Ngong Hills

August 8, 2026

When we arrived in Kenya in 2023, our first home had a lovely rooftop view southwest toward the Ngong Hills outside Nairobi. On many evenings in the fading light I would get out my longest lens to look out, beyond the few lights flickering on in the working-class communities of Kangemi and Kawangware, to the microclimate theater playing out over the distant ridgeline.

I don’t usually do straight landscapes but it was like the mountains created their own light and weather. Sometimes it was calm but there often seemed to be something stirring that wasn’t going on elsewhere.

Historically the Ngong Hills - now a protected Forest Reserve where hiking is popular - is a sacred site to the Maasai in the heart of their Rift Valley territory, at least before colonial-era displacement.

According to folklore, a Maasai mother had seven sons who were very close in life and were buried side-by-side. The earth rose up to cover them, the distinct mounds seen as their eternal resting place.

Prints are available here, in sets of four or sixteen. If there’s a particular single image you're interested in, let me know.

City of Walls

August 1, 2026

I’ve long struggled with what to say about Nairobi’s ubiquitous walls and what they mean for the city. I’ve been chipping away at these photos since I first arrived, the newest ones are from the last few weeks.

I like Nairobi and don’t want to do a negative post and this is really not meant as one.

But we need to talk about the walls.

Not just walls. High ones. Everywhere. I learned early on that anything resembling comfortable prosperity is behind walls. Often topped with barbed wire and/or electric fencing. Beautiful garden restaurant? Plenty of them, but you breach the walls through a security gate. Posh housing? Same. Shopping mall? Same, and your car gets searched going in, every time. Pretty much any new development includes a wall.

The walls are pervasive but generally not spoken about, they are just accepted as a part of the disjointed urban fabric. I’ve never heard anyone else use ‘city of walls’, it’s just a phrase that popped into my head and stuck.

To me, more than anything they are a clear and obvious symptom of Nairobi’s income inequality. Even as wealth has increased, it’s all for the upper (and sometimes middle) class, plus of course the sizable international community. A statistical majority of Nairobians are poor, with informal settlements (aka slums) throughout the city, often in close proximity to affluent housing and development.

How do you think that’s going to go? Especially in a city where public policing technically exists but is unlikely to help you in an emergency. In a city that is more like Dickens’ two cities, the ultimate crime deterrent - and social insulator - for the well-off is a big wall.

I would even say it’s a cautionary tale for a world with increasing wealth disparities pretty much everywhere. This is where it leads when you don’t invest in the well-being of ordinary people.

Still, proper stats are slippery and the actual need for walls varies depending on who you ask:

A middle-aged Kenyan guy tells me how bad crime used to be but how much better things are now. Over dinner at a comfortable Indian restaurant in a colonial-era estate, a Canadian expat - who came from a stint in Lagos, where she said everyone had a crime story - says no one she knows after eight years here has a crime story.

Then she told me not to walk around with my camera.

There’s definitely a tension between perception and reality.

The US embassy sends out mildly alarming alerts sometimes about worst-case scenario safety precautions. When you live in the expat bubble of areas like Westlands, Gigiri, or Karen, driving from gated housing to gated shopping and gated events, such alerts can feel abstract.

A young Kenyan photographer friend, who shoots all over the city, tells me he’s had to fend off potential camera-snatchers several times. But then again he’s on the streets everyday - both in chaotic central Nairobi and Kibera, the largest slum - so relatively speaking is that a good or bad anecdotal stat? And still he loves Nairobi.

Another Kenyan photographer shrugs and tells me the walls are simply for ‘controlling the space’, preventing squatters and such. It’s true that it’s not just about crime. With weak zoning enforcement, sometimes a physical wall is the only thing stopping informal structures from popping up on your property overnight.

Apparently the walls began increasing about 25 years ago in a city that was then more open but becoming more dangerous. People here will tell you, oh yeah crime used to be pretty bad. Like what some associate with Johannesburg. Maybe worse. Then they say how much better it has gotten. Is it better because of the walls?

The walls also create the zone where the two cities meet - in Nairobi’s ‘fortress urbanism’, the rough, liminal space in the setback between wall and street is some of the only usable common space. The informal economy often sets up shop hard against the fortress. A zone of contradiction in a city of contradiction.

Nairobi is one of the fastest growing cities on the continent. At the moment, all that development has walls baked into it for the foreseeable future. What kind of city will that be? Who will ever be the first to take them down? Recently we noticed a nice new shopping center down the street that doesn’t have walls, and has a farmers market on weekends where the wall would be. A hopeful sign.

Dispatch 6/26

July 26, 2026

I’m still shooting BW here in Nairobi as well as color. Here are the two most recent pics from the past week. Both are examples of going with what life offers, no matter how seemingly non-exotic. One is on the way to the grocery store, the other when taking our dog to the vet.

*Fourth of July gathering for Democrats Abroad, Nairobi (7/4/2026)*

This Expat Life

July 5, 2026

Greetings from Kenya. I’ve been back in Nairobi for a bit this summer with family and the doggos. The whys and wherefores are kind of convoluted, let’s just say our situation remains in limbo (IYKYK, if not, sorry I can say no more).

Could be worse, the weather beats North American weather. Or just about anywhere’s weather at the moment. Even with climate change, Nairobi’s elevation keeps it pleasant year round. No heat domes here yet.

Photographically I wasn’t really doing much at first but I’m warming up. Mainly in color so far, taking what comes but trying to balance views of the local Kenyans vs expat circles. There are formidable gaps that are often hard to bridge, which in a way cut to some uncomfortable truths about Nairobi. But mostly I’m just trying to bottle some slivers of the everyday flavor. It’s such a car-centric city but we’ve been trying to walk more, which helps.