Kenyatta Avenue

This guide to Kenyatta Avenue in Nairobi centers on Nyayo House, the 27-storey tower built from 1979 as President Daniel arap Moi's monument to his own creed of following in Jomo Kenyatta's footsteps. Behind its ordinary glass and orange concrete, Special Branch officers spent years converting basement rooms reached only through a blocked lift shaft. Civil servants filed in every morning to swear loyalty to an idea of footsteps, unity and obedience, while below them a very different kind of loyalty was being enforced on Wachira Waheire and others like him.