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…
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…
Your hard work in secondary school paid off and you made it to university. You are elated, sure that this is the beginning of a future with endless possibilities. Since home is too far from school, it only makes sense to board – this will be the first time you…
Amidst the usual smut and common-place party videos that would make Kenya Film Classification Board Chairman, Ezekiel Mutua, throw up his lunch, a more disturbing clip was shared widely by my comrades early this week. The video was surreal, strange and made my head my head spin. It (allegedly) captures…
My old man, Grandpa Richard, has always questioned the viability of student loans disbursed by the government. While he is all up for helping my comrades pay for their tuition, he is concerned that a huge chunk of that money usually ends up in their pockets instead. “This facilitates them…
My old man, Grandpa Richard, is a prophet who rarely gets appreciated at home. While we should be composing songs in his honour and naming our children (both boys and girls) after him, we instead often choose to ignore the erudite greybeard and his sagacious advice. For exactly two years now,…
Tucked within the pages of this newspaper’s Sunday edition was a tear-jerking story touching on my comrades. But then again, when it comes to my comrades, no news is hardly ever good news. I long for a day when I’ll be chronicling inspirational and heart-lifting tales concerning this lot of…
Two years ago, my old man, Grandpa Richard, suspected that something extremely fishy was going on with my comrades. Relying on his extensive experience in rodent-sniffing, the greybeard smelled a fat and overfed rat among my colleagues and approached me to assist him blow the whistle. “Why don’t you do…
Last week was a sad time for all of us. The Kenya Youth Survey Report stated that evils such as corruption and lack of integrity have struck our youths like a thunderbolt. Our youths, as it turns out, are malignant, uncouth, morally corrupt and, get this, cursed. In case you…
My old man, Grandpa Richard, has always held the view that our higher education system is shambolic, topsy-turvy and—gets this—cursed with an evil eye. When he first made these claims, comrades flooded my mailbox and twitter timeline with all forms of contemptuous epithets, crying baloney and saying that his opinions…
My comrades are cruising at 200 kilometres per hour in the wrong direction. We are hurtling at neck-breaking speed towards the edge of the cliff, and nobody seems to be willing to apply the brakes and save us all from tumbling over. If my column today reads like a piece…
EARLY THIS WEEK, I found myself tongue-tied trying to explain to my old man, Grandpa Richard, what a hashtag is. In the past, I have tried, amid abashing stutters, to elucidate to the dignified greybeard the meaning of new fangled terms such as MILF, twerking, and more recently, Team Mafisi.…
Happy New Year, comrades. If you’re reading this, you’re one of the seven comrades with a good noggin between their ears. The rest of your colleagues are too inebriated to even wake up from the trench they slept in last night, let alone read the morning paper. Blame this on the…
Arise and shine comrades. My old man, Grandpa Richard, has asked me to wish you a merry Christmas from the bottom of his humongous heart. He has also asked me to clarify to you that Christmas is a holiday whereby Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. Not a day set…
My old man, Grandpa Richard, will never get to wrap his head around some of the things Generation X do. We cannot fault him, though, for old dogs seldom learn new tricks. Take dating, for example. Grandpa still holds firm his belief that cupid deserted the youngsters ages ago, leaving…
After US President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Kenya, my old man, Grandpa Richard, was a jolly man. However, his hopes of leaving behind a better Kenya for his grandchildren have been dashed over the past few days. His moods have nosedived from the tower of optimism to the basement…
It is not often that one is invited to the high-table. Sharing a meal with my old man, Grandpa Richard, is therefore a privilege. The opportunity to drink from his bottomless well of wisdom is one to kill for. His mercurial nuggets of wisdom are always enough to transform even…
In a land where people eat politics for breakfast and dinner, we’ve been busy praying for showers of blessings to descend upon our politicians. Seeing that the sun has been in its full wattage lately, my old man, Grandpa Richard, decided he’d pray for literal showers instead. If what the…
A fortnight ago, I made it clear that I won’t be wasting an atom of my grey matter deliberating on the Mollis audio clip. Quoting former President Daniel Arap Moi, I was convinced, and justifiably so, that such matters do not have the ability to add ugali on my plate.…
You spent the past three weeks or so covered in a fine layer of dirt, but somehow you’ve decided to break the unholy pact you had set with the devil about crucifying hygiene. Today you took a historic bath and actually brushed off the ubiquitous previous week’s miraa from your…
We, the comrades from Kenya’s institutions of higher learning, stand united today in condemnation of the recent directive issued by the President against alcohol manufacturers and consumers. The directive, which has seen both legitimate and comrade-friendly illegitimate beer destroyed in the past few days, has plunged us into a state…
The previous week has seen my comrades’ moral fibre come under heavy scrutiny from a number of sources. Instead of opening books and spreading knowledge, my comrades of the fairer sex have run the gauntlet of social media for allegedly opening legs and spreading syphilis, once again. The campus diva…
