Nairobi of Nairobi's Karen Blixen Museum. Nairobi is also the setting of many of the novels of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Kenya's foremost writer. Nairobi has been the set of several other American and British films. The most recent of these was "The Constant Gardener" (2005), a large part of which was filmed in the city. The story revolves around a British diplomat in Nairobi whose wife is murdered in northern Kenya. Much of the filming was in the Kibera slum. Among the latest Kenyan actors in Hollywood who identify with Nairobi is Lupita Nyong'o. Lupita received an Oscar award for best
History of Nairobi plague and the subsequent burning down of the original town. By 1905, Nairobi was a humming commercial center and replaced Mombasa as capital of the British East Africa. The city expanded, supported by the growth in administrative functions and in tourism, initially in the form of British big game hunting. As the British colonialists explored the region, they began using Nairobi as their first stop. This prompted the colonial government to build several grand hotels in the city for British tourists and big game hunters. Nairobi continued to grow under British rule, and many Britons settled within the city's suburbs.