Nairobi, Kenya – Shouts of “Birdman! Birdman!” path 27-year-old Rodgers Oloo Magutha down a avenue within the centre of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
Distributors pause mid-sale, police look away from visitors, and pedestrians abruptly cease to look at the person topped with raptors on his head and shoulders. Kids burst into giggles or shrink again in concern as crowds collect, telephones raised like paparazzi.
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Magutha has lived on Nairobi’s streets for years, one among the many many kids and youth asking for cash from hurried passersby. He blends in with this marginalised group in each manner however one: the wild birds surrounding him.
“Many individuals really feel unsafe when approached by us, they’ll even disguise their telephones,” Magutha says about most people’s response to his avenue household.
“However once they see the birds, every little thing adjustments … They arrive over to pet them, take photographs. Somebody who regarded indignant a second in the past is abruptly smiling.”
Magutha has been rescuing and caring for birds since childhood, and for years on Nairobi’s streets. But he remained a largely obscure determine till final 12 months, when hundreds of younger individuals flooded the central enterprise district to protest in opposition to rising prices and authorities corruption.
Photographs of Magutha went viral, lifting him to native celeb standing because the “Nairobi Birdman”.
Nonetheless, few know the story behind the pictures – considered one of a life formed by loss, adversity and an uncanny companionship with the birds he rescues, a connection that has sustained him by greater than a decade residing on the streets.
‘Hen fanatic’
“I by no means go in search of the birds – they only come to me,” says Magutha, his beanie tilted underneath the burden of a kite perched on his head, one other clinging to his shoulder.
He sits on a roadside in Kayole, a low-income neighbourhood on Nairobi’s edge, the place he not too long ago moved after a useful stranger supplied him shelter. Kids circle him, brushing the kites’ wings earlier than darting off, laughing.
Magutha’s story started in Nakuru, a metropolis within the Rift Valley often known as a birdwatcher’s paradise.
“I used to sneak into Lake Nakuru Nationwide Park and sit by the water, watching flamingos, pelicans and so many different birds,” Magutha says. He would typically pet them, share meals, and felt they trusted him once they stayed calm round him.
“That’s once I turned a chicken fanatic,” he says. Whereas different kids hunted with slingshots, he persuaded them to guard birds as a substitute. At residence, he raised pigeons, chickens, geese and even rescued a flamingo.
However at 13, his mom, who was elevating him alone, died abruptly. Left with out a secure residence, he drifted between relations earlier than ending up on the streets. He survived in Nakuru, Mombasa and Nairobi by asking passersby for assist or promoting plastic bottles and scrap metallic.
In every metropolis, he says, avenue residents gathered round, drawn to him very like the birds. Over time, they turned his household, giving him a way of belonging.
But it surely was in Nairobi, close to Kenya’s Nationwide Archives constructing within the central enterprise district, a standard gathering spot for avenue residents, that Magutha started to construct his world.
Life there, he says, is outlined by battle. “No one involves the streets as a result of they wish to,” Magutha says. “Most of them are traumatised; they’ve been deserted or mistreated.”
A lot of his avenue household are orphans, others escaped tough households, and most arrive weighed down by trauma or neglect. Sleeping tough is especially tough on chilly nights, and medicines are in all places. “Everybody needs an escape. They only sniff it to neglect,” Magutha says about those that inhale mafta ndege, an inexpensive petroleum-based solvent.
The group additionally faces pushback from police. “They at all times chase us away. They beat us as a result of they assume we disturb individuals,” he provides.
But he sees a magnificence in his avenue household that they typically can not see in themselves, and tries to information the youthful ones – educating the youngsters expertise together with studying and writing – and urging them to think about a greater future.
“They must consider in one thing higher, however if you’re on the streets, it’s arduous to think about the rest.”
‘Governor’ of the birds
It was about 4 years in the past, whereas making an attempt to nurture hope the place little appeared to develop, that Magutha says an indication appeared. Beneath a tree on Moi Avenue, he and his avenue household had been sharing donated chips and rooster when a wounded child black kite stumbled into their circle.
Frail and ravenous, with its mother and father nowhere in sight, the chicken accepted items of their meal and climbed onto Magutha’s hand. The 2 shortly shaped a bond.
Months later, he named the chicken Johnson, after Nairobi’s governor, Johnson Sakaja. “As a result of I noticed him because the governor of the opposite birds,” he laughs, as pigeons he has since rescued swoop right down to relaxation evenly on his shoulders.
Assembly Johnson marked a turning level for Magutha, giving him function and easing the melancholy that usually pervades avenue life. “Johnson turned my hope,” he says. Regardless of efforts to launch him again into the wild, the chicken at all times resisted. “So I made a decision to maintain Johnson as a companion as a result of we’ve been by lots collectively,” he says, because the kite flutters onto his head – its acquainted perch. “He’s a giant a part of me now.”
Earlier than lengthy, different injured, sick, or orphaned birds discovered their approach to Magutha. Through the years, he has cared for 5 black kites, crows, an owl, marabou storks and pigeons – nursing them again to well being earlier than releasing them. At Uhuru Park, he teaches them to take their first flights and hunt.
However Nairobi – as soon as celebrated for its lush canopies – is steadily losing its city forests, and with them, the birds’ properties. Complete swaths of timber have been felled for roads and workplace blocks. Authorities body it as financial progress, however conservationists warn of rising temperatures, worsening air high quality and heightened flood dangers.
Every felled tree means nests destroyed and chicks tumbling to the bottom. “When the nests fall, the infants are simply left there,” Magutha explains. “Their moms don’t come again as a result of they assume perhaps a predator attacked them.” To date, he has rescued 4 kites from the wreckage of Nairobi’s disappearing treescape.
