"Hey Ryan, I have some trivia for you," Lisa said. "How old do you think Nairobi is?"

"Hmm, I don't know," I replied. "Maybe 700 years?"

"Nope! It's only 100 years old," she told me. "In the 1800's this area was just a swamp."

Nairobi is the capital of Kenya and it is the 4th largest city in Africa. There are somewhere around four million people living in Nairobi. I was amazed that it was so new! Lisa told me that Nairobi started as a small supply town for the railroad. Without the railroad, Nairobi might have never come to exist.

In 1896, when construction on the railroad started, the British controlled much of East Africa, including Kenya and Uganda. After the British found the source of the Nile at Jinja, Uganda, they decided to build a railroad connecting Uganda to the Indian Ocean. The railway would act as a supply line. The British would be able to more easily transport materials and machinery for new construction in Uganda. They would also be able to transport Ugandan products like tea and coffee to the coast. Before the railroad, all materials had to be carried by ox-drawn wagon.