There’s a kind of strange poverty in a place billed as the world’s wealthiest democracy, where mass shootings are so easy and frequent. It’s the kind of poverty that runs a cold chill in the mind, even when goodness and opportunity is common, and running into human kindness everyday is heartfelt. It is not a…
It takes a lot to say some things when the hand that feeds you is the same one that slaps you. You weigh it against your moral true north, you realize you have fewer years ahead of you than behind you, and you no longer have the luxury of accommodating strategic fear. For a crutch,…
The one thing coursework in International Terrorism can do is make you despise simplistic good vs evil storylines. So can the study of History, the reading of other people’s literatures, and the willingness to know what you don’t want to know. Be warned that your capacity to suffer fools gladly quickly wanes too. In this…
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…
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 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,…
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…
Fattening and Sickening “During the mission period, 3 out of 4 of the coastal Indians perished. They’d lived well free, but as soon as we introduced them to a Christian and community life, they fattened, sickened and died” – a Christian missionary during the Christianization of the Native American peoples, The West (Burns). My mind…
Something happened on August 7th, 1998. There were two terrorist bomb attacks in Kenya and Tanzania by Al-Shabaab against the United States. 213 Kenyans and 11 Tanzanians died over a war that had nothing to do with either country. It was a foreign war brought to African soil. Kenyans had no inkling on the rising…