Women are the reason why men have changed because women are hard on men. [鈥 The expectations they come with into a relationship, and generally how they have been brought up, or the life they live, that is what gives some men stress. [鈥 When someone is living with a woman in the house, you find that issues are many because money is little.

Wellington Ochieng, 36-year old labor migrant from western Kenya

During almost three years of ethnographic fieldwork among male migrants in , I heard complaints like Wellington鈥檚 almost daily. Migrant men, in my case predominantly Luo from western Kenya who came to Nairobi with high expectations of a better future, bemoaned a life full of pressure caused by the romantic, sexual, and economic expectations of their girlfriends, wives, and rural kin. The blame often lay on 鈥榗ity girls鈥� who were portrayed as materialistic 鈥榮lay queens鈥檞ho 鈥榝inish鈥� men by leaving them bankrupt only to suck away the after grabbing him with their 鈥楤eelzebub nails鈥� as Wellington called the colorful nails sported by many Nairobi women. Soon, so a fear expressed repeatedly by my interlocutors, most men would no longer be needed at all and Kenya鈥檚 economy would be ruled by economically powerful women who raise chaotic boys brought up . Such fears of male expendability also manifested in imaginations about a future in which more and more men and women would live in or 鈥榗ontract marriages鈥� that replace trust and love with contractual agreements. When my flat mate Samuel, a student of economics divorced from the mother of his baby son, returned to our apartment after passing the neighbor鈥檚 house where a group of women celebrated a birthday, for instance, he just shook his head and sighed: 鈥榃e live like animals in the jungle. Women and men separately. We only meet for mating and making babies. Maybe that鈥檚 where we鈥檙e heading to.鈥� Overwhelmed by their wives鈥� and girlfriends鈥� expectations, many migrant men who spoke to me in Pipeline decided to spend as little time as possible in their marital houses. Instead, they evaded pressure by lifting weights in gyms, , , gulping down a cold beer in a Wines & Spirits, playing the videogame FIFA, or catcalling 鈥榖rown-skinned鈥� Kamba women on the roads. Some men who could no longer cope took even more drastic measures involving murder and . One man, for instance, cut the throat of his girlfriend only to try to kill himself, while another tried to poison himself, later quoting the wife鈥檚 actions and character as the cause. Anything appeared better than spending time with the 鈥榙aughters of Jezebel鈥� who were waiting for them in the cramped houses of Pipeline, sometimes demanding migrant men to engage in romantic and sexual practices they were unfamiliar with as expounded upon by Wellington:

When you come to Nairobi, our girls want that you hold her hand when you are going to buy chips, you hug her when you are going to the house, I hear there is something called cuddling, she wants that you cuddle, at what time will you cuddle and tomorrow you want to go to work early? [鈥 you don鈥檛 go to meet your friends so that you show her you love her, you just sleep on the sofa and caress her hair, to me, this is nonsense because that is not romantic love, I think that romantic love, so long as I provide the things I provide, and we sire children, I think that鈥檚 enough romance. [鈥 Another girl told me to lick her, and I asked her 鈥榃hy do you want me to lick you?鈥� She said that she wanted me to lick her private parts. Are those places licked? [鈥 Those things are things that people see on TV, let us leave them to the people on TV.

Figure 1: Pipeline

The burden of economic and sexual performance was not only felt by poorer migrant men though. Rather, as shown by articles in Kenyan newspapers (see, for example, and ), it is a nationwide pandemic affecting men from different classes. On a two-day long men鈥檚 meeting on the slopes of Mt. Kenya in mid-2022 which I attended and which was organized by Chomba Njoka and the self-help book authors and masculinity consultants Silas Nyanchwani and Jacob Aliet, for instance, a male lawyer, a psychologist, and, among others, a land surveyor lamented about similar issues. Sitting around a bonfire drinking cold beer in Mt. Kenya鈥檚 damp night, one man after the other told a story about a girlfriend who cheated with a financially better-off man, a wife who emptied the marital home of all valuable commodities and left with the children, or young women who come to Nairobi to be seduced by the city鈥檚 material promises and men in suits with 鈥榙eep pockets鈥� who flock the bars of places like Pipeline looking for teenage girls with dreams of big cars, shiny clothes, and expensive hair pieces. Initially the stories were narrated with hesitance, one could feel that the men telling them were afraid to be blamed. Was I not man enough to provide for a family? Was I responsible for my wife leaving me? Yet, soon and after more and more of us had told similar stories, we broke out in cathartic laughter after another man had told us about another ridiculous incident in his life. Maybe, we began to think, it was not our fault, but whose fault then was it?

