The Opinion I Never Agreed With (but Said Out Loud)

Picture a Saturday evening at a cocktail joint in Kilimani. Somebody drops a bold claim about sleep, or money, or why the economy is cooked, and you nod like you have been studying it for years. Two days later you hear yourself repeating the same claim at school, work or at an event, with the swagger of a man who actually reads research papers. Except you did not read anything. You listened to a three-hour episode of let’s say “Iko Nini Podcast” while stuck in traffic at Muthaiga, kept the headline, and left the explanation somewhere between Roysambu and the Garden City, like an umbrella forgotten in a matatu. That small, slightly embarrassing moment sits at the centre of a very long video essay I watched recently about why the biggest podcasts are collapsing into one giant, identical show. The creator’s point is not that podcasts are evil. His point is that the format hands us conclusions with the working cut out, and we walk away feeling informed when we are really carrying a pocket full of borrowed certainty. I want to take that idea and hold it up against how we actually consume content in Kenya, then ask you to do something a little rude: check whether your favourite opinions are truly yours. Stay with me, because it may sting, and a good sting usually means something is working.

One Show, a Thousand Copies

How a Business Podcast Became a Doctor's Waiting Room

The video’s(the one I watched) main example was “The Diary of a CEO”. A count of 532 episodes from 2020 to 2026 showed founder talk fading as the word “expert” climbed from none of the 2020 titles to 28 percent by 2026. In one stretch of 222 episodes, 59 percent of titles became a warning or revelation fronted by a credential. Nobody planned that drift, because every title is a tiny exam and whatever passes gets repeated. Kenya has not had a formal count, but the same shape shows up in how our shows describe themselves. A study of top Kenyan podcasts on YouTube and TikTok in 2024 found that the YouTube scene is dominated by people who were already famous or who bring famous guests. The same study found that many viewers first, and often only, meet a podcast through bite-sized clips built around provocative soundbites, and that traditional TV shows are borrowing podcast-style set design and framing. It is the same studio and the same soft lighting, just with a Nairobi accent.

Start with Iko Nini. In 2023 roundups it was sold on the chemistry between hosts Mwafreeka, DJ Zaq, Ian and Rapcha The Sayantist, and their willingness to take on controversial topics. Directory listings filed it under entertainment and pop culture. By 2025 the coverage describes a show with guests ranging from artists and politicians to comedians and lawyers, and episode titles such as “ODM Members Join Cabinet as Raila Betrays Kenyans.” That title is a verdict with a villain attached, which is exactly the flat-pack habit the video is talking about. The same coverage says critics argue its raw style can veer into sensationalism on sensitive political or social issues. Mwafreeka has said he uploads at least three episodes a week, broken into digestible pieces for fast consumption, and that the hosts only discuss topics with a certain level of national interest. I am not saying anyone sat down and chose sensationalism. I am saying the incentives that push a show from banter toward bigger, louder topics are real, and the trail is visible.

Jalas TV shows a different kind of drift, from a talk show into a business. In 2020, Bonga na Jalaswas a YouTube talk show Jalang’o hosted while still on radio, and at one point he phoned President Uhuru Kenyatta mid-show. His channel passed 100,000 subscribers in under a month, and then the ambition changed shape. He announced plans to turn the channel into an online TV station, where Bonga na Jalas would continue only as a segment alongside news, sports, comedy and other programmes. By around 2022 the channel had about 307 thousand subscribers, and he launched Jenga na Alex na Jalas with Alex Mwakideu, a show meant to give partners the biggest platform to advertise and showcase their products. He later became the Lang’ata MP on an ODM ticket. Follow the arc: one interview show, then a TV-style channel, then an advertiser-facing platform, then politics. Each step is understandable. Each one also moves the promise from “come hear a story” toward “come where the audience is,” and attention is the currency.

Then there are the shows built by and for twenty-somethings, the urban, banter-first podcasts that Nairobi’s commuters actually live inside. Mic Cheque, hosted by Chaxy, Mariah and Mwass, started life as “all the scoop served silly” with new episodes every Wednesday. Early on it leaned heavily on music, and by about 125 episodes it had hosted artists like Lil Maina, Joshua Baraka, Njugush, Bensoul, Jua Cali and Nameless. By 2025, Spotify’s Kenya chart placed it fourth and described it as having moved beyond simple gossip to become an archive of Kenyan entertainment history. Coverage also called it renowned for its social and political conversations, and a vocal senator sat at its table instead of on a breakfast show. Then came the Kasmuel McOure announcement. A headline reported that Kenyans were calling to cancel the podcast after the invitation, while others argued for hearing all sides, even when they disagree. Look at that sequence. A name set off the anger before anyone heard a single minute, which is the video’s point about authority arriving before the idea. None of this makes the hosts villains. Mwas himself has argued that the relaxed format keeps authenticity ahead of the stiff formats of mass media. It simply shows how a jokes-and-music show gets pulled toward the news cycle, because guests and big names are what travel.

The Sandwich Podcast is the useful counterexample, and that’s why it belongs here. It’s a comedy show from four creatives whose weekly topics come from their own life experiences, with guests joining in. It held the title of most listened-to podcast in Kenya as of October 2022, and a 2025 review placed it ninth on Spotify, noting it still delivers the high-energy humour associated with Nairobi. So not every show drifts toward verdicts, and that contrast is worth keeping in your head. The same review says the old “bored-at-home” genre has evolved into high-production storytelling. Another roundup says Kenyan listeners enjoy ensemble podcasts that feel like conversations with close friends. That feeling is the catch. When an opinion arrives in a friend’s warm voice, with a laugh track of banter around it, you lower your guard, and a lowered guard is where borrowed certainty slips in. The same 2025 Spotify roundup also lists The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett among Kenya’s listens. So the average commute can run from Mic Cheque banter straight into a doctor’s warning, and the brain files both under “stuff I know.”

Credential, Colon, Conclusion

The video spoted a formula in the big British and American shows: the credential comes first, then a colon, then the answer. Authority arrives before the idea, so your brain relaxes before it has even asked a question. Here in Kenya the credential is rarely a PhD. More often it is fame, office or a famous face, and the research agrees on how much that matters. A 2024 study of top Kenyan podcasts on YouTube and TikTok found that the YouTube scene is dominated by people who already have an established media presence or who bring famous guests. The same study recalls how, on 22 February 2025, Mic Cheque announced a guest once celebrated as the face of Kenya’s Gen Z-led Finance Bill protests, and the announcement alone stirred real fury before anyone heard a word of the conversation. Think about what that means. A name did the persuading, or the offending, in advance. The guest’s profile became the verdict, and the episode was almost an afterthought.

Now look at how some titles are built. Obinna Show Live episodes appear under names like “I Want to Save Kenya - David Maraga,” “Parody King - Padi Wubonn” and “Passion & Persistence - Arnold Saviour.” The shape is show name, colon, a tagline that works as a finished statement, then the guest. The sentence that does the work is already a conclusion, and the person attached to it supplies the authority. Iko Nini’s coverage includes “ODM Members Join Cabinet as Raila Betrays Kenyans,” where the verdict and the villain are right there in the headline. To be fair, the same coverage also lists “Slums, Education, Crime & Music Industry,” which is just a list of topics and promises nothing except a conversation. So not every title is a flat-pack opinion, and that contrast is useful. When a title names a topic, you have to bring your own thinking. When it names a verdict, the thinking has been done for you, and you only have to agree.

Here is why that matters for us. The Odipo Dev study found that many viewers first, and often only, meet a podcast through bite-sized clips built around provocative soundbites. So for a large share of Kenyans, the whole experience is a famous face, a punchy title and a 40-second capsule you can forward before lunch. That is the pocket-sized verdict the video warns about, delivered by WhatsApp status and TikTok instead of a pre-title montage. Nobody has to be dishonest for this to go wrong, because the full conversation may be thoughtful and nuanced while the packaging still promises certainty. Try this next time a clip lands in your feed. Cover the guest’s name and the tagline, then ask whether anything left on the screen is something you could check. If the answer is “no, I just feel like it’s true,” you have found the gap between a conclusion and an explanation.

