Trigger warning; suicide. He didn’t want to die at lunch hour but that’s when the hunger for death surged. A time when the sun was at its peak and folk were sitting down to break bread. The plan was to go to Prestige Plaza on Ngong Road, access the rooftop and hurl himself to his […]
Daniel was handpicked for an unpaid internship program. The city he lived in – Jerusalem – had been besieged by a bearded brute called Nebuchadnezzar who installed himself as King. Some folk called him Nebu, others Nebusizzle. But if his men heard you call the King those nicknames, you’d be hanged from the cedar tree […]
I bought a ridiculous floppy sun hat from a hawker with brown teeth in traffic. It’s his teeth that caught my attention before the hat did. He grinned outside my car window. He had a smile you wouldn’t hide if you wanted to. It filled my car window, urging me to open the window and […]
She weighed 98 kgs in Form One. As it turns out there was a girl in school – a Form three – who weighed 102 kgs. What was remarkable was that in Form 2 she toppled that girl’s record; her weight shot up to 104 kgs. If you are 104 kgs in high school, a […]
What’s the silver bullet of wealth? Isn’t that the question that dominates our lives? Financial security. How do you make enough money so you never have to know or care how much things cost? Never to look at a price tag and gasp? Stress over inflation. Or stand in a queue behind a man with […]
Heard of Tog Wajaale? It’s a small dusty border town in Somaliland, right at the nose of Ethiopia. Goats sit under trees, chewing gum, squinting in the heat. It’s a bustling town, forever gushing with trade. Men haggle at the market. Women move mad cash. I’m currently here, courtesy of Trademark East Africa to interview […]
From the air, Bujumbura looks like it’s yet to be let in on the joke. On the table where he sits, the rest have sort of gotten it; Kampala is giggling over there in his banana print silk shirt, Nairobi is seated at the head of the table, palms flat on the table, a bit […]
It was a modest house in Makueni. Just a few rooms, a living room and a verandah where the man of the house would sit on a rickety wooden chair most evenings fiddling with an old transistor radio. The verandah faced the gate as verandahs should, otherwise they wouldn’t be verandahs now, would they? The […]
You should have been there to hear him speak. He wore a stark white dress shirt, a subtly coiffed afro perched atop his head. He had that calming demeanor, listening to him. He spoke in unhurried sentences with emotive marrow filled on the inside. His hands remained folded across his chest for the most part, […]
They dragged his ass to court. He was shoeless, penniless, and out of luck. He stood in the dock, blinking in the bright light of justice. The judge, a stern lady of the Vioja Mahakamani disposition, never once looked at him. Head bowed, she read whatever judges read in a dead voice. He was supposed […]