The rescued birds, which as soon as additionally included an owl balanced on considered one of his shoulders and a broken-winged marabou stork that consistently trailed him, have made Magutha a spectacle on Nairobi’s streets, drawing a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. Many cease to take photographs or strategy nervously to the touch the birds, with Magutha urging them to let go of their concern.
“I wish to see individuals smiling,” he tells Al Jazeera with a large grin. At Jamia Mosque – town centre’s fundamental mosque – fellow worshippers gave Magutha, who transformed to Islam as a toddler, the nickname Nabi ya Ndege, Swahili for the “chicken prophet”.
“The birds made us much less invisible to individuals,” Magutha says. “And that’s my dream: to make our group seen and to indicate we’re simply as human as anybody else – and never one thing to be feared.”
Going viral
Whereas Magutha and his birds had lengthy turned heads amongst passersby, the June 2024 protests introduced a brand new form of highlight.
Kenya’s youth had been simmering with anger after President William Ruto swept into energy on guarantees of jobs, decrease residing prices and small enterprise loans, solely to scrap subsidies and lift taxes.
On June 18 – the day parliament was to debate a brand new finance invoice – months of on-line outrage spilled into the very streets Magutha calls residence. As police models massed outdoors and demonstrators started to assemble, Magutha woke from his slumber inside an deserted constructing close to the Nationwide Archives.
Although unaware of the deliberate march, he determined to hitch. “I’m an environmentalist and an advocate for avenue households, so once I realized what was occurring, I knew I had to participate. I desire a democratic nation and a greater future for our era,” Magutha says.
When he stepped into the streets with Johnson on his head and two different kites, Jaimie and Jannie, perched on his shoulders, he immediately drew a crowd. Protesters pulled out telephones for selfies, whereas journalists jostled to interview Magutha.
This shortly drew the eye of the police. “After they noticed individuals crowding round me, they assumed I used to be a pacesetter,” he remembers.
Through the days-long demonstrations, which had been met with a brutal police crackdown, Magutha was overwhelmed with wood golf equipment and shot in the head with a rubber bullet, inflicting lasting imaginative and prescient issues. He thinks the officer geared toward Johnson, however the bullet hit him when he moved to guard the chicken.
In one other incident, police fired a tear fuel canister straight at his leg, knocking him to the bottom. Footage shows his raptors clinging fiercely to him, refusing to budge at the same time as rescuers attempt to push them apart.
Magutha’s picture from the protests exploded on-line. His viral fame, nonetheless, introduced little alternative.
“It’s like I turned seen, however remained invisible on the identical time,” he says with a disheartened shrug.
Regardless of the eye, the tough realities of avenue life remained. After the protests, Magutha’s days went again to scavenging for meals or cash, with nights spent curled in a hessian bag on footpaths, in parks, or deserted buildings.
“Whenever you’re on the streets, you may’t be discovered simply,” Magutha says. “It’s arduous to maintain a telephone as a result of individuals steal. So if somebody needs to offer me garments or assist me, they’ll’t discover me.”
His notoriety additionally bred stress amongst his avenue household. “When somebody traits in Kenya, individuals assume there might be goodies,” he explains. “However none of that occurred for me. As a avenue particular person, I didn’t get the identical advantages one other particular person would. Deep down, I really feel responsible – my avenue household thinks I’ve cash, however I’m not serving to them.”
Dreaming massive
Earlier this 12 months, a well-wisher invited Magutha to remain at his residence in Kayole, lending him a telephone and giving him entry to Wi-Fi so he might begin creating social media content material – one thing he had lengthy hoped to do to encourage others together with his ardour for birds and the surroundings.
He created Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok accounts, the place he shares movies of himself together with his birds and paperwork his environmental work – cleansing garbage from the close by Ngong River and planting timber alongside its banks. Neighbourhood kids observe behind him like a second flock, all desirous to act as his cameraman.
However Magutha stays within the thick of battle. Within the central enterprise district, supporters typically donated meat for his birds; in Kayole, he should purchase it himself. To earn cash, he spends his days on the close by dumpsite, sifting plastic from heaps of rotting waste – work that not often brings in additional than $2 a day.
The monetary pressure not too long ago compelled him to launch the marabou stork, the owl, and a number of other kites earlier than he felt they had been prepared.
Magutha now retains simply one of many kites, Jaimie, as a companion for Johnson, and likewise tends to 3 pigeons.
His hardships, nonetheless, haven’t dimmed his ambitions. He typically seems again on the day he rescued Johnson as a reminder.
“[Johnson] was so weak, however remained affected person, trusting somebody would rescue him,” Magutha says, gently lifting the chicken from his head, stroking it with quiet affection.
“That’s how I’m at present – affected person. Johnson was rescued, so perhaps someday I might be, too. I’m simply ready for the appropriate time, trusting the method. He was the primary to indicate me hope that issues in my life might change.”
Magutha goals of someday constructing a shelter in Nairobi – one which rescues each individuals and birds.
“The birds and the individuals I meet on the streets – they’re all in the same state of affairs,” he explains. “Each are in want of assist and care. They’re in the identical battle.”
He imagines an area the place kids from the streets can discover shelter, meals and clothes, and a way of function by caring for rescued birds and the surroundings. “I wish to instil a ardour for the birds on the street kids. I’ll train them in regards to the ecosystem, in regards to the local weather, in regards to the significance of planting timber and cleansing the rivers.
“Once I convey them collectively, it is going to be like a giant household.”
On the coronary heart of this dream is an easy philosophy: love.
“Everybody at all times asks me how I tame these wild birds. It’s simply by exhibiting them love and care,” Magutha says. “Whenever you present them love and make them really feel secure, they provide love again. That’s true for birds – and it’s true for individuals.”