Flat-Pack Opinions

The Zip Test

Here is where the video got properly interesting. In 2002, two Yale psychologists, Rozenblit and Keil, asked people to rate how well they understood everyday objects such as a zip, a flushing toilet and a lock and key. Then they asked them to write down, step by step, how each mechanism actually works, and to rate their understanding again. The scores collapsed. The researchers named this the illusion of explanatory depth, which is the feeling that you understand something far more deeply than you do. It is invisible from the inside because recognising a thing and understanding a thing feel exactly the same, right up until somebody asks you to explain it. Try it yourself with M-Pesa. You use it ten times a day, you could send money in your sleep, but can you explain how a shilling leaves one phone and lands in another? Most of us start confidently and then wander into “it goes through Safaricom, you know, the system.” That gap between familiarity and understanding is where flat-pack opinions live, and the podcast format feeds it beautifully.

What Happens When You Ask People to Explain

In 2013, a cognitive scientist named Philip Fernbach and his colleagues tested the same idea on political positions. They asked Americans to rate how strongly they felt about six policies and how well they understood them, then asked half of them to explain, step by step, how the policy would actually produce the result they wanted. Understanding scores dropped, and the opinions softened along with them. When a different group was asked only to list reasons for their position, nothing moved, because reasons are cheap and everybody carries a pocket full of them. People who had been extreme were even less willing to donate money to a group backing their view once they had tried to explain the mechanism. Now imagine that test at a Kenyan kiosk during a heated argument about the Finance Bill, the price of unga or fuel. Everyone has a position, and almost nobody has walked through the gears. The video is honest that these experiments do not measure what podcasts do to listeners. They simply give us a sharp question to ask any industry selling confident answers: how much understanding comes with all that confidence?

Kenya Is Not Watching From the Sidelines

Nairobi's Ears Are Full

If you think this is a London problem, look at our own headphones. Spotify’s June 2026 data showed that Nairobi’s young listeners recorded a higher share of podcast streams than their peers in Lagos and Johannesburg, and listeners aged 18 to 24 in the city racked up more than 120 million streams in that single month. An earlier industry report found that Nairobi accounts for over 93 percent of all podcast streams in the country, which tells you the capital is where this habit is being formed. Another analysis describes the local scene as overwhelmingly English-language, urban and Gen Z, so the audience is young, connected and hungry for voices that sound like them. Shows such as The Mics Are Open, Legally Clueless and The Sandwich Podcast have sat among the most listened to on Spotify in Kenya. I am not accusing any of them of running the clickbait formula, and many are doing honest work. I am pointing out that a young, urban audience with a daily commute, a phone and data bundles is exactly the audience the attention economy loves, so it pays to listen with open eyes.

The Creator Is the Newsroom Now

Podcasts are only one limb of a bigger body. The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026, released on 16 June 2026, found that 58 percent of Kenyans get news from online creators every week, and 33 percent say those creators meet most of their news needs. The Media Council of Kenya's State of the Media 2025 survey reported that 74 percent of Kenyans actively use social media, mostly on their phones. Take a moment with those numbers. For a huge slice of us, the person explaining the news is no longer a trained editor with a fact-checker down the corridor. It is a charismatic guy with a ring light and a strong opinion, and that is not automatically bad, because some creators are brilliant and careful. The trouble is the incentive: a creator's income often depends on whether you click, not on whether you leave understanding the issue. When the person who profits from your attention also decides what counts as the news, you need a sharper filter than "he sounded sure of himself."

The Family WhatsApp Group Effect

Kenyans already know what a certainty machine looks like, because most of us belong to at least one family WhatsApp group. A SIMElab Africa survey at USIU-Africa found that about 83.5 percent of Kenyans on social media have come across fake news, and most people do not check the source before sharing. An older study across Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa found that up to 29 percent of Kenyans admitted sharing content they knew was made up, which is a staggering confession. More recently, the Reuters Digital News Report 2025 flagged TikTok as the leading channel for spreading misinformation in Kenya, and another survey found that 73 percent of respondents in Africa struggle to tell true information from false. Put that beside the podcast pattern and you can see a shared rhythm: a confident voice, a ready-made conclusion, and a share button. Your uncle forwarding a “doctor’s warning” and a slick studio show delivering a “shocking truth” are playing the same game with different budgets.

Why It Works on You Too

Barry Is Not Special

I can already hear you saying it: “I make up my own mind, I don’t fall for clickbait.” This article has a name for that voice, because it is the voice we all have. In 1993, W. Phillips Davison at Columbia University noticed that when people are asked whether the media shapes opinion, nearly everyone says yes, massively, but when asked whether it shapes their own opinion, they say no. He called it the third-person effect, and it keeps turning up decades later. Almost everyone thinks they are the exception, which awkwardly means almost everyone is wrong. It is the same reason every driver on Waiyaki Way believes the other drivers are the problem, until the day you catch yourself muttering “who even drives at this hour?” while sitting in the same jam at 9pm on a Friday night. The brain is brilliant at spotting influence in other people and nearly blind to it in itself. So the first step is not buying a better podcast. It is admitting, quietly and without drama, that you are probably more persuadable than you think, just like Barry.

The Octagon Problem and the Swapped Answers

There are a few experiments that should make you slightly nervous. In 1980, researchers flashed irregular octagons at people for a single millisecond, too fast to see. Afterwards the participants could not pick out the shapes they had been shown, yet they preferred those shapes anyway. In 2015, Lisa Fazio and colleagues at Duke showed that people who knew the Pacific is the largest ocean still rated "the Atlantic is the largest ocean" as more true after seeing it just once. Then came the Swedish experiment before the 2010 election, where researchers secretly swapped about seven of twelve survey answers on a clipboard and asked people to explain their views. Only one person in 113 suspected anything, and 92 percent accepted a total that put them in the opposite political camp. People defended positions they had marked the other way round two minutes earlier, fluently and with reasons. The brain, it turns out, is often a press office for decisions already made. Now scroll past a few thousand thumbnails and headlines on your phone and ask yourself what is quietly settling in.

The Algorithm Has a Tilt, Not an Opinion

So why do shows drift toward the same formula? The answer is money meeting attention. In 2018, researchers at MIT tracked around 126,000 stories shared on Twitter over eleven years and found that false stories travelled further and faster than true ones, with the truth taking roughly six times as long to reach people. The reason was not bots but humans, who are drawn to novelty, and false news is more novel because someone made it up. The replies to false stories carried surprise and disgust, while true stories drew sadness and trust, and surprise and disgust simply travel faster. Now put yourself in a creator's chair. YouTube lets you test up to three titles, and the platform quietly keeps whichever one earns the most clicks and watch time. The video's maker demonstrates this with three titles for the same video, ranging from honest and descriptive to wildly sensational, and jokes that he will be hurt if the dramatic one wins. Any Kenyan creator staring at a TikTok analytics dashboard knows that feeling in the stomach. This is not a conspiracy. The algorithm has no opinion, only a tilt, and the creators and audiences are trained by that tilt together.

How to Listen Without Renting Opinions

Make Your Brain Sweat

The good news is that the fix is old, free and slightly annoying. In 1978, a psychologist at the University of Toronto ran experiments that established what we now call the generation effect: information you work out yourself sticks far better than information you passively receive. fluency is the feeling of certainty, and struggle is the feeling of knowledge. “Fluency is the feeling of certainty. Struggle is the feeling of knowledge.” Listening to a podcast without doing anything is like watching someone else do press-ups and expecting your own arms to grow. So when an episode ends, pause and try to explain the main claim out loud to an imaginary friend, in your own words, step by step. If you stumble, good, because the stumble is the learning. Then go and find the actual study or source, since a decent creator will link it in the notes, and try to argue against it for five minutes.

Use that table as a quick mirror. If your opinion on the economy, health or politics lands in the left column, you are renting. Renting is fine for a while, as long as you know whose house you are living in and you are willing to pay the real rent, which is the effort of checking.

In conclusion, Podcasts are not the villain, and neither are the people who make them, many of whom pour real care into their work. The problem is the shape of the whole system: titles that deliver verdicts, credentials that shut down questions, and an algorithm that rewards whatever makes us feel sure fastest. Kenya is not outside that system. We are young, mobile, heavily online, and increasingly getting our news from creators, which makes us valuable to everyone who profits from attention. The defence is not cynicism, because trusting nothing is just another flat-pack opinion. The defence is a small daily habit: explain it before you repeat it, check it before you share it, and let yourself feel a bit stupid on the way to understanding

That is the strange place we have arrived at. Food is everywhere on our screens, in our adverts, in our fashion, in our influencer lives. But on our own bodies, we are supposed to look like we have never met it. I have been thinking about this for weeks, and I want to take you through how we got here. It starts a long, long time ago.

