Growing up, I heard ogre stories in school, at home, and on VoK from a show called Land of Majitu (Land of Ogres). The show would start with ogres dancing around a homestead singing– Sisi majitu, sisi majitu / aah sisi majitu… Ogre stories are a common genre in African orature. They have a simple…
The cicadas are come and gone. It’s too quiet. It seems to me we missed something. Some ritual of sorts. We got visited by lifeforms that appear every 17 years. For a month they controlled us with their shrill non-stop chirping that sounded like deep space invasion. All sorts of incredulous stories were told about…
Part I: We saw South African small business owners weep bitterly over the vandalizing of their shops. It’s unfair, barbaric, foolish and just downright evil to steal from your own people who worked so hard for so many years to build a small business, feed their families and hold their hand out to those coming…
I made this confession during a symposium on Pan-Africanism this past Tuesday. What did religion teach you that you later came to know was a terrible lie? Me? That we as Africans are a cursed people. I hang my head low just saying it again. Give me a minute to lift it out of this…
I had a roommate in college. She had a boyfriend who loved books more than he loved her. I should not tell this story, it’s so wrong.. tihihihi.. Ok, I will tell.. but chase your kids out of the room first. So one day her boyfriend came to visit and she was not there. -Sema…
I think how black people wear their anger determines how far they go. I’ll speak of those I know. East Africans will tend to wear their anger six layers beneath the skin. They are afraid of its power and potential for radical change. They have also been taught to be ashamed of it, to see…
During a rehearsal for “Puma” in Nairobi, I struggled to get the scene in this photo to work technically. In my writer-director’s mind, the oath-taking President figure (Gilbert Lukalia) was supposed to slide smoothly across the stage, ghost-like, follow-spot on him as oaths from the 4 presidents in Kenya’s history fill the auditorium. A moving…
Just before he dies, the former South African president who led a white supremacist regime tries to clean up his act and hope history’s brush will paint his life with soft strokes. He records it all for public release in a last-minute mea culpa titled “FW de Klerk’s message from beyond the grave”. I think…
Copyright 2009 Mkawasi Mcharo “I am a child of God, a child of God, a child of God…” he chanted, keeping an absent mind on the familiar route that took him every morning from his Eastlands home through the city and across to Nairobi West. He repositioned his hands around the steering wheel so the…