Figure 2: Men鈥檚 meeting in central Kenya

鈥楴airobian girls, man, acha tu (Kiswahili, 鈥榡ust leave it鈥�)! If some hapless guy with disposable income and sensible behavior shows some interest, the girl will put her acting mask on, and can easily fool the man proper. Nothing wrong with that, as life is a game. You play. They play. We play each other鈥�, writes Silas Nyanchwani in his book 50 memos to men (2021: 104), a collection of his Facebook posts on gender relations in contemporary Nairobi. The first time I met Silas in a caf茅 in Nairobi鈥檚 central business district, he, a calm and soft-spoken guy over two meters tall and father of a girl, told me that men had been left behind in Kenya鈥檚 economic and cultural development of the last two decades, thereby perpetuating local discourses about the 鈥樷��. Most development aid interventions were , and women were increasingly empowered economically. Who, however, was there to tell men what to do, to give men a voice and guidance? Jacob Aliet, an imposing man with an authoritative appearance, shared Silas鈥� sentiment. Known as a writer of Sci-Fi novels, many of his male friends had shared stories with him about the pressure to provide, the burden of performance, women鈥檚 ungratefulness, and men鈥檚 inability to know how to respond to what women and society demands of them after which Jacob decided to write the book Things our fathers did not tell us. Unplugged. From comforting lies to cold hard truths (2022) that, according to has helped many male readers to find relief and new hope by getting guidance on what it means to be a man in contemporary Kenya.

Figure 3: Gym sign in Pipeline: men as strong, stoic, prudent providers.

Yet, neither Silas Nyanchwani nor Jacob Aliet rule over the booming Nairobian masculinity consultancy scene where one can find a controversial figure such as former radio host among more moderate voices such as who counsels men and couples or who openly talks about his experience as a male rape victim and advises men to allow themselves to be vulnerable. The most famous personality, however, is who gives advice to Kenyan men and through other social media channels. Although Jacob Aliet, Silas Nyanchwani, former writer of the column 鈥樷�� in the newspaper The Nairobian now written by , and Amerix align with the global red pill movement, part of a global backlash against feminism or some of feminism鈥檚 social consequences, they do so to different degrees. While they all agree that the world has become 鈥榝emicentric鈥� and that men need to swallow the red pill to be 鈥榰nplugged鈥� from the false truths of feminism, Amerix has a more radical take on Kenya鈥檚 gender relation and offers answers that aim at changing not only the totality of his adepts鈥� daily lives but also openly admire Paul Kagame鈥檚 autocratic style of leadership and dreams of a world where strong 鈥楢frikan鈥� men subdue obedient women. In his chat groups, young Kenyan are not allowed to write using 鈥榚ffeminate鈥� emojis or incorrect English while dreaming about a reinstated patriarchal order and implementing Amerix鈥� advice by practicing semen retention to accumulate testosterone, fasting for days, lifting weights, and avoiding industrial processed food as well as imperial ideology spread in NGOs and churches by white men and women. Being pressured to perform economically and sexually, young men all over Nairobi beg Amerix to 鈥榗ontinue to mislead鈥� them by warning against get-rich-quick schemes and by ridiculing s.