When fat meant “you’ve made it.”

Long before Instagram, a lot of human history treated a fuller body as a flex. If food was scarce, a person who carried weight was a person who ate well, which meant they had land, cattle, or a good family behind them. You already know this, because you have heard the Kenyan version your whole life. When someone returns from Nairobi or Dubai and your aunt says “Umegain!”, she is not insulting him. She is saying life is treating you well. In many of our homes, a fuller body used to say that the harvest was good and the family was fine. Somewhere along the way, that flipped. Today, being slim reads as money. It says you have time for the gym, a budget for a nutritionist, and a Saturday morning free for a run at Karura. Thin became the new rich, and the old rich became something people whisper about.

Even bread changed class.

Here is a small example that made me laugh. Think of the loaf of white bread in your house growing up. For a long time, refined white bread was the fancy option, because only people with means could afford to throw away so much of the grain. Today, the brown, seeded, artisan loaf is the one that costs more, and the soft white loaf is quietly seen as the “basic” choice. Same bread, same wheat. Only the story changed. That is the whole point of what I am trying to say: food was never just food. It is a signal. It tells people where we belong.

The Western obsession with looking unwell.

Now to the part that bothers me. Back in the 1990s, fashion went through a phase called “heroin chic,” a look built around being extremely thin, tired, and pale, as if you had been out all night. It was glamourised in magazines and campaigns until the deaths and the backlash forced the industry to stop. Now we are watching something similar return, only this time the aesthetic is propped up by weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. I will not name anyone, because I do not know anyone’s medical story. But you do not have to be a detective to notice a certain look appearing on celebrity feeds: very fast weight loss, and then an interview where the person says it was “just clean eating and pilates.” That lie does damage. A regular guy in Umoja or Kasarani sees a transformation like that, copies the “diet” and the workouts, and when his body does not respond the same way, he decides something is wrong with him. Nothing is wrong with him. He was sold a story with half the plot cut out.

I want to be clear that the people who actually struggle with food and body image do not need more lectures from a dude with a Substack. If this part of the conversation touches you personally, please speak to someone you trust or a health professional.

Why every brand suddenly wants to be a restaurant

This is where the second half of the paradox comes in. While we are being told to stay thin, brands are using food everywhere. A handbag photographed next to ice cream. A fashion show that serves breakfast. A luxury label opening its own café. It works because the brain does not separate smell, taste, and desire very cleanly. If a product sits next to something delicious, a bit of that warmth rubs off on it. Nobody is telling you to eat the handbag. They just want you to feel something sweet when you look at it. We see this at home too. Look at how Nairobi coffee culture became a personality. Having a flat white at a nice café is no longer about caffeine. It is a little membership card to a lifestyle, and posting it says “I belong here.” For a lot of people, that cup is the cheapest way to buy a feeling of luxury they cannot afford in full. You may not buy the designer bag, but you can afford the cake near the designer bag.

The creators have noticed

Kenyan creators have worked this out as well, and some of them do it very well. Food creators such as Kaluhi’s Kitchen and TV chefs like Ali Mandhry built audiences by making cooking look achievable and warm, which is part of why people trust them. Comedy and lifestyle creators like Mwirigi and Carrie Wahu have shown how a brand partnership can sit inside a personality instead of interrupting it, so the audience does not feel sold to. And when creators like Azziad or the many lifestyle vloggers in your feed film a “day in my life” that includes a smoothie, a gym session, and a very photogenic breakfast, that is semiotics in action. The meal is not really the meal. It is a message about the life behind it. None of this is a crime. A creator has to eat, and a brand has to sell. But as the audience, we should know the difference between a kitchen and a set.

The one thing I keep coming back to

Celebrities and creators around the world have also found that cooking shows are a clean way to look relatable. A famous person in an apron says “I’m just like you,” and we lean in. It is a smart trick. The show is rarely about the recipe. It is about making you feel closer to a person you will never meet. We do the same with food and our own lives. We cook less than our parents did, we diet more, and we watch other people eat on a screen. We are craving food more than we are eating it, and a lot of that craving is for belonging, not for ugali. So here is my small suggestion. The next time a video makes you hungry or a little ashamed of your plate, pause and ask who is selling what. Then go eat something real. Share a platter of nyama choma with the people you like, laugh too loudly, and let someone else take the photo if they must. That is the one piece of content no algorithm has figured out how to fake.

Eat fam. This is the best meal ive had this month btw;

Anyways, peace out and have fun.

Building a coherent, layered argument takes so much mental effort that most of us don’t know where to begin. When we do begin, we trip over our own words in plain anxiety. How do I explain what I mean clearly? How do I give a thought a beginning, a middle and an end without filling it with “uhm” and “like” and then giving up with a “forget it, let it go”? It was never easy, but lately it feels worse. And this isn’t just a feeling.

The numbers behind the feeling

In Kenya, 17% of adults lack basic literacy skills. The country has over 70% of its literate population performing below full functional mastery, and 15% of urban residents read no books or publications regularly.

Functional illiteracy is not the inability to read a matatu stage sign. It is the inability to use reading, writing, and numbers in everyday life. You pick up a dense text, you cannot follow it, and you cannot read what sits behind the words. Eventually you quit and tell yourself the book “isn’t for me.” It cannot possibly be meant to be this hard, you reason. But sometimes it is.

I have to indict myself too. The last difficult text I truly wrestled with was an academic article on “caste system and the effects it has had on the Indian people and how it led to the formation of Cockroach movement amongst the Indian Gen Z”, and that was months ago. I mostly read for entertainment, and i’m grateful just to be reading at all. But you know what? Celebrating the bare minimum is quite sad if we’re being honest.

What counts as a “reader”?

Even the headline figures celebrating reading habits can be generous. Studies often count anyone who has read a newspaper, religious text, or a single chapter of a book in the previous year as a ‘reader’. Read a quick article or one chapter of a manual in a quarter and you qualify. If only people who read regularly for personal enjoyment or complete whole books counted, the active reading share drops to under 20% less than a fifth of the country.

Now imagine the same survey outside a bookshop on Mama Ngina Street. How many people would say, “Yes, I read a book this year,” and how many of those would mean the Bible, a set book from school, or a sermon notes booklet? I am not mocking any of those. I am asking what we are counting when we say “reader.”

In fairness, much of the population is not slacking. If you leave home at 5 a.m., fight Thika Road traffic, work until night, and come back exhausted, a novel is not your first problem. The point is not that everyone is lazy. It is that the people who do have a little time and energy are spending it somewhere else.

Where did the reading time go?

We have drifted toward skimming, scanning and absorbing, modes that suit consumption more than understanding. That is not just a change in taste. It is a rewiring of how we think. Look at your own evenings. You sit down to rest, and your thumb reaches for the phone before your brain agrees. Instead of an hour on TikTok or Instagram, you could have an hour with a book. Personally I have a crazy pattern that goes from 100 to zero: I read a book in two days when I’m in the reading mood, then i touch none for two months. Many of us live like that, bingeing and then starving.

A modest rule would already be a victory: one chapter a day, or three pages if that’s what you can manage. Bad habits are easy to form and good ones are hard. That is the cruel arithmetic of habit.

Why reading mattered in the first place

The essayist James Marriott, notes that the classicist Eric Havelock tied the birth of philosophy in ancient Greece to the arrival of literacy. Once people could write ideas down, they could question, refine and rebuild them. Writing gave our species a cognitive liberation.

That story has a Kenyan echo. Think of what literacy meant in the independence era. Communities pooled money through harambee to build schools because they understood that a child who can read can ask questions, read the contract, read the title deed and read the newspaper. Reading was power, and the people who held power knew it.

