Walking Majengo

Walking Majengo

Presenting pasts, part of Absentpresence.org, explores histories and relations of coexistence between Christians and Muslims in Pumwani Majengo, Nairobi’s first estate for Africans built during the colonial era. With its history of mobility and settlement, trade and transit, Majengo has always been a religiously and ethnically diverse urban centre in a country popularly seen as Christian and rural, and beset with ethnic tensions. The area is changing rapidly, unsettling relations of coexistence and sedimenting growing inequality. Inspired by my walks around the area, presenting pasts aims to capture visually and aurally the textures and sounds of everyday life, conveying the phenomenological experience of being there. Drawing on this digital project, I reflect on walking as an ethnographic method and a place-making practice in this informal settlement.

Leslie Fesenmyer is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on migration, religion (Pentecostal Christianity and, more recently, Islam),…