Figure 4: Amerix: a men鈥檚 movement with over one million followers on Twitter

It would be easy to just ridicule the absurdity of some of Amerix鈥� advice or to call out Jacob Aliet and Silas Nyanchwani as toxic men. Yet, over one million people are following Amerix on Twitter, and both Jacob Aliet and Silas Nyanchwani are rather typical Kenyan men who, despite boasting patriarchal inclinations, care about their children, girlfriends, and wives. None of the men I met on the slopes of Mt. Kenya dreamt of enslaving women, and all agreed that a return to their fathers鈥� worlds was not desirable. However, after three years of fieldwork, I can count on one hand those men who confided to me that they are in happy relationships or marriages. Heterosexual Kenyan men, in other words, are unhappy, and, as attested for by Amerix鈥� fame, they are desperately looking for explanations for their experience of economic, romantic, and sexual pressure and the impasses they find themselves in financially, socially, and with regard to their relationships with women more generally. Many Kenyan men feel sidelined and, despite their willingness and attempts to provide, are unable to meet what they imagine to be or what sometimes indeed are the unrealistic expectations of women which compels them who seem to be the only voices resonating with the problems they face 鈥榦n the ground鈥�. Mark, an unemployed Luo migrant with a degree in physics who survived by writing essays for Chinese students with substandard English skills, for instance, responded to my question about the role of Amerix in his life with excitement:

Amerix is talking about why shouldn鈥檛 we be us? Why do you have to be dictated by a woman? Let the woman decide whatever you have to do. Be away from friends, she does not want. Do whatever she wants? You see that? So, we were like, give us this shit. [鈥 From the first day, we were all into Amerix鈥� thing. [鈥 there are some people who argue that Amerix is misleading the men, but then if you understand what Amerix is talking about, it is the real thing, the real situation on the ground.

In such an impasse, western journalists, social scientists, and practitioners from development aid should ask themselves what social, economic, and conceptual benefits for both men and women could be generated from working with more moderate masculinity consultants such as Silas Nyanchwani. Though they neither agree to notions of the social construction of gender nor share beliefs in the necessity to dismantle all patriarchal gender roles, they have access to the minds and hearts of Kenyan men such as Wellington, Mark, or Samuel. Although I disagree with the red pill movement鈥檚 evolutionary naturalization of gender roles and its simplistic use of biological assumptions 鈥� such as female hypergamy 鈥� to explain human social relations and strongly believe that a more political-economic approach would allow men and women to attack some of their common enemies who deprive them of economic development, I also think that honest debates that include the voices of various masculinity consultants could open a conceptual space beyond, on the one hand, the capitalistic and colonial notion of the male breadwinner and provider that necessarily produces pressured men who desperately want but cannot provide for their loved ones due to structural conditions of Kenya鈥檚 capitalistic economy, and, on the other hand, locally largely still unacceptable notions of men as vulnerable and dependent that only resonate with a few middle-class Kenyans. Such progressive, open-minded, and creative debates might help to repair what appears to be a social constellation characterized by mutual misunderstanding and heightened mistrust between men and women.

is currently a senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. He is the co-editor of the blog series 鈥楶ressure in the City鈥� and currently finalizing a book manuscript entitled 鈥楳igrants and Masculinity in High-Rise Nairobi. Under Pressure in an African Capital鈥�.

By Mario Schmidt,听Christiane Stephan, Kawikya Judith Musa听补苍诲 Eric M. Kioko听

Panic! Rush! Empty sacks! Women running! Big cars passing by! Boom! All women stare at the same spot on the road: a car passing by. Within seconds, many of them rush towards it. One who was selling roasted maize, water and a few more goods leaves her place of work opposite the road and runs towards the vehicle as well. Panic and competition are in the air. Within a few minutes, the women come back, discouragement and lack of morale palpable in their bodies and faces. 鈥淲hat happened?鈥�, one of those left seated asks. 鈥淭he driver didn鈥檛 think we were this many, so he closed the car麓s door and left!鈥�

This scene gives insight into dynamic moments taking place along the roadsides of Nairobi鈥檚 affluent suburbs since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. It displays the intensified competition characterizing the job market for informal house helps looking for work and financial or material assistance. Suburbs like Kileleshwa or Kilimani present an unusual picture to those accustomed to see African cities through photographs of slums and shantytowns. Yet, here we have elegant residential areas mushroomed in leafy environments, roads with pedestrian walkways for cycling and jogging, cosmopolitan coffee joints, posh malls, and police patrols.

