A couple of days ago, I was putting groceries in my trunk when this lady comes hobbling about with bags and all. Can you help me please- she says. I’ve got both my eyes stuck in the trunk so I don’t look at her in the eye and catch empathy. That’s an expensive emotion. I…
Some years back, an organization that catered to immigrants and refugees asked me if I could take two weeks of my summer to run a youth camp. I agreed because the organization’s founder was someone I highly respected. At that camp, I lost a young man. Lost him to a more interesting world. He was…
My neighbors two blocks south kept on wanting me to go visit their temple with them. My resolve to dodge their relentless invitations was finally eroded and I caved in. Off to the Mormon temple we went. It was all my fault. I caused it during casual conversation when I said, having just discovered they…
I’ve always marveled at a marathoner’s staying power. I watch them, especially the Kenyans and Ethiopians, how they start off on an easy trot, as if on a jog in the park, their feet going, step-jump, step-jump, carrying a light body-frame round and round the tracks, overlapping those who cannot keep up without ever changing…
I walk round the bend from the Kenya National Theatre and down Kijabe street, looking for the food kiosks I once knew that stood some place near Text Book Center, or so my frayed memory tells me. There, we would consume chapati-mayai and tea. They think up the most innovative combinations of dishes on the…
October sprinted by, leaving an easily forgotten sprinkle of tired maroons, oranges, and yellows that almost grayed out of fall fatigue. The season had been late coming and already, the trees seemed forlorn, ready to shed their leaves and bow out into hibernation. Something was chasing fall, a bad dream it seemed. Only the maple…
The eagle’s eye spots its target and begins to circle the air above. His movements are slow, meditated, precisely calculated, better than the unfailing tick-tock of a clock. He has been traversing the skies for many days, moving away from the cloudy zones that blocked his vision by day, relaxing the wings of his determined…
The dazzling silver of the Swedish Alps seemed to be mocking Mumbi’s gray countenance as she looked down thousands of feet from her seat on the KLM flight. Send me sleep, dear God, send me sleep, she begged. For two days now since she read her sister Kui’s email, she had not slept. She had…
“Sheeeit!!!…” Cursed the voice at the other end of the line. Lenana quietly hung up on the deranged lunatic without a word. Shanni watched him from her spot in the living room. She knew instinctively who it was. It was her younger brother, Crush, and she wasn’t about to ask questions. Not now. Yet it…
Mumbi contemplated the little arrow resting on “send”, sighed, and right-clicked the mouse. She sat gazing into her computer screen for what seemed like eons. She was giving him time to make a response. She was aware of the existence of the chat option that allowed one to carry on a conversation on screen. She…