An attention-grabber that says "look at this"—casual, immediate, carrying the energy of something worth noticing right now.
Cheki is how you grab someone's attention in Nairobi—the verbal equivalent of tapping someone's shoulder and pointing. You say it when something demands to be noticed: a surprising sight, an interesting person, something worth sharing. It carries the energy of discovery, the assumption that what you're about to show matters.
The word emerged in the 1960s as part of Sheng, the mixed language Nairobi's urban youth created by weaving together Swahili, English, and indigenous languages. It started as code—a way for young people to communicate without adults or authorities understanding. They borrowed English's "check," reshaped it to fit Swahili's sound patterns, and made it their own.
Using cheki marks you as urban, as someone who navigates Nairobi's streets with ease. It's decidedly informal—you'd use it with friends in a market, shouting across a minibus, or online mixing languages without thought. But never with elders in traditional settings, never in formal spaces. The word exists because Nairobi's youth needed a language that belonged to them alone, one that signaled membership in a culture that refuses to speak just one way.