Squeezed within these neighbourhoods, around street corners and road junctions waits the 鈥渙ther鈥� of Nairobi鈥檚 affluent neighbourhoods: people selling boiled eggs, sausages, small 2 kiosks offering biscuits, vegetables and sodas, open-air food joints, and car wash points. These businesses allow the well-off inhabitants of Nairobi鈥檚 West to obtain services and goods at their doorstep. At the same time, the stalls鈥� owners also sell goods and food to construction workers, commuters and, occasionally, one of the women who are the protagonists of our vignette. The latter are gathered in ethnically organized groups of five to twenty and between the ages of twenty and sixty. According to their own reports, their number has kept increasing since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. From early morning to late evening, they seem to idle around along the roads without being engaged in any productive work.

This, however, proves to be a premature assessment. Many of them have developed skills of 鈥溾�� in what Ferguson called 鈥溾��. Knowing how to occupy which road junction and being able to identify and win over a 鈥渂oss鈥� that helps with some money, food or even offering temporary employment are skills needed even more urgently during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Through a combination of remote and on-site ethnography, we have collaborated to gain insight into the everyday realities of these 鈥渞oadside women鈥�. Ethnographic observations and interviews by Judith Kamwikya Musa have allowed us to exchange preliminary ideas about socio-economic transformations in Covid-19 Nairobi. Our data is neither backed up by long ethnographic engagement with these women nor can we provide quantitative data on their 鈥榯rue鈥� numbers or former employment situation. Our goal is more modest. We want to illustrate the highly volatile 鈥渁tmospheres of pressure鈥� that have become prevalent along the roadsides of Nairobi鈥檚 affluent suburbs.

House Helps On The Street – Employers’ Fears And The End Of Economic Relationships 

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the livelihoods of many of these women, who almost exclusively migrated to Nairobi from Western Kenya and Machakos and now live in Kibera, Kawangware or other informal settlements, depended on being house helps in richer homes. Their wages allowed them to pay rent, food and school fees for their children. However, most by employers between March and April 2019, when Covid-19 infection rates started to increase in Kenya. Many employers feared that their house helps would transmit the virus to them, thereby exacerbating stereotypes about unhygienic and irresponsible 鈥榮lum dweller鈥�:

When Corona came [鈥 I was told I will be called [鈥 you cannot stay at home and you have children who want to eat [鈥 I decided to look for a casual job as I wait for the call even if it is washing dishes [鈥 even if I am given at least 200 shillings, I buy flour [鈥 That is how we wake up early and come here [鈥 since March, I have not gotten any job opportunity.

Female, mid-40s, Kileleshwa

The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent containment measures have, as for many other Nairobians and , produced painful times for the women. Socio-economic relations with former employers which have always been precarious and often exploitative can no longer be characterized as reliable. Most importantly, relations have been impersonalized. On the roadside, house helps and 鈥渂osses鈥� no longer meet as social and economic actors who know each other personally. Rather, they now interact as, to a certain extent, personally unknown members of different socio-economic classes who are further unsettled by the potential risks of getting infected with Covid-19.

The roadside women are more and more dependent on what Bornstein has called epitomized in a 100 Kenyan Shillings banknote handed over from one stranger to the other through an open car window. Economic precariousness, pandemic anxieties and the intersect and make women鈥檚 economic future even more unpredictable. Depending on how a day on the roadside unfolds, atmospheres change quickly. From fights and beatings to generous sharing, from shared and painful hunger to light-hearted gossiping.

鈥淚f You See An Old Woman Coming To Find Peace By Sitting By The Road, You Know Things Are Bad鈥� (Female, late 30s, Kilimani) – Competition And Solidarity

Before Covid-19, the roadside was temporarily laid off or newly arrived house helps. Increasing economic pressure and pandemic anxieties of Nairobi鈥檚 middle-class, however, have turned the roadside into the main site of socio-economic activity for more and more women. In their scramble for jobs and material support from well-wishers and employers, women have turned the roadside into an ambivalent space of pressure and relief, inclusion and exclusion, competition and solidarity: 

[Woman 1] We are many groups here, some live in Kibera and others in Kawangware. Everyone knows everyone else鈥檚 face so they chase you away for a while so that you get used to the new life by the road. We have strategic points here where you cannot sit when you are a stranger. [Woman 2] They ensure a new person doesn鈥檛 get anything when an old person [one who has been there for a longer time] has been here. [Woman 1] Here, where we are sitting, we are the ones who accommodate new people because if you鈥檙e lucky you will get, [Woman 3] and if not, you will come here for a whole week and go back home with nothing. [Woman 1] If you feel this place is a loss sitting, you just leave […].鈥�

Group interview, 27th August 2020; 4 women.

