AO: Page 453 of Carotenuto and Luongo (2005) highlights other libraries and archives that could be of interest to researchers in Nairobi. As an extension of this exhibit, Trevas and I are working on a crowdmap of some of these research resources in the city.
The University of Nairobi library system holds numerous archival and secondary sources of interest to historians. ...
The Daily Nation library is an excellent resource for contemporary newspaper articles and photographs from one of the most highly circulated papers in sub-Saharan Africa. Articles have been clipped and filed thematically, thus providing researchers with files containing numerous articles arranged in chronological order. ...
The McMillan Library, located one block from the Nation Centre, has an extensive collection of vernacular and colonial-era newspapers. ...
The libraries of the British Institute in Eastern Africa (BIEA) and the Institut Francais de Recherche en Afrique (IFRA) are the best resources for African studies monographs and journals in Nairobi. ...
IFRA is housed in Maendeleo House on Monrovia Street, a short walk from the University of Nairobi main campus and the KNA. ...
AO: As the paragraph below describes, the process of signing up to become a reader of the archives is quite straightforward. The fee is 1,500 KES for foreign researchers for the year.
Unlike the national archives of its East African neighbors, the KNA is a truly public institution that does not require that users hold a research permit in order to read documents. KNA readers' cards are available in the search room for 50 Kenyan Shillings (about 65 US cents), renewable each year. A photo I.D. and a passport-size photo are required for issuing the card. The search room is located upstairs and is open from 8:30am- 4:30pm, Monday to Friday, and from 8:30am-1pm Saturdays. New read- ers should inform the receptionist at the main entrance that they would like to visit the search room.
AO: The sentiments articulated below echo what my ongoing fieldwork has also revealed, particularly surprising given that I have been engaging with researchers in Kenya. Even amongst local and foreign researchers based in Nairobi, KNA is not seen as a go-to resource. During my visits to the archives, the majority of users appear to be Kenyans from media and think tank organizations.
...the archives remain largely unknown and vastly underutilized by the majority of the Kenyan public. Staff members state that few of the thousands of people passing by the KNA each day have any idea of what the archives are or what they can offer. Indeed, on explaining that they do research at the KNA, the authors have been asked by countless Kenyans, "Where are the archives? What do they do there? Who can use them?" Even students from the University of Nairobi, located scant blocks from the KNA, rarely use the archives' resources. Unfortunately, there are very limited resources for outreach and publicity, restricting the staff's best efforts to market the KNA.
AO: Carotenuto and Luongo (2005) point to the Mau Mau reparations and Maasai Land treaty as two key reasons why members of the public, even those who may be illiterate, have been frequenting the archives.
In the last few years, members of Kenya's public have increasingly drawn on the KNA's resources to do their own historical research about two contentious issues: Mau Mau reparations and the Maasai Land treaty. In the wake of heated international discussion and popular dis- course about the possibility of the British Government offering repara- tions to Mau Mau detainees, elderly ex-detainees and their relatives are visiting the KNA with the hope of finding family names in the colonial detention records, thus making them eligible for reparations if such funds indeed become available. Second, with the recent expiration of the con- troversial Maasai Land treaty, an agreement through which the British colonial government acquired Maasai lands for settler development for a period of 99 years, elders from Maasai communities are searching the KNA collection for information to aid their campaigns to reclaim the leased lands.
AO: This quote from Carotenuto and Luongo (2005) continues to hold true today - perhaps even more so - and speaks to me of the requisite time and level of commitment that the archival researcher must have in order to develop the expertise and patience to search the archives.
... the authors experienced the researcher's chagrin of finding that "key source" in the bound or computer indexes, only to discover that it was improperly cataloged or missing altogether. New researchers should be warned that it is necessary to devote a considerable amount of time to learning how to locate and identify sources, and that they should be prepared for disappointments.
AO: This quote to me highlights the importance of avoiding progress narratives because in the nearly 15 years since this article was written by two American graduate students, the Kenya National Archives that one encounters today contradicts this rosy picture of it as the "leading archives on the continent." Without discounting the good work that they continue to do, the one or two person team available to assist in retrieving materials using the one functioning computer now seems in stark contrast to the ninteen trained archivists described in 2005. This highlights to me the importance of government, funder, and community support for the un-sexy and "un-innovative" maintenance work over the long-term.
Since its move to Moi Avenue, the KNA has developed into one of the leading archives on the continent. Today the institution employs nineteen trained archivists and an overall staff of close to 100, responsible for maintaining over 1.5 million documents along with thousands of microfilms and photographs. (2005, page 447)
AO: This excerpt from Carotenuto and Luongo (2005) highlights the reuse of the physical infrastructure of the bank to store archival materials instead. How did existing infrastructure of the bank shape the design, perceptions and use of the archives?
During the late 1970s the KNA moved from its basement beginnings to its present location on Moi Avenue. The current facility first housed the Bank of India and later the Kenya Commercial Bank. Not surprisingly, the building's architecture suggests a depository of currency much more than a repository of information. Indeed, documents are currently stored in bank vaults throughout the building's eight repository rooms, and the most highly-sensitive documents in the KNA's collection are secreted away in the old bank's "strong room," which can be accessed only by the director of the KNA.
AO: According to this excerpt from Carotenuto and Luongo (2005), KNA's work in the first few decades of the newly independent Kenya was to repatriate documents removed from Kenya by the outgoing British regime.
...despite greater government support, the KNA grew slowly during the 1960s and 1970s. During these decades the institution's primary goal was to identify, catalog, and repatriate colonial gov- ernmental documents removed from Kenya at the end of the colonial period by the outgoing British regime.
AO: This quote from Carotenuto and Luongo (2005) frames the archives and those who use it as part of "resurgent civil society" and positions the archives as a space where the politics of knowledge (production) are recognized and contested by "ordinary citizens" (through their use of the historical sources and production of new knowledge?).
KNA is equally a part of a resurgent civil society in which ordinary citizens increasingly assert their rights to gain access to information and recognize their stakes in the use and production of knowledge. (page 446)
AO: This opening paragraph of the paper describes where the archives are situated within the Central Business District of Nairobi (CBD). Indeed, the everyday noises of passing matatus, preachers and vendors on the street below continues to characterize the experience of working from the second floor of the archives building.
Situated at the edge of the central business district in downtown Nairobi, the Kenya National Archives (KNA) is a reservoir and living example of historical and ethnographic knowledge. Straddling the boundary between "tourist" Nairobi and "real" Nairobi, the KNA inhabits a space that transcends both function and class in a cosmopolitan, urban setting. The archives look out on the landmark Hilton Hotel, together with the swarms of up-market tourists and wealthy locals it attracts. On the KNA's rear, Tom Mboya street serves a modern gateway to the crushing, chaotic avenues and alleys that the vast majority of Nairobi's citizens tread daily as they depart from and return to the stark realities of Nairobi's eastern slums. Engulfed by the wailing horns of passing matatus and the rhythmic calls of street hawkers, the spaces inside and outside the archive offer a rich terrain for social scientists interested in both contemporary and historical Kenya.