In Christian mythology, labor is a curse. A punishment to humans for disobedience. Deity curses the land so that men shall forever toil in futility until the day they die. It’s a rather grim outlook on labor. “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the…
When I was 11-and-a-half I fancied a boy. I remember exactly why. He was the only one with a book bag that had graffiti on it. I did not know then that I was attracted to things creative, but there it was, Boy X and his green canvas backpack. On it were huge blocks of…
When a generation of youth is blind to the sacrifices of the shoulders they stand on, they become a boot on others’ shoulders and start a new cycle of oppression. Back in 2015, I had many personal conversations with the youth of Kenya that left me numb. The collected layers of calloused tragedies from insecurity,…
In one of the high schools I went to – those were the days one graduated from 4 years of secondary school to a 2 years of high school – we were not allowed to speak Swahili. Only English. This school was at the Coast, the land of Swahili peoples. They speak, think, dream, project,…
Irrational Belonging is a theory that overturns Balance of Power and destroys ideas of dominance & superiority. It views the world through identity constructs.
Power: They were only 16, give or take a year. But so powerful were they their mere appearance caused dread in girls no matter what we were doing. You could be sitting quietly during study hour and see a maroon sweater pass by from the corner of your eyes and your blood pressure suddenly rises….
One day, my mother pulled me out of school. Just for a day. I was 17. It had occurred to her that I needed to be given a rite of passage. That rite turned out to be an Anglican one. The Church of England had erased our cultural rites and bequeathed us theirs. Ok, so…
I got into a bit of a tiff with three young ticketing officials at the Voi SGR train station. This was over legitimate tickets that needed name-change to indicate the travelers, not the buyer. They said the only solution acceptable by “the system” was to cancel them, get fined for it, and take a 50-50…
Willpower is overrated. I’ve heard about people going cold turkey on bad habits – too much smoking, cracking knuckles, alcohol, gnashing teeth, biting your lip, etc. “Yeah! I woke up one morning and decided enough! And from that day on I never touched another cigarette!” I don’t know about that. I just don’t believe in…
*Warning: Contains some graphic description that may churn the stomach. One day, true story, the toilets in the senior dorm broke. This was in one of the high schools I went to, a school that turned out to be a perfect fit for my personality and mental disposition. The school had no fence and no…