The increasing number of house helps does not only decrease the available share for each woman and intensify hierarchies between newcomers and women who have been there for some time. It also scares potential well-wishers as shown by our vignette in which the women did not receive anything due to their number. Well-wishers fear bodies who potentially carry the Coronavirus. They try to avoid contact by commanding women to queue with distance, by telling them to remain seated so that they bring them the share cautiously or, less often, by deciding to give to one woman with the advice to share.

It is crucial to note that competition and solidarity do not exclude but rather seem to complement each other as strategies for navigating pressure. This can be understood considering the social composition of the roadside women. Organized into sub-groups of roughly six to eight women they share the same ethnicity and often know each other from the places where they live. These sub-groups share gossip, give emotional comfort and their members sometimes share money with one another. Collectively keeping a secret about their real situation when going to the richer suburbs day by day, furthermore contributes to a feeling of complicity: 

I tell my children I have gone to work […] if I tell them I go to sit somewhere in the sun the whole day, they will be stressed […] when I go back home with little flour, I tell them that I got a job […] I don’t take porridge as they take, I tell them I will take strong tea where I am going and probably, I don’t even have a single cent.

Female, late 30s, Kilimani

Practices of sharing money or food given by a well-wisher appear to be governed by different rules organized around the acceptance of 鈥渓uck鈥� as the main principle guiding who gets a share of the roadside鈥檚 鈥溾��. Generally, the women should subdivide financial or material assistance received among all women that were present when the transaction happened. The distribution is enforced by social pressure, the hectic atmosphere of all women rushing towards the well-wisher or the place where the transaction happened and the threat of violence.

Due to the high number of women, however, food as well as money can only be subdivided reasonably until further dividing equals giving out nothing. In most cases, the majority of women therefore do not get anything. The 鈥渓imited goods鈥� available on the roadside put pressure on the groups to not accept further members and the women are aware that the situation needs to change soon. Some, e.g., already report about what could be called a charity fatigue:

With the extended period of Covid-19, the well-wishers have reduced in numbers. When Corona began in March and April, you could see two in a week but these days [August], it can even take two weeks without anything.

Female, late-40s; Lavington.

While the house helps stand out from the neighbourhood麓s residents in several ways, there is one aspect we want to highlight. Unlike the well-wishers and 鈥渂osses鈥�, the roadside woman seems to undermine the dictate of 鈥渟ocial distancing鈥�. She strengthens social ties that have not been cut and attempts to create new bonds with women who share her struggle. It would be dangerous to stereotype her as a Covid-19 heroine that survives the pandemic鈥檚 precarious conditions. We do not know how her story continues, but it will most probably involve further navigating socio-economic landscapes of ambiguity: facing emotions of fear, hope, desperation and affection, performing practices of care, competition and calculation, invoking well-wishers, God and luck.     

Mario Schmidt is Postdoctoral researcher at Collaborative Research Centre 鈥淔uture Rural Africa鈥� and a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities, University of Cologne. He tweets at .

Christiane Stephan is a postdoctoral researcher in human geography at the Department of Geography at University Bonn, Germany. She tweets at .

Kawikya Judith Musa is a community development practitioner and first degree finalist at the Department of Environmental Studies (Community Development), Kenyatta University, Nairobi.

Eric M. Kioko is a lecturer at the Department of Environmental Studies and Community Development, Kenyatta University, Kenya. 

This research was funded under the Argelander Grant scheme by Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms-University Bonn in the project 鈥淐ontending with COVID-19 shock in selected African countries: Micro-level evidence from Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Namibia鈥� managed by Christiane Stephan and Emmanuel Rukundo.

