Inside the murky world of Nairobi’s smoking zones

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figcaption class=”caption” caption–img caption caption–img” itemprop=”description”> A woman stands at a smoking zone in Nairobi, Kenya. Smoking openly on the street can incur a hefty fine. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

At the door are two cigarette sellers, doing a busy trade. Its rare for anyone to buy whole packets. Packs of cigarettes in Kenya are broken up and sold by vendors as single sticks. That makes them cheap for women, children and the poor, despite manufacturers being banned from producing packets of less than 10. One of the two sellers sitting passively inhaling smoke is a woman who taps a packet of 20 and shakes them deftly out, one at a time, exchanging them for small coins. Men buy one, sometimes a couple, sometimes three. They will not all be smoked here. The sellers sit at the large red wooden boxes, with open lids that become the display cabinet. Most popular and cheapest is Sportsman at 100 shillings a pack (75p, 97 cents) or 5 shillings (less than 4p, 5 cents) for a single. Smokers buy sweets too, to take away the smell of tobacco when the worker goes back to the office.

The shed is vile, but few dare smoke even on the pavement outside in the cleaner air in the knowledge that the plain clothed official public health enforcers will be circling, ready to impose fines on anyone they catch. Nairobi city has got tough on smoking. The Kenyan government has banned advertising and marketing and smoking in public places, but it is up to the individual counties to interpret and enforce that and they all do it differently. Nairobi county has cracked down hard. Lighting up on the open street in the city centre can result in a stiff fine of 50,000 shillings (374, $485) or even arrest. But its not so everywhere, or even outside of the city centre.

Yusef, 58 and from Kenyas second city Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast, says people smoke openly in Mombasa. He has been smoking since the 1970s. His 28 year-old daughter died recently from colon cancer. That gives him a different perspective. Im more worried about GM foods, he says.

Outside of the city centre, the restrictions do not appear to be enforced at all. In the High Ridge residential area, a predominantly Indian community, stall holders are grilling corn and frying cassava crisps on the street. Others run the small stalls selling sweets, biscuits, fizzy drinks and cigarettes, openly smoking themselves. People wander along the road with a cigarette between their fingers. A large lorry stops and a man jumps down to buy two sticks, lighting both and passing one to his fellow labourer before they unload.

These stalls are common near schools. A recent report compiled by the Consumer Information Network, a campaigning Kenyan anti-tobacco organisation, with Johns Hopkins University in the US, found such stalls selling sweets and single cigarettes within yards of primary schools across the country.

You wont see an advert for Dunhill or Rothmans in Kenya. At least, nothing that looks like an advert. Advertising and promoting cigarettes has been banned. But everybody knows what the large red wooden boxes and red wooden display trays at stalls at the side of roads contain. Red is the colour of British American Tobacco. The words have been stripped off the red umbrellas that protect street vendors from the sun or patched over, but the colour is a tacit reminder of what they used to say and what is still sold there.

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