Category: Pop Culture
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The Dog, The Beach, The Music: New Year’s In Kilifi
My brother ran over a kid. That’s how our New Year season began. A baby goat though, I should clarify, not a human child. Big brother was driving us to Kilifi, his girlfriend at the time riding shotgun, his right hand steering, the other gripping her hand. Me, being the youngest, was sitting sandwiched between…
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Comic Conventions: From the Outside Looking In
In 2014, while I was headed out to attend the first edition of the Nairobi Comic Con at the Village Market, my parents asked me where I was going and what I was going to do there. Now as this was my first experience at a convention I wasn’t really sure either. While I didn’t…
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Imagine This: A Virtual Reality Fantasy
Imagine this. A world where the physical realm and the virtual realm blend into one. Where the limitations of the mortal flesh and solid ground are erased in favour of the surrealist terrain of a 3D artists’ brush stroke. This is what Mark Zuckerberg envisions for his ‘Metaverse’. This is what Darubini: State of the…
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Wazee Wakumbuke: Them Mushrooms at 50
Them Mushrooms band are arguably Kenya’s most iconic band who have placed the country on the global scene thanks to their catchy slogan ‘Hakuna Matata’ that originates from their smash hit ‘Jambo Bwana’, a composition of the band founder and saxophonist Teddy Kalanda Harrison, better known as Mr Groove. In an industry where bands are…
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Utajua Hujui: The Checkered Story Of Too Early For Birds
Sunday evening. 11 November 2022. Jain Bhavan Auditorium, Loresho. Par Can lights glimmer starkly above the cast standing hip to hip. Hand in hand. Crew members in a horizontal file behind them. The auditorium lights dim slowly, the cast and crew bow to a chorus of spontaneous applause; rumour has it that this time for…
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Lamu Nights Have No Sequels
It’s Friday again in Shela Village. The Mwadhini’s song reverberates across the ripply Indian Ocean, a pied piper calling all inhabitants of Amu who practise the Islamic Faith to a sundowner of prayer. If you’ve had a long day, the call to prayer means it’s time to go pray and then go home. However, if…
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Body Art, Like Drip, Is Forever
Whilst the practice of traditional scarification and tattooing is now considered primitive and even outlawed in some African countries, the age-old ritual is not quite dead. Instead, body art has transmogrified into modern cultures in cities across Africa, with the young and the young at heart now finding it fashionable to sport a tattoo for…
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It Refuses To Pour Over Nyege Nyege Festival
Every year, the organizers of Nyege Nyege Festival partner with a traditional rainmaker to keep the clouds at bay, and every year the clouds over Jinja hold their breath until the festival is concluded.
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47 Random Thoughts on Bandana Ya E-Sir
Bandana Ya E-Sir is a let-down. There is nothing about E-Sir in this song. The lyrics are dirty. Disappointing, even. E-Sir was more than a bandana. Sure, it was his signature look, in the same way I don a hat, but there was more to the man. This doesn’t feel like a tribute, more of…
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What to Get the Boys for Valentines
And so the first step in getting better at gifting your partner is unpacking their tastes and preferences, interests, and love languages. That way, whatever we end up gifting them on special occasions (or just any ordinary day when we feel moved) will come across as an expression of love and care as opposed to…