By Mario Schmidt, Eric Kioko, Evelyn Atieno Owino and Christiane Stephan

Everyday economic life in Nairobi has been transformed following the COVID-19 containment measures installed by the Kenyan government. In the immediate aftermath of Kenya鈥檚 first case reported on 13th March 2020, President Uhuru Kenyatta shut down air travel, introduced a nationwide curfew for the night hours, introduced a mask requirement, reduced passenger numbers in public transport, closed schools and institutions of higher learning and restricted social gathering. These measures set in motion transformations that span across various networks and scales of the urban. In order to analyze the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on urban households, we have teamed up with five Kenyan colleagues who conducted over two hundred qualitative interviews in different locales of Nairobi and Nakuru. In Nairobi, our assistants, who made sure that measures of COVID-19 containment and personal safety were respected, worked in the informal settlement Kibera, the low-income tenement settlement Pipeline (Embakasi), and Kileleshwa, home to richer Nairobians and expats. Our research assistants interviewed Nairobians from the age of twenty to over eighty years. Among the respondents were migrants and people born in Nairobi, casual, unemployed and laid-off workers, maids, housewives, Uber drivers, white collar workers, shop owners, club bouncers, artists, daycare owners, tailors who found a new job producing face masks, waiters, chefs as well as people employed by NGOs. 

In this and the next blog, we want to offer some preliminary reflections on these interviews that have been conducted in English, Kiswahili, Dholuo, Kikamba and the informal Sheng. We do not aim to offer a comprehensive analysis of a capitalist African metropolis during a pandemic. Rather, we want to provide glimpses into the everyday lives of Nairobians engaged in different forms of making ends meet. One common thread, however, crystallized quickly: Economic pressure has become almost unbearable. Many of our respondents report financial losses exceeding 50 % of their pre-Corona income. Skipping meals and sleeping hungry has become the norm and most of our interviewees mention an increase in sleeplessness, 鈥榙eep thoughts鈥� or stress-related development of ulcers. Out of over two hundred respondents, only a handful reported that they have not experienced drastic changes in their economic situation. At the same time, the virus itself has left remarkably few marks in our respondents鈥� lives. Few report knowing infected persons or someone who has died from Covid-19. This corresponds with the official data released by the Kenyan government which, as of 18th September 2020, has reported 650 Covid-19 deaths. During a comparable time span of five months, roughly , and . 

鈥淟iving in Nairobi is All About Money and If You Don’t Have Money, You Live A Life of Loan鈥� [male, 42, Pipeline1] – Landscapes of Debt and Social Distancing

Places like Kibera, home to over half a million Kenyans who live in close social as well as spatial proximity to one another, and Pipeline, one of sub-Saharan Africa鈥檚 , have always been characterized by landscapes of debt, i.e. intricate and carefully balanced webs of credit and debt relations that organize social and spatial relations across networks of friends, family members and colleagues. These landscapes have massive effects on Nairobi鈥檚 material infrastructure and the ways people move and socialize with one another. Informal vendors who take mobile loans in the morning and pay them back by night with money from customers whose husbands have left them 100 Kenyan Shillings to prepare dinner; shop owners who have a balanced portfolio of customers paying cash and customers taking soft loans as well as matatu drivers and mobile money agents who maintain complex rural-urban networks of assistance with food being sent from the shores of Lake Victoria and money through mobile phones the other way. Wherever you look, debts and obligations crisscross social, spatial as well as ethnic boundaries.

Figure 1: Interior Street of Pipeline, Embakasi

Our interviews give unsettling testimony of how the measures put into place to fight the spread of the Coronavirus have destabilized these landscapes of debt. The political response to the Corona pandemic led to an economic shock. Because of this shock, carefully orchestrated economic relations have been brought to their limits. People no longer know where to find money to pay back a loan or debt. As a consequence of this general attack on carefully balanced systems of economic entrustment, we furthermore observe changes in social relations and new formations of sociality that we summarize under the slogan of an increasing social atomization leading to an overburdening of the nuclear family. 

