NAIROBI - Traipsing through the Nairobi Exhibition and Convention Center on this weekend were small-business owners, teachers, civil servants, farmers, recent college graduates and others, who make up a group of Kenyans often invisible to the outside world: neither desperately poor nor outlandishly rich but someplace in between.On a continent where people are often trying to escape or simply survive, here were people perusing six-burner stoves who said they wished to stay, aspiring homeowners who have been fueling what amounts to a construction boom in this east African city of skyscrapers and rusted slums; leafy, moneyed neighborhoods; and lately, it seems, a thousand half-built cinder-block condominiums with pools, gyms and broadband Internet.
Although the Kenyan economy is growing at 6 percent a year, economists are uncertain whether the proliferation of new housing and accompanying mortgages reflects a growing middle class or simply a more prosperous one.
"Looking at these houses, you see a whole life," said Nicholas Kinoti, a clothing designer with his own shop, which caters to a wealthy clientele. "I thought instead of paying rent, I could adjust and pay a mortgage."
He was among dozens swarming the booth for a new development of Kansas-made prefabricated houses called Green Park, whose managing director is a former aid worker who once dealt with the Ethiopian famine.
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