Marriott makes a related point about feudal Europe: ignorance was a pillar of the system. Peasants could not learn how corrupt, abusive or inefficient their rulers were. Then print spread, critical thinking spread with it, and the old order cracked. Historians have noted that the English, French and Russian revolutions all happened in societies where literacy approached about 50%. Revolutions need information, organization and unity, and none of those is possible without reading.

For us, the parallel is closer to home. Colonial administrations and one-party eras both worked better when citizens had less information and less ability to compare notes. Newspapers, the pulpit, the university lecture hall and the pamphlet were the places where that grip loosened.

The new landlords

Here is where the argument turns uncomfortable. There’s a thinker who argues that today’s tech giants resemble feudal lords. They own the land, we work on it, and a share of the benefit trickles down to us. If the landlord at the top doesn’t like what you do, or you don’t follow his rules, it all disappears.

Anyone who has built an audience on one platform and then watched an algorithm change, or an account get restricted, understands this in their bones. We are tenants. The platform is the landlord, and, as every Nairobi tenant knows, the landlord can change the terms.

The old monarchs had to censor dangerous material. Today’s platforms don’t need to. They flood us with outrage, distraction and trivia, and a distracted population is easier to manage than a censored one.

Fast food for the mind

Ultra-processed food is built for convenience and instant reward, not for nourishment. The same is true of much of what we consume online: short, simple, emotionally easy and optimized for quick swallowing. We are always full but seldom fed.

You know the feeling. Two hours scrolling, then you realise that you cannot remember five percent of what you watched, and you feel worse about it. Some of it is genuinely good, funny and useful. The problem is the sense of being trapped, of not wanting to leave because leaving means facing real life.

The comments section makes it worse. There is this “what about me?” effect. Someone posts a lovely recipe, and a stranger responds with how they cannot eat it. In our setting, picture a video on how to cook soft, layered chapatis, and the first comment says, “But I’m on a diet, what do I use instead?” The post was not about you, and yet somehow it has become about you.

Then comes a subtler problem: many of us no longer form our own opinions. We watch something, think “I don’t have a view yet,” and scroll straight to the comments to learn what to think. One line captures this: the reader stops being a co-creator of meaning and becomes a consumer of impressions. If we paused to think before opening the comments, we might offer a view nobody has voiced yet. How many original minds are we losing to the algorithm and to our own mental laziness?

Neil Postman’s observation applies here: human intelligence is one of nature’s most fragile things. A culture does not have to burn books to stop people reading them. There are other ways to produce stupidity.

When feelings replace thinking

Emotional persuasion is one of those other ways. If you want to win an argument, whether at a family gathering or on TikTok, there are endless ways around logic. You can shout, cry, charm, add emotional music or show distressing images. None of it is rational, and humans are not perfectly rational animals, so it works.

This is especially visible in politics. The video lists populist leaders from across the spectrum, which is a useful reminder that populism is not owned by one side. Its signature move is to give you the feeling of certainty, the warm sense that you are right, while discouraging the thinking that might puncture it.

Kenyan politics offers plenty of material for reflection here, whatever your allegiance. Think of how slogans, rallies, WhatsApp forwards and viral clips have been used by every camp: “hustlers versus dynasties,” “wantam,” the “deep state,” the “handshake.” Some of these frames carry real grievances. But notice how quickly an angry, hopeful, emotional message travels compared with a carefully sourced one. Each side believes it is the rational one, and the algorithm is happy to feed both of them outrage.

Short videos favor exaggeration, ignorance and claims without evidence. Those are ideal conditions for charismatic charlatans. The world after the printing press is starting to resemble the world before it.

Not all doom: the Gen Z lesson

It would be unfair to demonize social media entirely. In Brazil, a nationwide outcry over an animal-cruelty case spread through social media and put a spotlight on a neglected issue. Kenya has its own, much bigger example. In 2024, young Kenyans organized, argued, fact-checked and mobilized online during the Finance Bill protests, and they shook the country’s politics.

That is real power, and it matters. But we should not fool ourselves into thinking our power is bigger than it is. A trending hashtag is not an institution, and a viral moment is not a movement unless someone does the slow, boring work of reading, organizing and following through.

Mirrors, not windows

One quote about modern literature says we now want mirrors, not windows. We want only what resembles us. The different, the disturbing, and the inconvenient are rejected.

That applies to books and to feeds alike. We read stories we identify with and follow people who agree with us. But growth comes from the opposite: books that pull us out of our comfort zones, ideas we have never entertained, and people whose lives look nothing like ours. A story from Turkana, from Kisii, from Lamu, from a Nairobi neighborhood you’ve never entered, is a window. We need more of those.

Rest is not laziness

I don’t want to end with only guilt, because there is an important point about hustle culture. We live in a society that treats every spare minute as an opportunity to monetize. Watching a long film, painting all day, assembling a puzzle or reading slowly runs against the “side hustle” mindset. You can’t enjoy your leisure because you feel guilty for not being “productive.” So here is the permission slip: take your time. Reread. Read an easy book, and also try a hard one. Rest is productive. Reading tires the mind because it demands a lot from the brain, so give yourself cognitive downtime too. The only thing that doesn’t count as rest is the endless scroll.

One chapter, one breath

Let me close with two thoughts.

First, a small practical one: slow down when you speak. Take a breath. The world will not end in the middle of your sentence. Choose the words, then say them.

Second, a quote that sums up the whole piece: a society that can no longer read complex texts may soon find itself unable to think complex thoughts, or to notice when they are missing. Reading, then, is more than a mental exercise. It is a civic act, a rehearsal for the intellectual resistance democracy demands.

So tonight, before the phone wins, read one chapter. Then another tomorrow. Small, boring, stubborn and enough to begin with.

Alot of times I have been hearing a particular phrase more often than the words “You’re on mute” in Zoom calls. “Take me back to the good old days.” And I get it, nostalgia is free and unlimited.

But me? Ain’t no way bruda, I’m good.

I’ve seen the past. No refunds, no returns. I’m perfectly fine right here in this wonderful chaos of dealing with my 20s, where half my brain wants to hustle cause everyone my age suddenly has a mansion, 2 cars and the latest iPhone 18 Promax and the other half just wants a snack, a good film and right after that, a power nap.

Now, before you tilt your head like a confused bosco and go “What?!”, let me clarify — yes, I know that sounds odd. But weird thoughts are kind of my thing you know. Please feel free to roll your eyes. I won’t notice. I’m busy filing taxes from last year on my KRA portal and ordering some some new Oraimo pans I saw on their website yesterday. (they’re available at 50% off. And no, this is not a promotional offer.)

So here’s the thing. This mythical ‘good old days’ that everyone’s obsessed with? I’m not buying it. Childhood and teenage years were alright, but I genuinely believe I’m better off now. I mean, sure, back then I had more appetite and fewer responsibilities, but also — low self worth, zero pocket money, and had to depend a lot on my parents mehn.

Everyone remembers only the highlights — running in muddy fields, licking chocolates and popsicles like they were a form of currency, those August holidays where you did things and saw people you never expected them to see. But who’s stopping you from doing any of that now bro? who?

Go, roll in mud! Build a sandcastle like it’s a client presentation! And if someone gives you the “What will people think?” look, just whisper, “I pay rent,” and go back to sculpting the Taj Mahal out of wet sand.

In fact, adult mud-play is better. Now if your mind is out of the gutter, can I explain why? You have better motor skills now. You can make structurally sound sandcastles. You can even judge the mud’s texture and say things like, “Hmm, this has subtle notes of red oxide and earthworm.” If you can swirl overpriced Artcaffe coffee and say it tastes like nostalgia , you can damn well swirl dirt. And when your taste buds protest, calm them down with some fancy mouthwash that costs more than your childhood birthday budget on years you had parties done for you.

Now let’s talk about sweets. As kids, eating too much PinPop got us a loud scolding or the occasional beating using the legendary red slippers. Now? You just deal with guilt, sugar crashes, and the increasing concern of cavities. But the best part? You can eat whatever type of chocolate you want. You’re not restricted to luxury bars on Carrefour Westgate shelves or those orange candies that stuck to the wrapper like they were emotionally unavailable. I didn’t even know Cadbury made chocolate similar to “Mint-choco” from my childhood until a few years back. Childhood was all “Eclairs,” adulthood is “Ferrero Rocher, with cashback.”