The example of a 27-year old woman living in Pipeline who felt coerced to conceal from her husband that she assists a friend with some food lays bare an atmosphere of mistrust in which helping someone risks being interpreted as a threat by someone else. Giving to someone has become stealing from a third person: 鈥淚 have to steal so that I can help her鈥� (female, 27, Pipeline). Other respondents contemplated 鈥榢illing themselves and their loved ones鈥� such as a mother of seven in her thirties living in Kibera. She used to work as a casual laborer in the house of a government official in nearby Langata but lost her job. Her husband, also recently unemployed and regularly drinking 肠丑补苍驳鈥檃补 (illegally brewed alcohol), started physical fights with her which lead our respondent to think about buying poison to kill herself and her children in order to let the stress and pressure disappear. A 36-year old father of two who lost his job in a tourist company saw no other solution to escape his debt collectors than faking his death: 

The people from the app called me, and I refused to pick the phone. I then gave the phone to my friend […] [He] told the person on the phone that I鈥檓 at the city mortuary so that they could stop calling me [鈥 so he told the guy to also help in contributing money towards my funeral arrangements [鈥. From then, they have never called me.鈥�

(Male, 36, P2.)

Mobile loan apps such as Zenka, Branch, , , and Safaricom鈥檚 recently introduced continuous overdraft service are increasing pressure on debt defaulters. At the same time, new credit requests are blocked as one of our respondents who works for a digital banking service company and restructures loans confirmed. Our respondent鈥檚 attempt to continue living a peaceful and humane life by pretending to be dead epitomizes one of our blog鈥檚 main observations. Carefully established and maintained social relations with neighbors, family members, and colleagues as well as more spontaneous forms of sociality have disappeared or crumbled in the wake of the measures put into place to curb the spread of Covid-19. This development is aptly summarized in the words of another interviewee who had already sold his furniture and most personal belongings. He remained with his bed and a single suitcase that he kept packed in order to move out quickly if he were to be thrown out by his landlord. For him, sociality itself was no longer within reach. In his eyes, the whole world had turned against him: 鈥淚 feel like the whole world is just against me, […] everybody is just an enemy鈥� (24, male, P3). 

Figure 2: Street in Pipeline during the evening hours

The Corona pandemic鈥檚 political reaction has transformed , i.e. the ability to gain and benefit from large and deep social networks into what we tentatively call poverty-in-people. Nairobians are forced to invent and enact practices of 鈥榮ocial distancing鈥� that are not medically induced. They switch off their phones to avoid being called by debt collectors or friends and relatives asking for money; they walk around in the neighborhood instead of going home to avoid conflict with their spouses or other family members; they lock themselves in their houses to cry; they contemplate suicide; they send their children to the rural area; they no longer knock on their neighbors鈥� doors as they expect the neighbors to expect that they want money; they carefully choose new routes every day to avoid being spotted by a shop owner who wants them to pay back a soft loan; they put on masks so that creditors do not recognize them on the streets. While we are aware that not all these strategies are new, we want to emphasize the scale at which they take place. The increase in practices of avoiding social contacts to ward off economic claims has multiple effects, out of which we want to highlight one in the next section: an increase in gender-based violence and changing gender roles.

鈥淎 Lot of Women are Screaming at Night鈥� [male, 40-50, Kibera1] – Gender-Based Violence and Ambiguous Arrangements of Care 

The practices of social distancing mentioned in the last section lead to an over-burdening of the social unit living together under one roof which often consists of the nuclear family, i.e. husband, wife, and children who have been sent home from school since the beginning of the pandemic. Especially in Pipeline, the nuclear family, being squeezed into less than ten or fifteen square meters, has become the main functioning social unit under constant danger to be dissolved by impatient landlords who threaten to cut off electricity, lock tenants out of their house and auction off their goods. This tragic emergence of the nuclear family intensifies conflicts and generates new but ambiguously viewed relations of care. Images of the husband as 鈥減rovider鈥� are destabilized and lead to increased gender-based violence and mounting pressure on both partners to find money. At the same time, some of the men who have been laid off report that they have more time to spend with their children. While most enjoy this, some also voice shame, such as a 35-year old man whose employee had stopped paying him in March. He felt that friends would start to look down upon him because he spends most of his time indoors with his daughter. Such an emasculating gaze is frequently projected by husbands onto their wives as shown by a respondent who reported to have felt 鈥榝orced鈥� to slap his wife: 

