Behind Nakuru’s Kenya Industrial Training Institute is a dusty estate with moderate blockhouses.
Food joints, wine and spirits shops, clubs, among other outlets for millennial dot the estate.
The estate is Mawanga. A place that is popular with its low life.
Residents here take pride in it despite there being nothing to brag about.
An aerial view of Mawanga/Sudi
This writer toured Mawanga in an effort to unmask the life here as well as why on earth a place would be called Mawanga. Is it not boring? It sounds like a drug for an STI, ama?!
Anyway, that is not the case and according to residents the state was born out of one woman’s resilience.
Long before this writer thought he could ever live in a boring city like Nakuru (by the way those who brag about Nakuru know nothing about a city), Mawanga was a bush within the Ngashura farm.
Gangs used to maraud the area as they waylaid Murunyu residents who got late in town.
Because by then there were no phones or laptops for mugger and gangs to rob you, those who found themselves in the hands of the gangs lost bread, sugar and cooking fat.
By the way no man went home those days without a loaf of bread for his dozens of children to share.
“Nobody wanted to build anything here. It was a deserted bush. Plots were very cheap but no one was interested because of the thugs,” Michael Ndung’u, one of the elders in the area, said.
One woman though was a daredevil. She bought a plot and built a small house and a kiosk. With impunity, she named her kiosk as Mawanga Kiosk.The woman was called Mama Wangari – anything familiar with how Kikuyus name their businesses, haha!
One of the clubs that dot the estate/Sudi
Mama Wangari could only be matched to Wangu wa Makeri or Mekatilili wa Menza due to her bravery and courage.
Despite the area having been infested by thugs, she stayed put. She could not be intimidated by the outlaws, often telling them that she was a remnant of Mau Mau (the freedom fighters) and anybody joking with her would have his two balls chewed without mercy.
That is how Mawanga was born. Talk of the strength of a woman!
Today, the estate is so populated with hookers, touts, students, clandes, and also thugs.
“People of all walks of life live here. From prostitutes to students. It is also a hiding place for the bad boys,” Esther Muthoni, a mother of one, said.
The massive population at the estate has seen all types of businesses mushroom as well as lack of key amenities like the steady flow of tap water.
A water vendor serving resident/Sudi
Those who had bought pieces of land and left them idle are now putting up rentals to cash in on the increased house demand.
Investors put up rentals in Mawanga/Sudi
A one-bedroom house in one of the very finest apartments in the area goes for Sh10, 000 rent a month.
Single rooms, most preferred by students and thugs, go for as long as Sh1300.
The biggest eyesore here, according to residents, is the Kiti-Murunyu road.
Murunyu-Kiti road/Sudi
The road is so dusty that shades of dust are what ushers you in most homes – especially those that border the road.
“We want to make an appeal to our MP Kimani Ngunjiri, please help us have this road tarmacked and have water,” John Kimani said.
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