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,…
A response to Bikozulu’s “A Letter to Kenyans Abroad” http://bikozulu.co.ke/a-letter-to-kenyans-abroad/ For a long time I’ve fought the itch to respond to blogs, tweets, status updates and newspaper articles from Kenyans at home that bash Kenyans abroad for their accents and attitudes. I had decided it’s too trivial. Until today when “A Letter to Kenyans Abroad” arrived…
Sight Savers was about two miles from where we lived in Nairobi. One could walk down hill for about an hour along the stretch of Mbagathi Way, or take a matatu from Kenyatta Market. When I sauntered into this organization and asked for a job from out of the blues, I had zero expectations because…
… on the way to the doctor’s office. Western medicine treats the human body more mechanically than it treats a car. Every body part is treated as if its connection to the rest of the body is coincidental. You’ve got the ear, nose & throat guy, the ophthalmologist, the foot doc, the ladies’ parts doc,…
When talk about AIDS first broke out, no one really knew anyone with it. I was in high school, and for us, it was a distant story about Americans. In fact, we were told black people didn’t get it. We joked about it as if it would never ever become a reality in Kenya. I…
I finally watched the film, Rafiki (2018), on Kanopy, thanks to my Howard County library membership. Then I wondered why on earth Kenyan authorities had banned it. It is an excellently told story, simple and true. Yet is sent men in charge of a country’s storytelling business frothing in terror. There was a time in…
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…
Let me tell you something you all missed while catching your breath in shock at the loss of an accomplished actor. You really didn’t think about what it takes to go to work as an actor, did you? I need you to understand this part. Because then you might look at your child who’s trying…
I’m not sure how to feel about our African ultra-evangelical friends– the ones who sound like they are from deep bible-belt Mississippi. Their social media timelines are both entertaining and disturbing in times of political heat even about events unfolding thousands of miles. How American politics affects them emotionally is a thing of wonder. Entertaining…