“When I come back to the house, let鈥檚 say, I don鈥檛 come with meat in over a week now that鈥檚 a problem [鈥 because she asks me what kind of a man am I who can鈥檛 provide for his family [鈥 so that one also gives me psychological stress because even with the vegetables I provide daily I think she should understand that times are hard. […] I slapped her but not in front of the kids, I waited for the kids to go play and had to remind her that the house she is living in I鈥檓 the one paying the rent [鈥 and she doesn鈥檛 know what I have to go through to let her reside with me in that house [鈥 so it was just a reminder that I鈥檓 frustrated.” 

(Male, 35, P4.)

In other interviews, we came across reports of an increase in arguments, physical fights, and suspicion of infidelity. One of our respondents, e.g., had sent his wife and daughters to the rural area in order to ease the financial pressure in the city only to thereby increase his psychological stress. His wife being in the rural area triggered fears about other men taking advantage of the situation: 

“Relations at home have changed because since my wife went home in July I don’t have hopes of getting the fare to follow her there […] and if you don’t go to your place know that the neighbor does and can buy flour there […]. These motorbike people are just nearby with money, and if they lie to your wife, you can get a disease that is not yours.”

Male, 42, P1.

Practices that aim to reduce the economic pressure have had fundamental effects on wider social relations and have changed arrangements down to the nuclear family. Reducing social contacts to a minimum to avoid debt collection or ward off new demands has introduced new pressure on intimate relations between spouses and parents and children.

Will the Pressure Ever End?

At the end of our interviews, we asked respondents how they picture their lives after Corona. In contrast to their assessment of the present, which was almost uniformly negative, many respondents looked with hope into the future while a few considered the pandemic as an incident changing their lives forever. A 31-year old electrical engineer who had come to Nairobi with hopes of a better life, e.g., told us about his plans to return to his rural home, thereby giving an example of what Dauti Kahura has called 鈥溾��:&苍产蝉辫;

“In my life, I have made a decision that if the pandemic ends or if the lockdown ends, I think it will be better if I go back home because with this unpaid leave getting back to work will not be easy [鈥. I have lost hope, once lockdown is over, I will have to go back home and rest before coming back [鈥”

(Male, 31, P5)

Others see opportunities emerging after the Corona pandemic or interpret the pandemic as a teaching lesson that enforced their belief in the need to be self-employed and independent: 鈥淲hat corona has taught us is that you should have your own business [鈥, you should have your own where you get income even if its 50 bob per day鈥� (male, 28, P6). Some also voiced hope that the pandemic will trigger lasting changes in the educational and health sector: 

“If you see the educational department. They must increase their number of classes in schools, the desk they are supposed to add to enable them to keep the one meter social distance; meaning they will have to employ many teachers. And also now when you go to the health sector. You hear from the news they are trying to add some beds, some machines. It will be a greater change. [鈥 Kenya is supposed to learn that we are supposed to make our health facilities the best one so that anyone can be treated everywhere”

(Male, 20-30, K2)

Even those who were optimistic that life would return to what people were used to before Corona expect a long and arduous journey: 鈥淲e have lost a lot [鈥 so it will be very difficult to recover what we have lost鈥� (male, 28, P7). For the majority, economic pressure is expected to be around for long. They have already accepted that financial struggle, debts, and shifting social relations will have long-lasting effects no matter when the pandemic ends.

Mario Schmidt is Postdoctoral researcher at Collaborative Research Centre 鈥淔uture Rural Africa鈥� and a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities, University of Cologne. He tweets at .

Eric M. Kioko is a lecturer at the Department of Environmental Studies and Community Development, Kenyatta University, Kenya. 

Evelyne A. Owino is a research consultant with National Crime Research Center with a M.A. in International Relations from the United States International University of Africa, Nairobi.  

Christiane Stephan is a postdoctoral researcher in human geography at the Department of Geography at University Bonn, Germany.