Uhuru Park

This guide to Uhuru Park in Nairobi asks why, in 1989, the government tried to bury this exact ground under a sixty-storey tower of party offices, a newspaper, a mall and parking for two thousand cars. It first traces how the park itself began as a colonial railway dump, cleared and reshaped into the lake you can see, and opened by Jomo Kenyatta in 1969 as a namesake for freedom. Then it follows the biologist Wangari Maathai's letters of protest, and the afternoon Parliament mocked her and President Moi told her, on this same lawn, to be quiet. Pedal boats still cross that lake while you listen.