“Afadhali nife badala ya kujiuzulu!”
Hivi leo, Kenya inatahitaji wafanyikazi wa umma walio na ujasiri wa kutosha kiasi kwamba wanaweza kujing’atua madarakani pindi tu madai ya hulka potovu yanapotolewa dhidi yao.
NO, RESIGNING IS NOT A SHOW OF COWARDICE
Today, more than ever, Kenya needs public officials who are brave enough to step down whenever they are faced with allegations. People in managerial positions should learn to take responsibility not only for their blunders but also for the demeanours of their subordinates.
THE HEADMASTER AND HIS SUNFLOWER (A Short Story)
Story by: Jones Wafula Lukorito Even though it was only 10 am, the sun shone so vigorously that the prison van was Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. At the driver’s compartment sat two corporals who had introduced themselves to the jail-birds as Tiriongo and Kamande. Smoke from the cigarettes that they puffed like chimneys wafted in grey wisps…
“SHE KILLED OUR BABY!”
My longtime close friend, whom I’ll call Robert in this article, found himself in cupid’s chokehold during our sophomore year. I still recall how giddy he was the day he introduced me to Stella (not her real name). “Now I see why you’ve wasted no time in ‘getting her inside your box’. Any guy will…
ONE STEP AT A TIME, THERE’S NO NEED TO RUSH
I recently had my birthday, and my wonderful kith and kin were on hand to ensure I had a good time on my birthday. After the day’s jamborees and merry-making were over, however, I withdrew to a solitary place to take stock of what I have achieved so far and meditate on where my life…
YOUR DREAM JOB IS NOT A DREAM. YOU GOTTA WORK IT!
I have a friend who always wanted to be an actor ever since our high school days. She filed newspaper clippings of interviews with famous actors and learned all there was to learn about the movie and TV industry in Kenya. After high school, she auditioned dozens of times but only seemed to land infinitesimal…
HOW TO BE BEAUTIFUL IN THE DIGITAL AGE
With all its advances in technology and especially social media, the 21st century is perhaps the toughest era in which to be a young adult. This is because everything is so superficial nowadays you hardly encounter authenticity. Take beauty for example; do we still have what one can refer to as authentic beauty? What is…
THE POLEMICS OF DREADLOCKS
The lengthened electioneering period in Kenya has caused jitters among the citizens and anti-poll protests have become the order of the day in Nairobi. During one of such picketing sessions, a group that called themselves ‘Nairobi Business Community’ organized a parallel to counter the anti-poll protests and later on gave a press conference. Pictures from…
WE ARE AFROPHOBIC, YES, BUT WE ARE NOT SHITHOLES.
From Cairo to Cape Town, we are still struggling to pick our jaws from the floor after Donald’s Trump’s unsavory description of African countries alongside Haiti and El Salvador. We had cut Mr. Trump some slack when he had earlier insinuated that all Nigerians live in huts, but our outrage reached a boiling point when…
DOES AN AFRICAN ROSE BY AN EUROPEAN NAME STILL SMELL AS SWEET?
I am informed that it was raining cats and dogs the night I came into this world more than two decades ago. After lengthy deliberations, my elderly kin decided that I shall be called Wafula, a name that was commonly given to children born during the rainy season in my community. Lukorito, a name that…
ENGLISH: A TONGUE OF ENSLAVEMENT?
In Kenya, no matter how eloquently you speak the Queen’s English, you won’t pass muster as a politician unless you are also able to address your constituents in their mother tongue. As the pithy truism by Nelson Mandela goes, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head.…
TRACING OUR KENYAN ROOTS IN ART
“Why are foreigners the ones collecting most of your paintings?” I asked the above question to Kinuthia Mbugua, a Kenyan impressionist based at Nairobi’s Maasai Mbili Art Gallery. The response he gave me also provided an answer to what was going to be my next question, “Why do many Kenyan artists appear to achieve recognition…
WHEN I GROW UP, I WANT TO BE BEAUTIFUL
Guest post by: Julie Hope Ambani When I was young, all I wanted to be when I grew up was beautiful. I wanted to have velvet smooth skin and nice hair. I wanted to be the girl that no boy could resist. This was of course a result of watching too many movies that give the…
HELP! MY COMRADES CAN’T DRIVE!!
An ardent reader of this column, Mr. Michael Hatego, recently wrote to me mourning his watchman and his newspaper vendor. I felt his pain, because I know how hard it is to get a decent newspaper guy for my old man, Grandpa Richard. The deaths, Mr. Hatego noted, resulted from collisions with young men and…
CRIME OF PASSION (Short story)
You’ve heard the saying “Out of the frying pan into the real fire,” which was coined back in 1985 inside Justice Erastus Wepekhulu’s courtroom. My skin recoiled as the judge, whose scarlet red gown reminded me of the blood drenched airstrip during ‘the assignment’, condemned me to three decades in a maximum security prison. “After…
COMRADES GETTING HIGH; ABUSING VIAGRA
Like a broken record, I have been ranting and raving against abuse of drugs by my comrades for two years now. I have fought tooth and nail to see my comrades shun deleterious substances such as boiled marijuana, liquefied miraa and second generation hooch. It now seems like my comrades got tired of my nagging…