TREES IN HARMONY:

TREES FIRST, BUILDINGS LATER

By Maritim Kipngetich

Although the University of Nairobi‘s Main Campus is situated at the heart of Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, it has tried its best to make sure that its environment is up to the standard.

Getting a place to grow trees is a tedious activity in every city, but this is not the case at this prestigious university in the country build within the city.

It has made sure that the area under trees is approximately 30 percent of the total area covered by the university.  This percentage is large considering the fact that the campus is situated just within the city centre.

Well, for people who do not know the importance of trees, they see the move taken by the university as silly. This is because the area covered by trees in this institution is enough to accommodate a lot of buildings. For investors, trees are never important. Cutting them down in order to pave way for construction of rental houses is the most tremendous thing.

However, the institution has a big reason why it left a large area for trees.

Meet Dr George Nyabuga, a senior lecturer and environmentalist at the institution, to tell you the reason why the university decided to spare a lot of space for trees.

“Growing trees in a large area inside an institution is never a waste of space. First, trees provide a serene environment. They make buildings look beautiful when they are built sandwiched them.

“The University of Nairobi has been supporting environmental programmes for many years. So growing trees in most part of the institution serves as an example to other institutions who look at buildings to better than trees. Those institutions that install buildings everywhere within their compound and leave no space for even a single tree,” Dr Nyabuga said.

When one visits the University of Nairobi student’s hostels one is welcomed by students sitting under trees. This happens not only during weekends when students are not attending their lectures but also during the days of the week when students are attending their lectures.

Beside every hostel, there must be a large space covered by trees and clotheslines. This has made the student’s residence look awesome. In fact, many students prefer spending their time within their hostel compound to visiting public places like Nairobi Arboretum and Uhuru Park where people within the city like visiting to spend their leisure time.

Indeed, environment is almost in the top list of priorities at the institution. General clean up happens nearly every week at the institution. Watering flowers and cleaning pathways is a thing that has been embraced at the institution.

Students enjoy the university’s environment and they said, seeing dust within the school is a legend. Most of them attest that they cannot polish their shoes throughout the week: they only shine them since there is no dust from their hostels to their lecture halls situated across the famous Uhuru Highway.

University’s administration considers cleanness of the environment as a paramount thing and it promised to continue conserving it. The university’s tree conservation initiative serves as an example to other institutions of learning.