Preface

There is a poem titled, ‘On the Pulse of the Morning’ that Maya Angelou wrote and performed at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration ceremony in 1993. While the contents of that poem are irrelevant here, that title kept coming back to me as I read this collection of essays. Then it hit me. Is Dagoretti the beating pulse of Nairobi? Is Dagoretti the unpretentious, unassuming but prodigious Nairobi baby? Like a healthy child, Nairobi has grown. Thus, this collection of essays is an ode to the spatial, socioeconomic, and political landscapes of one of its most important cultural hubs - Dagoretti.