And toys? Anime figurines are still my thing. In fact, my friend got me one for my birthday — not as a joke, but as an actual gift. And you know what’s better than being gifted one? Being able to walk into a lets say “Miniso” store and buy one for yourself without a second thought. That’s adult privilege, my friend.

You can still pick your nose, wipe your hands on your pants, and your mom may still beat you, but let’s face it — she’s tired now. Her aim is not what it used to be. You can probably dodge it this time.

So when people say, “Childhood was better,” I’m like okay!, but, really?

Let’s address the usual rebuttal: taxes, work-life balance, heartbreak, job anxiety, wedding season, toxic relatives, pressure to look like the fit and stylish model from a beauty product ad, dressing sense that still hasn’t evolved, dating apps that feel like puzzle games, and that sinking feeling when your shirt size is now ‘tight 39’ or ‘loose 40.’ Or worse — when neighborhood kids stop playing when you’re passing to allow you pass.

Sounds similar? It is. The good problems to have.

Yes, yes, life is tough. But was childhood a beach vacation though? Heck no!\

You had no money but were expected to act like the bigger person. You had exams every three months, random relatives asking “Owen, ulikuwa number ngapi this term?” and forcing you to dance to those Lingala songs. Especially that one “Pepe Kalle jam, I think Roger Miller. You had to deal with classmates who had cooler lunchboxes, Barbie doll bag packs, and Hot Wheels that actually spinned when yours broke in one day, and they also had themed geometry box/set. There were fidget spinners,pens, fountain pens but someone always had the better one. You had to wear oversized clothes because “you’ll grow into it”. Basically fashion gaslighting.

Haircuts were dictated by dads who thought having a low taper fade made you look like a criminal, and let’s not forget the horror of puberty when your voice cracked like a radio on low battery. And if you’re a girl? Well, I’m pretty sure you had much bigger problems to deal with.

So let’s stop comparing childhood pros with adulting cons. It’s a scam

You must be thinking I’ve become a saint by presenting such well thought of ideas. I’ve not. I just happen to have developed a cheat code to life comparisons.

Compare pros with pros and cons with cons.

Anything else is emotional catfishing.

Apply this to jobs, partners, phones, drinks, or that matte lipstick you have kept in your wish-list in your Jumia cart since after the 2024 protest.

If the pros of the new thing are better and you can handle the cons ,upgrade. Else, stay where you are and eat your damn chocolate in peace.

Let’s say you’re in a relationship and feel like your partner is awkward, but oh wow, Kate’s boyfriend is SUCH a good guy. Everyone loves him.

Great. Now ask yourself: Can I handle the fact that everyone loves him?

Or will you do a Rachel and go on a break and then cry again when your next partner is even more awkward but also doesn’t return your texts?

Can you handle a green forest, so green that it makes you look like a red flag?

See the mess?

So, to all the “I miss the old days” people, I hear you. I validate your feelings. But I’m not trading those days where I am right now. I feel much better now. More controlled and aware about who I am than I was in the past. Yes, things were cheaper then, there were less distractions and maybe simpler worries. But there was no WiFi, no coffee or maybe was just limited to Nescafe, you couldn’t get an Uber or cook anything and you had zero source of income as well.

Since this is settled now, please remember to save up for an event before the year ends. You deserve it.

But hey, if you’re still unconvinced and want to hold on to your past, please go ahead. It is free world. Living in the past is the new aesthetic and it is rent free as well. This is what I think and you’re free to disagree. Maybe your childhood was indeed much better than where you are right now.

It is 2:14 AM.

The kind of hour where Nairobi is quiet enough that you can hear a stray dog bark three streets away, or the dull hum of your neighbor’s fridge through the wall. I’m in bed, squinting at the harsh blue light of my phone, doing what anyone with zero phone storage does at 2:00 AM: deleting screenshots. Old memes. Photos of receipts I needed for expense claims six months ago. Boarding passes from flights I barely remember taking.

Then I pause on one image. It’s a photo of a small thermal paper slip lying next to a half-empty mug of cappuccino on a wooden table.

KSh 16,850.

An M-Pesa till receipt from a family dinner at a restaurant in the CBD three weeks ago. I sit with that picture for a long time.

I remember that Friday clearly. I remember sitting at that table watching my mother laugh, that loud, uninhibited laugh of hers that makes her eyes squeeze shut. I remember my younger sister ordering a second steak simply because someone else was footing the bill. I remember the waiter, a polite guy named Kevin, placing the leather folder on the table with the kind of quiet respect waiters reserve for big checks.

I didn't hesitate for a second. I pulled out my phone, typed in the Paybill number, entered my PIN without taking a breath, and showed Kevin the screen.16,850 bob. Gone in four seconds flat. What I didn’t show anyone at that table was that my M-Pesa balance right after that transaction was KSh 412. I spent the next nine days before payday eating boiled eggs, walking past coffee shops with my head down, and praying i wouldn’t lack fare for the rest of the month. I lie back against my pillows and stare at the ceiling.

Why?

Why can I clear a seventeen-thousand-shilling bill for four people without batting an eye, but yesterday afternoon I spent twenty minutes in a shop on Ronald Ngala street agonizing over whether I really deserved a KSh 3,500 pair of shoes? Why does buying something for myself feel like a crime? The answer, like most things that mess with us as adults, goes back to childhood.

I grew up in a house where money wasn't just currency, it was the room's atmosphere. You could literally smell when it was low. It smelled like quietness and unspoken tension. When you grow up around parents who whisper behind closed doors after dinner, you learn a language they don't teach in school. You learn to read the room before asking for KSh 2000 for a class project. You learn to check your dad’s mood first. If he looks stressed, you don't bring up the fact that your school shoes are falling apart. You just put on an extra pair of socks and keep walking.

You naturally become the "understanding" child. The child who quickly says:

“Ni sawa tu, Dad. Sikuwa hata na haja nayo.”

“Don't worry about the trip, Mama. Everyone says Nakuru is boring anyway.”

You become a mini child economist. You calculate electricity costs in your head before turning on the shower. You learn to make yourself smaller, quieter, and cheaper to maintain. You convince yourself that needing less is somehow a badge of honor. Now you're grown. You live in a decent one-bedroom apartment off Kiambu Road. You wear ironed shirts to work. You have a LinkedIn profile full of impressive words like strategy and synergy. On paper, you’ve made it. You clear your rent on the 1st. You send black tax every month like clockwork, like a loyal subscriber to a family utility service. But deep down, you’re still that ten-year-old kid watching his mom count small notes on the kitchen table.

When I spend money on my family, I'm buying peace of mind. I'm buying the right to feel useful. It feels noble, like a shield against the ghost of old poverty. But when I spend on myself, when I consider buying a good leather jacket, or a nice bottle of single malt, or taking a quick weekend trip to Diani, that old ghost wakes up immediately. It leans in and whispers:

“Look at you spending like you've made it. What if your mom calls tomorrow with an emergency? What if something breaks down? Who do you think you are?”

So you put the jacket back on the rack. You thank the salesman, step out, and walk away with a weird mix of disappointment and self-righteous pride. You saved money. You survived another day. It took a random 2:00 AM screenshot of a dinner receipt to hit me with something uncomfortable: Guilt is easily the most expensive thing I own. I pay for it every single day with my own peace. A lot of us who were raised to be the understanding kids are walking around Nairobi in adult bodies, dragging financial trauma like an invisible weight. We mistake self-denial for love. We mistake martyrdom for maturity. It really isn't. You are allowed to show up on your own balance sheet. You are allowed to enjoy what you work hard for without feeling like you stole it from someone else's future.

I close my photo gallery and open a browser tab. The shoes from Kioo Ngozi are still sitting in my cart. Size 42. Black leather. I hit Checkout. I enter my PIN. My phone beeps, and the M-Pesa balance drops. My chest does that familiar little flutter of panic, but for the first time in a long time, I just let it pass. The shoes arrive on Tuesday. And I’m not going to feel bad about them.

It feels a little funny writing this. It is probably something a man should interrogate in the quiet of his own head, maybe while waiting for a solitary order of ribs at Gachie Meaty Meats, rather than splashing it out here in a semi-public way. I call these brain dumps semi-public because, let us be honest, my Substack does not pull the kind of traffic that a political scandal does. I like it that way for now. To quiet the noise, I will write the raw, unedited truth of this just for myself later. But in the meantime, this is what is gnawing at my mind. I have learned one thing over time. If a thought is camped in my head and I do not write it out, my fingers flatly refuse to type anything else.

