Surprisingly, the unplanned settlement took root. A few years later it was totally rebuilt after an outbreak of plague and the burning of the original town compound. By 1907, it was so firmly established that the colonists took it as the capital of the newly formed "British East Africa" (BEA). Europeans, encouraged by the authorities, settled in large numbers, while Africans were forced into employment by tax demands (without representation) or onto specially created reserves - the Maasai to the Southern Reserve and the Kikuyu to their own reserve in the highlands.

The capital, lacking development from any established community, was somewhat characterless - and remains so. The original centre retains an Asian influence in its older buildings, but today it's shot through with glassy, high-rise blocks. Surrounding the commercial hub is a vast area of suburbs : wealthiest in the west and north, increasingly poor to the south and especially the east, where they become, in part, out-and-out slums.

Names of these suburbs - Parklands, Lavington, Eastleigh, Shauri Moyo, among others - reflect the jumble of African, Asian and European elements in Nairobi's population, none of whom were local. The term "Nairobian" is a new one that still applies mostly to the younger generation. Although it has a predominance of Kikuyu, the city is not the preserve of a single ethnic group, nor is it built on any distinctively tribal land. Standing as it does at the meeting point of Maasai, Kikuyu and Kamba territories, its choice as capital, accidental though it may have been (Kikuyu Limuru and Kamba Machakos were also considered), was a fortunate one for the future of the country.