June 11th, 2012 
Emily 
My most overwhelming first impressions of Nairobi are centered on the smells. As my friend Julie pointed out to me, the U.S. is so sterile. People wear deodorant; we clean ourselves, our clothes, and our homes obsessively. Our trash is stored in dumpsters and cans and taken far away to decompose. My husband puts it like this, “At home, I never smell anything, and here I can smell all sorts of stuff.” Touche.
Life is smelly here. You can see black car exhaust escaping from the tail pipes of buses. You can obviously smell it too, along with the trash that someone around the corner is burning. The sidewalks collapse into knee-deep gutters, where food wrappers and grass cuttings float in greasy rain water. A short walk leaves my nose running and my throat scratchy.
Body odor is a prevailing scent on the sidewalk and in stores. It’s not gross, but it is strange to someone not used to smelling other people. I can see why people are sweating; it’s warmer and more humid here than I expected. And I guess it makes me feel less conscious about my own sweating.
The grocery store smells like a cat died behind the milk section and no one did anything about it. Needless to say, we haven’t bought any milk yet, although the smell permeates the entire store. The grocery store scents have migrated back to our house with our groceries. Apparently Kenyans like their fruit extra sweet, which means extra ripe. The area around our fruit bowl has that sickeningly sweet smell of fruit on the edge of rotting. Other groceries have left a lasting impression too. We didn’t realize that a jar of hot sauce we had bought had started to ferment. When my husband opened it, it released a potent hot pepper gas that left us coughing, and laughing. If you know my husband, you know that he still used the fermented sauce to top off his food.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about how songs always conjure up memories of places I’ve traveled, but now I wonder if smells are just as powerful. What do you think?
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Perhaps you will miss those Nairobi smells when you return to the States. I gagged at the thought of your description as I read. I hope that is the most offensive experience you and hubby have while in Nairobi!
Thanks, Janet. Me too!
The thought of the “richness of aroma” makes me swoon and not in a good way. LOL! Actually, my experience in mainland China was similar but add very strong, burning incense. Are there farmer’s markets/outdoor markets where fresh fruit and veggies are not quite so ripe?
I hope the incense smelled nice, at least! We saw a market near our apartment, but not sure how safe it is because it backs up into one of the slums. For now, I breathe out of my mouth and make my husband buy the meat from the butcher (That’s where it really smells!)
I so enjoy reading your posts and how much the culture is different from our own. I think it would be a well deserved eye opener for all Americans to travel to a third world country where trash is not hauled a way and never to be seen again and where water does not come on damand and even when it does it is not usually drinkable.
Smells are so important and defendantly impressionable.
Thank you for sharing your experiences.
All my TLC love!
So true DeAnne, and well said! I wish I could have gone to Ghana with you, we would have had a blast.
Thanks so much for reading.
I miss you, have a great summer!
Hey Emily – I’m right there with you! There is nothing quite like breathing in the odor of burning trash everyday. When I was working out of the Kenya CDC office the rank smell of burning trash from Kabira was pervasive. I hope you’ll soon discover other pleasant scents, wood smoke, roasting meat, rain.
I think we are like-minded and like-sniffing travel souls. R can’t smell a thing and has yet to mention the odors of Kibera wafting over the wall and into the office!
Smells definitely carry a lot of power. I have a very strong sense of smell (I wish my special ability was telekinetic skills, but nevermind), and many of my memories are strongly linked to smell. My mom’s perfume, the awful odor of tar from when rooftops were being fixed in the hot Arizona sun (I was 4), the odd combination of Ben Gay & gun powder from HS track meets. You’ve done a great job capturing the smells of Nairobi with this piece- very descriptive sensory details. Well done.
Oh my goodness, I remember the smell of the starting gun at track meets too! It still makes me nervous for a race! And thanks for the writing compliment, I was excited to write a more sensory/detailed post.
[...] Kenya, where so many things are a little bit (or a lot) different than the U.S., I am hyperaware. I notice the smells, the sounds, and the people around me in much greater detail. These sensory details seep into my [...]
I was laughing out loud literally (you have what the Kenyans would call Mzungu nose) but not to paint a bad picture rosy, does the whole of Nairobi smell like trash, or it is just you not being specific with an area. I lived in Nairobi, in three different areas for 5 years and some of the things you write about I did not experience.
Haha, I’m laughing that there is such a thing called “Mzungu nose”! When we first got here, the whole of Nairobi smelled bad to me, but now I am more used to it. I think I have a sensitive nose, though. Also, in the U.S. we have more regulations on our buses and cars, so I always notice the smell of the exhaust from the vehicles here, since the cars in the U.S. don’t output smoke.