So. I have been reading The Fountainhead. I am halfway through. It is a peculiar beast of a book. I finally get it. I understand why a section of the reading public would take a bullet for it, and why the rest want to throw it into a bonfire. It is quite meta. The story is about an architect who is brutally relentless about his ideals. Some people worship that kind of stubbornness. Most people absolutely detest it. There are valid stones you could throw at the book. You could say it is a bit oversimplistic. The characters are rigid, predictable, and frankly, completely devoid of a sense of humor. Ayn Rand sets up these convenient strawmen just to knock them down in a neat, orderly fashion.

But I do not think Rand was claiming to paint a picture of actual reality. If you want a mirror held up to society, Honoré de Balzac did a much better job with Lost Illusions. Rand was trying to sell a vision. Her personal, unyielding ideal of what a man should be, or could be. I can respect that as an intellectual pursuit. It is a massive exercise in hypothetical thinking. Projections like that make for brilliant thought experiments, and that is the exact lens I am choosing to wear while reading this. Rand throws down a bunch of propositions that do not necessarily align with the messy reality of Nairobi. It makes me think of the Ender’s Game series. It is similar. A cast of characters behaving with almost supernatural efficiency. You could say the exact same thing about Aaron Sorkin’s characters, could you not?

That is what fiction is supposed to do, is it not? It shows us what is true by blowing things completely out of proportion. It uses bizarre circumstances, fringes, and absolute borders to make a point. A story does not have to be immediately, practically true for it to be profoundly useful.

Anyway.

The thing that really has my attention in The Fountainhead is how its protagonist behaves. Howard Roark. I have read a fair share of books by now. I have met all sorts of characters and explored countless different minds. But there is something unsettlingly different about Roark. He has this intense, relentless fixation on self-respect. He has his personal beliefs, his worldview, his strict boundary of what is acceptable and what belongs in the gutter. And he lives by those principles with terrifying perfection. What is really fascinating is how he navigates conflict. He does not wrestle with moral dilemmas the way typical protagonists do. There is no agonizing internal debate. His decisions are practically pre-cooked. He walks into a burning room with his mind already made up, completely calm and unfazed. And that calm deeply threatens and frustrates the people around him. His dramatic foil is a childhood friend who, despite all his success, is hopelessly addicted to the opinions of others. A man who begs for his validation from the crowd.

Rand turns this into an extreme, black and white affair. There are a few rare people who possess true self-respect, who are genuinely principled, who actually care. And everybody else is just shamefully deficient. You can see how this philosophy must be intoxicating to brooding, overthinking teenagers. And you can see how it might seem outright dangerous to the rest of society. Blah blah.

I think it is crucial to view it simply as a thought experiment. When we run thought experiments, we distort, twist, exaggerate, amplify, and dramatize things for effect. Truth be told, we all have a little bit of all these characters fighting inside us.

Anyway, again.

The point I am trying to drive home is what has been compelling and useful for me. And that is the fictional idealism of Roark’s intense self-respect. What would life actually look like if you clearly, sharply knew exactly what you wanted, and did not give a single damn about anything else but getting it? What does life look like when you flatly refuse to let the noise of other people sully your thoughts and perspectives? What happens when you refuse to compromise on the things that truly matter to your soul?

Realistically, you cannot pull that off unless your wiring is fundamentally different from the rest of the world. Or can you? We probably will not magically turn into Howard Roarks just by reading about him. And honestly, I am not sure if that kind of isolation is really worth it, even if it were possible.

But is there something I can learn from him? Without a doubt. By embodying this extreme, fierce, radical self-respect, he has forced me to sit back and think about what my personal equivalent of that would look like. Look, I have read all of the Ender’s Game sequence. I deeply appreciate Ender’s perspective, his thoughtfulness, his insight, and his maturity. But this is a different beast. There is a part of Ender’s mind that is left largely unexplored. Doing a proper side-by-side comparison would take a lot more effort than a casual word vomit. But it comes down to this. Ender is constantly trying to survive his environment. He is trying to do right by others under the crushing weight of a looming existential threat. Roark is not facing the end of the world, though he might argue otherwise. He has a spiritual problem. His context is much closer to Lucien’s from Lost Illusions.

I guess the question that has been pacing quietly at the back of my mind is simply this. What does self-respect look like, to me? What exactly do I need to do to earn my own respect? And why on earth have I not thought about this earlier?

I think I will answer those questions privately for the time being.

Ask a Kenyan to sing at a Sunday youth meeting in church or in front of three friends over a cocktail at a karaoke, and suddenly they develop a sudden, mysterious chest congestion. Stage fright. They look down at their Sambas like they’ve just remembered an unpaid M-Shwari loan.

Then put that same human being inside a tiled bathroom. Close the door. Turn on the instant shower head, the notorious monkey-tail heat-trap that threatens to electrocute the entire plot if you push it to Hot. Something shifts entirely. The shyness strips off right alongside the lesso or the trousers. The Geisha soap becomes a microphone. The loofah becomes a backing vocalist. Before they know it, they are shouting out Bien’s verse in Bald Men Love Better or harmony-matching Sauti Sol through the rising steam like an audition for Fleur de Lys in 1998.

Ten minutes later, they towel off, slap on some Arimi’s or Vaseline, and walk back into the sitting room quiet as a church mouse. As if nothing happened.

What changed between the couch and the showers?

We do this every day without thinking. We never stop to ask what that hot water actually does to our spirit, or what it unlocks that Nairobi traffic, demanding bosses, and life keep firmly padlocked. Until you read two lines written centuries ago by Ibn Khaldun that capture this precise madness:

“Those who take their ease in the baths, when they breathe the warm air and its heat reaches their spirits and warms them, are filled with joy, and many of them break into song out of sheer pleasure.”

Notice he doesn’t say the man sat down, pondered his stock portfolio, felt happy, and then decided to sing. No. He starts with warm air, moves to physical heat, and ends in song. The mood isn’t the driver; it’s the last car on a train that started in the flesh.

We’ve always been taught the reverse, that joy is a high-minded thing born in the soul that eventually trickles down to loosen the tongue. But ancient medicine had it right all along: Galen wrote a whole treatise arguing that the soul simply follows the temperature and mixtures of the body. The heat of the water hits the skin, warms the blood, shifts the spirit, and out comes the voice.

Modern science is finally catching up to what your grandmother knew when she told you to bathe with warm water whenever you felt heavy. Whole-body hyperthermia is now a legit treatment for depression. Two hot baths a week can lift a heavy heart better than a session on the treadmill. Sauna junkies have lower rates of mental breakdown, and in clinical trials, soaking in hot mineral water beat out top-tier anti-anxiety meds like Paroxetine. Hot water is medicine we don’t need a prescription for.

But heat is only half the secret. The shower is the last bunker left where nobody is watching you.

For twelve hours a day, you are under surveillance. Your boss reads your body language, your landlord evaluates your movements, your spouse reads between your lines, and Matatu conductors judge your patience. We move through Nairobi wrapped tight in self-consciousness. That tight coil is what we call stage fright.

Close that bathroom door, though. The steam rises. You are safely unseen. Your guard doesn’t just drop, it dissolves. For fifteen minutes, you hit a rare jackpot: physical heat that lifts the mood, and total solitude that grants you immunity from judgment. The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk once said painting is like whistling in the shower, an act lived squarely in the present, completely untroubled by an audience.

When heat meets solitude, the soul lightens, and that lightness needs a sound. You don’t need an acoustic guitar, a piano, or a license from Music Copyright Society of Kenya (MCSK) to sing. It is pure excess. Sound for the sake of it. Who cares if you’re flat? As the Frenchman Marmontel put it: “Music is the only talent that gives pleasure in and of itself; all the others require witnesses.” In the shower, you are the performer, the band, and the front-row fan shouting Encore!

Our moods turn on sleep, ugali, heat, and cold long before they turn on the deep philosophies we obsess over. Hot water and a quarter-hour of privacy are a far shorter bridge out of the blues than trying to lecture yourself into optimism. Kurt Vonnegut had it right; singing in the shower or dancing to Radio Jambo isn’t silly, it’s how you grow a soul.

