Yesterday was hair day. I opened the door to the Salon and stood there for a while drinking in the festive sight. The place was packed with black women getting doodied up for the holidays. A delightful Christmas tree stood at one corner with lights and gift-boxes at the bottom. My nose followed the welcoming…
When someone with inherited privileged chooses to experience the struggles of those the privileged class looks down upon, it is called class appropriation. Especially if that person proceeds to make that experience part of their public story. They create an imaginary “hustler glory”, and they do so for their own strategic gain. It is like…
I was speaking to a fellow linguist early this week and he said- I understand you have many dialects in your country… I interrupted him before he could formulate his question- No, languages- I said. O.. is all he said after that. I caused him to swallow his question before it reached his lips. Questions…
/ 3-minute read. There was this day I got a zero in Home Science. ZERO! Really, Mrs. Mungai? Form 2, 14 years old, my first and only zero ever. You need to hear this. This was the practical exam. Mrs. Mungai had taught us how to make two sets of decorative stitches around the hem…
Kajiwe Since 1963, all Kenya’s presidents have raised the Christian bible to take oath of office, and all of them have broken that oath with shocking impunity and audacious impenitence. Suppose they were required to drink the blood of something, chant some terrifying vows in the name of their ancestors, acknowledge that insanity and pestilence…
Hello there! Thank you for coming by. Sit with me for a while. Mkawasi.Com is a place of familiar confessions and self-discovery. It is a stream of consciousness in various literary genres. I hope it stirs you up sufficiently, entertains you profoundly, and surprises you with new knowing. Share it freely as you journey on. Me I…
Just over 5 years ago, I needed a black doll for my play that was to show at the Kenya National Theatre. I thought I could walk into any toy store and find one. I was in Africa after all. The Motherland with over 1 billion black humans. Let me tell you! I walk the…
A student once shared an interesting anecdote about his travel to Rwanda where he noted that the word “genocide” existed only in French translation and none in Kinyarwanda. By this, he surmised that genocide was not an African concept. Once again, here’s a fallacy of assuming that just because something has no definitive word in…
I’m parked out at Aldi about to go in and buy lemon-pepper. I open the door but I’m arrested by the story on NPR. About a man in India trying to save his father whose dry cough suddenly turned into to a fever. He rushed him to hospital after hospital – says the storyteller –…
We got there and weren’t sure which of the two houses was the “last on your left” as per instructions we got from our host. They both occupied that same curved stretch of bay at Cape St. Claire. We decided we weren’t going to come out of the car until we were absolutely sure of…
