Sunny Savannah is behind us. The month of December 2013 must now stay content with becoming a memory, a welcome escape from America’s winter. But not for too long. We land in Detroit, and as we prepare to board our final hour-long flight, it starts snowing, slowly, then a steady fury. We board. The plane…
I’m home, taking a walk around Jombo village in Mwatate, Taita. It is Jamhuri Day, Kenya’s 50th Independence Day. I encounter a sudden piece of paradise, children blissfully playing soccer on a dry riverbed, completely oblivious to all that hullabaloo about Kenya@50. No celebratory bells have tolled for them. The land is a gentle green,…
We were having dinner at one of our very best spots– an Amish family restaurant out yonder. They had pitched up a huge tent outside on account of Coronavirus, with each table set far apart. The open-air dinning surrounded by fields of green and buggies going clippity-clop was simply earth’s song rising to meet us….
Is it a brain illness, a person disorder or consciousness misunderstood? This morning I heard a doctor say that if you call it brain illness people will not stigmatize mental illness as much. I thought she had a point. But I started to think about my observation of mental illness up-close and personal, growing up…
I was a young–ish, ambitious and as naive as a crisp green guava that doesn’t know the worms will get to it as soon as the wind shakes it to the ground. I had just directed my first play in New York, and I was high on post-show artist’s restlessness and anxiety. One of my…
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…
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…
First published on December 20, 2021 So, hmm.. this village is showing me things! The other day the village ATM swallowed my debit card. I beat it, pap-pap, it refused to spit it out. It seems it was angry that I took money from it. The security guard for the ATM kiosk was eating mangoes…