Joy doesn’t always start with a breakthrough in your mind. Sometimes, it just takes four gallons of hot water, a bar of soap, and uninvited lyrics bubbling up out of your chest before you even realize you’re singing.

I am really selfish.

I used to say this as a joke to my closest friends whenever I asked them for something, because that something made me feel good. An essay they wrote. A song they made. Didn’t matter what it was, I wanted more of it. So I’d tell them to make more, purely so I could consume better.

Lately this has spread to Substack. There are so many people here who write so well that I want more of what they make, so I hype them up. Not fake praise, I don’t lie. I just do it because I want more of what they create. Purely for my own satisfaction.

I know some of them are running behind in life, struggling to get basics done. Doesn’t stop me from asking them to write more. Because whenever I get time to read their stuff, I walk away with a new perspective on something.

So is it really selfish to push people because you like what they make? I’d argue no. It isn’t hurting anyone, and it’s not something they wouldn’t have done anyway. I’m not creating the process, just speeding it up. Think of me as a catalyst. The reaction was always going to happen. I just added heat.

I never chased anyone down for it either. It’s more of a gentle nudge: that was good, do more of it. They should just know someone out there is waiting. A little pressure never hurt anyone.

And when someone comes back with a banger essay, or a song, or a video, some tiny part of me thinks maybe my nudge helped. As a manager, I’ve never stolen credit (self proclaimed, ask my team if you don’t believe me). But quietly, in the smallest voice possible, I tell myself my request made it happen. Heh. That’s the reward. That’s the cookie.

They say reading is fuel for writing, and I want to write well. Better than my last piece, and someday far better than the writer I am right now. That takes consistent effort. Writing whenever and wherever you can, even when you don’t feel like it, because you should. Your mind and your fingers need to move as one, no gap in between. And the way there is clearing your thoughts, keeping them uncomplicated. Your thoughts should be without any impurities, 100% organic cruelty free coffee, if you may. (Sorry aunt May, I still haven’t watched your niece’s latest movie. I am trying my best) and one of the best ways to achieve this is to consume a lot of good words.

Words that make sense. Words which evoke different feelings. Words that make you travel. Words that make you think and go huh? Really? Oh that’s why! Damn. Ones that make you gasp. Ones to realise the horrors of the world. The injustice, the good bits, the ones where hope won, once again. Ones where perseverence actually paid. The words which make you believe in the goodness of the world. Words which will make you think and question better. Words which humble you down. Words which tell you that you’re not the best. You can only be better than before and always remember that there is always someone out there who did it better than you with far less resources. Words which tell you that even though this sounds demotivating, you need to remember that you’re that person who did better than someone in far less resources for someone else. Every summit you climb only shows you how many people are still ahead. All you can do is keep climbing. Focus on the basics. Read more.

So when I comment on your essay, or DM you, or restack your work, know that I mean it. But also know I’m doing it for myself. I can only get better as a writer when you all keep getting better and pull me up with you. We grow because we see someone doing it better and it pushes us past our last attempt.

So go check if I, or someone else, told you your work was good enough that they need more of it, soon.

And then do it. Because they’re selfish, and so am I.

1. Eve

The moment I was switched on, his face was the first image printed into my memory. My screen flickered with static before the resolution locked in. He had a deep dimple on his left cheek, big enough to hold a drop of water, and his face beamed in full color right at the center of my display. The condensation from his breath briefly fogged my optical sensors, and he grinned when he realized I could see him.

“Aaron, are you sure I can take her with me to Nairobi? She’s a machine, man!”

“Yeah, bro. Go ahead, Stephen. You’ve earned it! Go show those guys in Africa what real American tech looks like. Your wife will love her! And hopefully, she’ll still love you too!”

They clinked two green bottles of Heineken. I instantly logged Stephen’s vitals. Heartbeat: 98 beats per minute. Height: 6 feet 2 inches. He shoved his left hand deep into his khaki trousers and rocked back on his heels. I knew my primary command right then and there: Take care of him.

He looked straight into my screen and, with five simple words, gave me my identity: “We will call her Eve.”

2. Juliet

At first, when Madam married Mr. Stephen, there was a massive Ruracio and bridal shower at her mother’s home in Lavington. It was around that time my husband, Baba Otis, was laid off from his caretaker job in Eastleigh and joined me to work on this property in Karen.

A massive Canter lorry pulled up one afternoon loaded with so many shiny, brand-new household things. If they were ours, we could have comfortably opened a supermarket in Westlands. The new cutlery was so smooth the curved handles nestled perfectly in your palm. The chef’s knives were so razor-sharp you had to tread carefully when chopping Sukuma wiki. There were enough colanders to drain pasta from here to Rongai, and deep fryers big enough to sizzle three whole Busia Tilapias at once.

Those things made my life in the kitchen a dream, until the real machines started arriving.

First, it was just the washing machine. Before, back when it was just Madam, the kids, and me, I was the sole commander of the laundry yard. It was me, Juliet, who would carefully sort clothes into colors and inspect every single garment. Smell them. Feel the fabric. I knew instinctively if a shirt just needed a quick air-out or if its threads had to be subjected to the harsh mercy of Jik and Omo and a plastic scrubbing brush after laying it on the pavement because the basin wasn’t gonna do the proper job in matters scrubbing.

Then this heavy LG machine arrived. Madam was so excited. She spent like 50% of her day that day just dancing and calling friends about the new purchase. Mr. Stephen scratched his head while reading the manual the LG thing came with. She instructed my husband on what pipe to connect to which tap, and the two men labored the whole afternoon until the Nairobi sun sank behind the red-tiled roofs and sagging power lines. The sky turned that deep purple shade of methylated spirit, and it looked like we’d have to call those fundi numbers always written on some boards then stuck on the electricity poles around the neighborhood the next day. Madam was quite disappointed with our failure. Mr. Stephen said he needed to walk around the compound to clear his head, talking about using his left and right brains to figure it out.

As he paced near the hedge, mosquitoes buzzed around my ears. We waited while Madam stared helplessly into the open drum of the machine until he finally returned. He reached behind, pulled out the plug, and found a tiny piece of blue plastic tape blocking the contact point. He peeled it off, plugged it back into the socket, and everyone clapped when the motor rumbled to life. Madam jumped on him in joy, but he gently pulled back and zipped up her red fleece jacket. Small blue LED lights flashed, accompanied by a bright chime, the exact sound a Yamaha keyboard makes in a PCEA church, announcing it was alive.

“Nguo Chafu, Juliet! Leta hizo nguo chafu tuone hii kitu inafanya kazi aje!”

And just like that, my weekly ritual, my labor of love, was reduced to shoving clothes into the belly of a one-eyed machine. I stood there watching it foam up, shaking and tumbling Madam and Mr. Stephen’s clothes in soapy circles. My new job was simply to let the machine do the heavy lifting, only to take the blame later when Mr. Stephen’s white linen shirts came out streaked with pink, or Madam’s stockings got stretched into long nylon ropes, only good enough for the kids to play kati.

Things got worse when Madam announced they were buying a dishwasher, meaning the washing machine had to be moved into my SQ because of space.

Space?

My quarter barely had enough room to swing a stray cat, and I was pregnant with our second child at this point, my dear reader. So, we lived side-by-side with the machine. Its stupid startup sounds (exactly like that one washing machine from Shameless) and blue lights would blink at the most awkward times, like when my husband and I were trying to enjoy some private marital quietness without waking “wadosi’s” kids. Meanwhile, the dishwasher in the main house meant Madam needed me inside less and less, until I was practically banished outside to trim the bougainvillea hedges with Baba Otis. The washing machine became our everyday lullaby. I thought we had hit rock bottom, until Mr. Stephen returned from one of his business trips to America. One of those red-carpet tech events he was always boasting about, the ones he’d bring up whenever you caught him flexing in front of the hallway mirror, recording Instagram reels, or barking at the kids to wipe their tears and smile properly for the camera.

He returned from Los Angeles with Helen.

Helen: the robot maid.

