One night last week, we watched “Out of Africa”, filmed in 1984, starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. Had we seen it before? Maybe. Who knows?

It’s a beautiful film. At the 1985 Oscars ceremony, it won seven, including best picture. It is based on the writing of Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), a Dane who married a British (?) Kenyan colonist, lived on a farm somewhere between Mombasa and Nairobi for about 15 years, was never really in love with her husband, but fell in love with free spirit Robert Redford (or his real life equivalent), divorced her husband and left Africa after her Redford was killed and her farm taken over by creditors. There you have it. And, oh yes, there was also World War I, and the Germans were in Tanganyika. It was the first two decades of the 20th century.

Africa, in the film at least, was beautiful and fairly empty, except for the wildlife, the natives, and the fuddy-duddy colonists. And Redford and Streep.

I have never been to sub-Saharan Africa, and I guess never will be. People who go as tourists generally go for camera safaris and love it  The politics, the economies, the cities rarely make the news.

Nairobi wasn’t founded until the very end of the 19th century. During the time the film was set, it looked something like this:

By the time I was born, it had grown to a population of about 100,000. But today, Nairobi has about 4,500,000 residents and Kenya has over 50 million. This is contemporary Nairobi.

I don’t know much about Kenya today. My smart phone tells me that the cost of living and inflation are high, as are urban crime rates. Sound familiar? Add  in high unemployment rates, something we don’t have (or maybe we do but it’s hidden because of how we measure employment). And, just like here, it’s apparently safe for tourists more or less.

Kenya and the rest of Africa are becoming more and more central to world economic growth. As they say, Africa is the future. Actually, I am not sure that anyone says that, but they probably do. They should.

I have two personal memories of Nairobi. First, in the 1950s, I was a big fan of Ernie Kovacs. Remember his Nairobi Trio?

Did anyone even think this might not be politically correct?

And then, when I was at Yale at law school, there was this extraordinarily attractive and always dressed to the nines young woman (known then as a girl) who would show up at events now and then, and put everyone in awe. Was she a Yale graduate student (this was before undergraduate Yale went co-ed), a student elsewhere, or what? If I knew them, I don’t remember now. But I learned she was an Ismaili Muslim (think the  Aga Khan), very rich, very smart……and from Nairobi.

My guess is she is no longer in either Nairobi or New Haven. Her name? I don’t think I ever knew it. Her name was not important.