They call him ‘Birdman’, and children shout his name along the dusty streets of the Kayole suburb of Nairobi.
To him, that epithet sounds like an affectionate echo or perhaps an ancient call.
Rodgers Oloo Magutha is twenty-seven years old and has two invisible wings that no one has ever sewn on, yet the city recognises him. Vendors stop shouting their prices, policemen look away, children laugh or run away, while above him — on his shoulders, on his head, on his heart — birds alight.
Magutha has been living on the streets for so long that even the wind can no longer count the years. He is one of those children of Nairobi who sleep under streetlights and dream vertically, because there is no room for dreams on the ground. But he is different. He is friends with birds.
He says he doesn't seek them out, they find him.
 
And in an Africa where even hope has stopped knocking, this already seems like a prayer.
As a child in Nakuru, he spied on the sky with the gaze of distracted saints: flamingos like flames on the lake, pelicans like boats. He had nothing, but he had the luxury of understanding that beauty does not ask permission. When his mother died, leaving him alone at thirteen and adrift like a kite without a string, he found refuge in the rustle of wings.
Every city — Nakuru, Mombasa, Nairobi — welcomed him with the same indifference, and he returned the same kindness. Among the rubbish, street children followed him like chicks, and birds, for some reason, chose him.
Then one day, on Moi Avenue, under a tired tree, a small wounded kite stumbled into his life.
‘It was weak, but it had confidence,’ says Magutha. ‘So I named it Johnson, after the governor. Because I saw it as the leader of the other birds.’
Since then, the bird has never left him. It has become his faith, his family, his mirror.
And as the world around him crumbled in the hands of progress — trees felled, nests fallen, children lost — he continued to gather, to save, to believe.

They gave him a name, “Nabi ya Ndege”, the prophet of birds.
And in that word there is more truth than in many sermons.
Because Nairobi — the city that lost its forests and its innocence — stopped for a moment to look at a man with a kite on his head, and for a moment smiled.
Birds, he says, make the invisible visible. And perhaps that is true.
Perhaps every time a passer-by photographs him, even without understanding it, they restore dignity for a second to those who have no home and no face.
Then came the protests.
On 18 June 2024, when the anger of young people shook the city, he was there — with Johnson and two other birds of prey on his shoulders — walking amid tear gas and hope.
He didn't even know what was being discussed in Parliament. He only knew that something had to change.
A rubber bullet hit him in the head, perhaps intended for the bird. But even in that blow there was poetry: the sky defending itself through its disciples.
Since then, he has become famous.
Famous and poor, visible and invisible at the same time — as only in Africa can one be.
‘It's as if everyone sees me, but no one really finds me,’ he says with a smile that smacks not of resignation but of tender irony.
Today he lives in a house offered to him by a stranger, together with his surviving birds — Johnson, Jaimie and three stubborn pigeons.
He records videos, cleans the Ngong River, plants trees where the city uproots dreams. Children follow him like a gentle procession, laughing, as he teaches them that loving birds is a way to remember to be human.
He has no money, no certainty, but he has a plan: to build a shelter for those who have no nest. Humans and birds together, learning lightness again.
‘The birds and the people I meet on the street,’ he says, ‘are the same. They both need someone to love them.’
And then he strokes Johnson, his ‘winged governor,’ and smiles:
‘He was saved, so maybe one day I will be too.’