Trading Places

Steve Bloom has ventured away from the centre of the dynamic African metropolis of Nairobi into neighbourhoods where malls and supermarkets have not yet penetrated – a world that is changing fast. Here people buy their daily necessities locally, from small shopkeepers who decorate their hoardings with hand-painted signs. The results are often delightfully quirky – an authentic form of popular street graphics. Store façades are painted with images of goods of all kinds, from light bulbs to cuts of meat. Affirmative messages abound. ‘Beauty is your birthright’ proclaims the Eclipse Hair Salon. ‘Never give up’, urges the Bora-Bora Bar; ‘Life continues’. More than one shack hotel wittily declares itself ‘Hotel Hilton’. ‘Ghetto life is not easy’ says the façade of Abdalla Store. Indeed not: life here is very hard, yet this book is a tribute to the creativity and generosity of the human spirit.