HISTORY OF NAIROBI

Nairobi is the capital city of Kenya and is situated at an elevation of about 1660m in the highlands of the mid-south part of the country. It is the principal economic, administrative, and cultural center and is one of the largest and fastest growing cities in Africa.
Nairobi was a marshy waterhole for the Maasai people and of little interest to the European colonialists until the 19th Century when the spiritual leader of the Maasai negotiated a treaty with the British hence allowing them to march the Mombasa-Uganda railway line right through the heart of the Maasai grazing lands. The area was an essentially uninhabited swamp until in 1899 when a supply depot of the Uganda Railway was built, which soon became the railway's headquarters. The railway brought wealth into the city, which made it grow dramatically.
Nairobi was named after a water hole known in Maasai as Ewaso Nyirobi, meaning "cool waters" which was rebuilt in the early 1900s. It replaced Mombasa as the capital of the British East Africa Protectorate in 1905 and then became Kenya's second largest town after Mombasa.
The city continued to grow under the British rule, and many British people settled within the city's suburbs. This continuous expansion of the city began to anger the Maasai people, as the city was devouring their land to the south. The Kikuyus were also angered and wanted the land returned to them.
In 1919, Nairobi was declared a municipality raising the number of white settlers from 9,000 to 80,000 between the years of 1920 and 1950. White settlers soon began to move into the fertile highlands north of Nairobi leading to friction with the local Maasai and, later, the Kikuyu. Mixed agricultural farms were set up, with coffee plantations established at about the same time by Karen Blixen and her husband, Brer.
Alienated from their land, the Kikuyu people migrated to Nairobi during the same period, became part of the colonial economy, and formed associations whose principal aim was the return of land to the Kikuyu.
Nairobi was granted city status in 1954 and after independence; it grew rapidly putting pressure on the city's infrastructure. Power cuts and water shortages were a common occurrence, though this has changed.
Nairobi then became a tent city and a supply depot and developed into the administrative nerve-centre of the Uganda Railway. It became a convenient place for the Indian railway laborers and their British overlords to pause midway before tackling the ardous climb into the highlands.
The people of Nairobi are a blend of a number of different tribes races that makes it a metropolitan city where whole world community can be found.Nairobi is one of the fast growing cities in the world with a population of about 3.6 million.Manufactures include processed food, textiles, clothing, building materials, communications and transportation equipment.
Nairobi has a large tourist industry such as Kenya National Museum, Nairobi National Park, Bomas of Kenya, Karen Blixen Museum and Paradise Lost that exhibits fossils excavated within East African river valleys, Snake Park, national archives. The city has several educational institutions includind Univarsities, colleges, Technical schools and Indusries.