As Africa's Cities Change, So Does Youth Slang

In the mid-1990s, residents of Nairobi were cautious when traveling through the city's "Rwanda" neighborhoods. Although physically far removed from the genocidal violence in central Africa, this was the area of the Kenyan capital where you were most likely to be mugged or carjacked. A few years later, these areas became known as the "Kosovo" section of the city. By the early 2000s, wandering into one of the "Baghdad" neighborhoods could be iffy.

The frequent shifts in names for areas of town are a product of Sheng, the city's increasingly popular street vernacular that combines both English and Swahili—Kenya's two official languages. A debate has been brewing about it for years: Is Sheng a language or "just" slang? Regardless, tourist translation dictionaries have essentially become useless on the streets of Nairobi because of it.