There might have been a time when my comrades were a civilised lot. But when that was nobody remembers; it must be when we were hunters and gatherers. Every evening my old man, Grandpa Richard, switches his TV to news about our generation that always consigns him to the clinic…
There’s nothing in the world that beats the feeling of having to share a meal with my old man, Grandpa Richard. I always look forward to such rare occasions as he recounts stories from the halcyon days when night-runners didn’t arm-twist the government to recognize them and Instagram was yet…
It is fair to say that she has made a few terrible mistakes in her 21 years on planet Earth. To her, life has opened up wounds so painful that no surgeon can stitch, caused cracks so big that no mason can fill and conjured a crime so dire that…
A week ago, popular columnist Njoki Chege shook the blogosphere with a piece that claimed today’s cohort of young men has increasingly become spineless, lazy and ambitionless. She referred to the ill-fated generation as Blueband boys, which I assume was an inference to what they were fed for breakfast while…
Giving credit where it’s due, I must say my comrades are very creative fellows. However, they all seem to apply this creativity in asinine ways such as innovating habits of cheating in exams and inventing new methods of ingesting marijuana.(Read: They’re higher than Kites; these comrades of mine). Until last…
My comrades usually invent the most ludicrous ways in which to “express themselves.” When they’re not being opprobrious to motorists by throwing stones across major highways, you will find them mutilating their skins with anchors and dragon tattoos which they will have the temerity to call art. “Back in the…
Nerea. That’s the title of a song about an eponymous girl, Nerea, who is being urged by her partner not abort his baby. In the beautiful tune by music maestros Sauti Sol featuring Amos and Josh, the partner argues that perhaps the unborn child might end up changing the course…
I sometimes wish my comrades would introduce me to what they smoke. At times I think to myself that I’ve chronicled all there is to write about my comrades’ asininity, but an even more flummoxing doozy always crops up only to leave Grandpa Richard and I picking our jaws from…
Having let insomnia win in tonight’s war, I have resorted to getting out of bed at 2 am to type this piece. The past few days are taking a rough toll on me, with sleep fleeing because every time I close my eyes, images of Garissa writhing in pain and…
Last week, President Kenyatta delivered a severe kick in teeth to crooked public officials by ordering them to step aside for sixty days in a corruption purge that will see them pave way for investigations. While my old man lauds the move by Mr. Kenyatta, Grandpa strongly feels that the…
My old man, Grandpa Richard, has been heavily criticised by my comrades for allegedly being a sadist. In his defence, Grandpa Richard states that he has indeed scoured my comrades with a fine-toothed comb in an effort to find positivity, but the results yielded were nothing to write home about.…
My old Man, Grandpa Richard, has been reading distressing news from his crystal ball once again. He has foreseen a future whereby comrades have been completely zombied out and their brains wasted. With a terrible visual acuity and disfigured thumbs from playing too many video games, these androids will roam…
Exactly a year ago, Grandpa Richard’s brain was threatening to explode if he didn’t share it with my slightly less intellectually gifted comrades and the entire nation at large. Being a good grandson that I always endeavour to be, I offered to offload his jeremiads against young people in this…
The problem with my comrades, according to Grandpa Richard, is that they pretend to have an opinion of everything under the sun. They act as if they are masters in every discipline available, wherein they grossly misconstrue facts and they are darn wrong. It would be nice if they limited…
The digital era is finally here with us. In its wake however, the migration debacle has wrecked havoc within Kenya’s soul, as opposed to the legion benefits we’d anticipated. It has violated every sacred principle about the right to information that the likes of Dedan Kimathi died for. Watching the…
I recall sometime back when hokum was being peddled around that dirt is good. A sizeable section of my comrades swallowed the malarkey hook, line and sinker. Heck, they even digested the tripe such that it became their DNA to be slovenly and generally walk around looking like a sack…
Welcome to 2015, a year in which Facebook will become a religion, boobs will be imported, nyenyenye will be added to the dictionary, Kenyans will migrate and beer will be drank more than water.
Whoever came up with the expression ‘Politics is a dirty game’ must have been an observer of campus elections. This is because my comrades’ p rimal nature never shines brighter than when they are electing their next bunch of leaders. During this period, comrades are ever volatile, highly charged, and…
My comrades are on drugs. They’re hopped up on ecstasy, hyped by vodka, topped up on Cannabis Sativa, puffing on sheesha and acting like a bunch of marauding dim-wits on a midterm break from the Mathare Institute of the Insanely Profane. It is disgraceful and makes me really furious. You…
If you are walking nearby any institution of higher learning in Kenya and would wish to enjoy a freak-show for free, grab yourself some popcorn from the nearest vendor and pay close attention to the weirdo hairstyles that students sport. I would advise you to put on sun-glasses though, for…
The Mugendalets are at it again. This time, they’ve effectively crossed the threshold from being a reprehensible minute institution full of primitive energy to being an international (I blame this on Thika Road) institution still full of primitive energy. Their primal nature has never shone brighter than when students are…