Category: Public Square
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Was Meghan Markle Naïve About Racism in Britain?
I have never been a fan of kiss-and-tell stories. I find them distasteful and dishonest. I don’t understand how anybody can be intimate with someone one minute and tell the world about it the next. Which is why I find the revenge videos of ex-girlfriends that men put up on social media so hateful. I…
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What Have Dreadlocks Got To Do With It?
“Imagine a lawyer or doctor with dreadlocks.” – Peter Kaluma, MP Homa Bay Town Constituency. What is hard to imagine is how and why in the 21st century, the ‘hairy’ fallacy alluding to the supposed ergonomical misalliance between locs (hairstyles) and certain professions persists. It is difficult and disappointing to imagine how 60 years into supposed…
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What’s In For 2023
Stop being rude. Stop asking people invasive questions and giving them unsolicited advice to their faces. Instead, go over there and gossip about them with your friends. Dissect their choices in life, theorize about their relationships (or lack thereof), make up stories about why they do not have children, and question how they make and…
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Holidays Are For Family And Family Is What You Make It
I don’t usually go home for Christmas. By home I mean Meru, to my mother’s house. I typically spend the holidays in Nairobi, enjoying the traffic-free streets, in a collective stupor with everyone else, sinking into that limbo period where we don’t know what day it is or when we last ate a vegetable. In…
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Christmas Rest Amidst Election Inquiries
And so, it is set to end. Finally the holidays are here, schools out and Kenyans are headed for a much needed break.
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National Government Should Support Nairobi, Not Dominate
Recently, the two gentlemen at the top of Kenya’s executive have expressed contrasting views on how Nairobi is being run. First there is Rigathi Gachagua, who sounded miffed when talking about the governor’s plans for Nairobi’s matatus. “Nitamketisha chini,” (I’ll sit him down) he said of Johnson Sajaka. Then there was the President. “Keep the…
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Nairobi: Shiny But Impractical
I have lived in and travelled to various cities around the world since I was a child. I have often viewed these places as living, breathing entities. Each city has its own personality, its spark, those spaces where the sun lands bringing in a sense of hope, and those spots where the darkness lies. Over…
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For Those of Us with Christmas Blues
The “So what are you doing for Christmas?” messages have started streaming in and my body is slowly clenching day by day.
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War Is Failure Of Football
Football or soccer is a strange sport. Put two teams of eleven each and a ball on a pitch, get a few people to watch them as they kick the ball around with the intention of winning by scoring more goals than their opponents, and voila! – you have yourself a social experiment. The twenty…
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Bloated Kenyan Delegation at COP27 Reflected the Country’s Misplaced Priorities
In a previous incarnation, when I was a globe-trotting United Nations official, I was constantly amazed at how big the Kenyan delegation was at international conferences. At a conference on cities held in Beijing, for instance, I was shocked to see ministers and top officials from Kenya whose docket had absolutely nothing to do with…