a more traditionally Kenyan menu? The Thatched House pub in Barking has a deceptively English exterior but inside you’ll find everything from nyama choma to sukuma wiki.

And what are those when they’re on my plate? Roasted goat and braised kale with tomatoes. Even better, the pub stays open till 3am every weekend, playing Kenyan R’n’B and hip hop.

What about Kenyan cinema? The gritty urban gangster drama, Nairobi Half-Life, won the Audience Award at London’s Film Africa 2012 festival in November and was selected as the Kenyan entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Brilliant though that sounds, is there a less harrowing side of Kenyan culture we could spend the weekend exploring? If you wait until March we could visit 575 Wandsworth Road, the former home of Kenyan poet Khadambi Asalache.

Why, what’s so special about it? From the outside it looks like a normal Georgian terrace, but inside every room is a treasure box of extraordinarily detailed fretwork decoration.

And this Asalache did all himself? Yes. He bought the house in 1981 and spent 20 years carving African, Islamic and British design out of old pine doors and wooden boxes. When he died in 2006 he left the house to the National Trust. It’s taken seven years to get it ready but it will be open to visitors next month.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in