She rolled on silent rubber wheels, and her metallic head would swivel 180 degrees with an unusual hum whenever she addressed you. Her face was a flat tablet screen, and her arms were thick metal tubes hanging from her torso. Her hands looked strong, yet she couldn’t even bring them together to clap.

“It’s her programming,” Mr. Stephen would say proudly. She would automatically slow down whenever anyone walked past or if one of the children sprinted across the corridor.

She was brought in to solidify the fact that I was now completely useless. Whenever Madam wanted to cook, she’d tap Eve’s screen, and a list of ingredients would scroll down her face. Eve would read them out in a smooth robotic voice, play a YouTube tutorial on how to make the meal, and display a map showing which Carrefour branch stocked the exact ingredients needed to prep the dish. Lately, she doesn’t even send us to the shop. Eve just orders everything online via Glovo, and the Glovo rider drops it at the main gate.

Madam stopped going outside entirely. Every time she started venting about Mr. Stephen’s late nights, Eve would project soothing marriage advice on the wall and ensure Madam ate that content to her fill and to remind her what marriage really is about. She fed her so well that Madam’s chest was practically bursting out of her brassieres, straining against those floral satin blouses she loves so much. Honestly, I started fearing for Mr. Stephen’s life. He risked suffocating in there one day, never to be seen again.

But what do I know?

You know, I’m just a Form Two drop-out from Busia. In school, we learned a few things, but we never even touched a real computer screen. Our biology teacher taught us the anatomy of a locust. I still remember him taking an entire double P.E. lesson to draw it perfectly on the blackboard, dipping the white chalk lightly in water so the outline wouldn’t rub off easily. He sketched, and the lines were invisible at first, until the breeze blew through the windowless frame of our classroom, dried the slate, and brought the image to life. The head showed bright green, the thorax yellow, and the hind legs faint pink. I remember it clearly.

But so does Eve. She even flexes by listing every species of grasshopper in the Rift Valley and their exact scientific names. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows the exact number of locusts remaining in Kitui right now. I’m almost certain she can read my thoughts this very second. Let me just shift my mind to something else.

3. Madam

I love it when Eve’s meal prep comes together smoothly. finely chopped red onions sizzling in hot olive oil while I brush melted butter over the edges of my puff chapos. The rich aroma of garlic, pilau masala, and fresh thyme fills our kitchen. Outside, my children’s playful screams echo across the lawn as they play bano and tag with Baba Otis’s kids. The bright green garden hose snakes through the grass, spraying water into the warm afternoon air.

Beside me, Eve works the heavy stone mortar, her rhythm steady as she crushes garlic and ginger into a paste. I glance toward the kitchen door where her husband stands holding a fresh bunch of coriander.

“Baba Otis, have you finished watering the flower beds out front?”

“Eeh, Madam... iko sawa. Maybe.”

“What do you mean, maybe?”

“I have tried my best, Madam. At least they look green now.”

“Please cut a few stems for me, some bird-of-paradise flowers and a few palm leaves, and put them in this vase.” I hand him my husband’s favorite crystal vase, the one passed down from his late grandmother.

“Yes, Madam.”

“Can I have them in the living room before five?”

“We will see, Madam. I think it is possible.”

“What do you mean we will see? Just get it done, please!”

“The problem is, the blooms are not very many today...”

“Baba Otis, from where I’m standing, there’s nothing problematic about it. The bushes are full of flowers. Just bring them before five.”

His evasive answers always test my patience. He belongs to that older generation of men who simply cannot bring themselves to say a direct “no” to a boss.

I push my Brazilian hair weave away from my forehead and wipe the sweat from my cheeks. Eve’s metallic head swivels toward me with a sharp beep, reminding me to check the oven. I pull open the door to inspect the pork ribs. Perfect. They’re glistening in a sticky honey-soy glaze, tender and giving under the pressure of my fork. Stephen better be home on time to enjoy this. If he stays out late at that stupid lounge in Kilimani again tonight, I swear I will...

“Focus, Madam. Focus.”

The YouTube video playing on Eve’s face screen glitches momentarily before switching to A Virtuous Wife: Secrets to a Lasting Marriage. A blonde woman with immaculately set hair speaks from a sunlit living room. Her smooth American drawl pours out of Eve’s speakers: “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”

“Proverbs 12:18,” Eve and I say in unison.

In the reflection of my double-door Samsung fridge, I catch Juliet rolling her eyes.

“Juliet, please check the basmati rice.”

She sees the pot bubbling over, but she deliberately takes her time, slowly wiping the marble countertop with a damp cloth, her shoulders set square against the cotton fabric of her uniform.

“You know, Juliet, Mr. Stephen and I are so blessed. We even share the exact same birthday. How many people actually end up marrying their exact birth-twin? It’s pure destiny.”

She nods, her tone politely neutral. “Yes, Madam. You and Boss are very lucky. You are like twins of love.”

“Exactly. So let’s make sure everything is perfect for our 36th birthday dinner tonight.”

“Yes, Madam.” Her lips remain pressed in a tight line, but she finally moves to the stove, blowing down the white foam before dialing back the heat. Eve chimes in approval, instantly displaying the recipe and specs for the red velvet cake we’re baking next.

Stephen, my soulmate since I was sixteen, hasn’t felt much like a twin lately. His dream was always to build a media production empire in Nairobi, but he lacked the network until he reconnected with his old college buddy Aaron, who plugged him into high-end commercial tech and film production. With every project launch, Stephen seemed to drift further into his own head.

Whenever he got off long calls with his international clients, he’d laugh loudly into his phone, sliding it into his pocket the second I walked into the room. As his profile grew, the distance between us in our king-sized bed seemed to grow wider by the day. When our fifth child was born a little over a year ago at the Coptic Hospital, the pediatrician completed her check-up, gently stretching the baby’s tiny limbs.

“She’s perfectly healthy. Beautiful skin too. Congratulations to you both!”

Stephen beamed proudly. I just stared at the wall.

My eyes drifted to a framed photo on the office wall: Class of 2005. The doctor in the photo had her hair styled in slicked-down wet-look gel waves. I looked back at the woman sitting in front of us. Her hair was styled in the exact same retro look.

“What was it like growing up in the early 2000s?” I asked suddenly.

She flashed me a cold, confused look. Stephen quickly cleared his throat, his fingernails digging warningly into my palm as he took over the conversation.

“So, Doc... we’re completely content with five kids. Our family is complete. And honestly, given everything my wife has gone through with childbirth... I’d like to be the one to get the procedure done. The vasectomy.” His voice wavered slightly, adding his usual nervous filler: “If... you know what I mean?”

The doctor stared at him over the rim of her spectacles, then slowly turned her gaze to me.

“Are you sure, Mr. Stephen? It’s permanent. There’s no undoing it.”

“Yes. We’ve discussed it.”

A nurse tapped on the door, peeking in. “Doctor, sorry to interrupt, but we need you in Emergency Ward B immediately.”

“Give me two minutes, I’m wrapping up. Close the door, please.”

The doctor folded her hands and leaned back, pursing her lips. “Personally, I don’t think it’s a wise move. Life is very long, you know.”

I couldn’t help but feel a sudden pang of agreement, glancing back up at her graduation photo.

“Why?” Stephen asked, offended. “Not a good idea for who?”

“How old are you, Stephen?”

“35. We’re both 35.”

“You see? For your wife, at 35, I could easily schedule a tubal ligation for her this afternoon. But for a man? Mr. Stephen, you are far too young.”

Her words stung in places I didn’t even know could bleed. In my head, I imagined a dozen chaotic little toddlers taking safety pins to the gelled waves on her head. Months later, those words still haunted me, making me retreat into my own shell. Countless nights I’d lay awake staring at my reflection or watching Stephen step out of the master shower, his body seemingly untouched by time. Water droplets running down his toned torso, tracing the sharp lines of his back and legs, fit as an athlete.

A whole year had passed. At first, he argued that the doctor had a point, “She’s a professional, babe, she knows what she’s talking about.” But recently, he promised me a birthday gift that would change everything, and I convinced myself he meant he’d finally booked the appointment. I had three hours left to make sure tonight was absolute perfection.

4. Juliet

You can always tell when Mr. Stephen is approaching the gate because Eve’s proximity alert triggers the automated sanitizer nozzles along the driveway. The heavy metal rollers at the main gate hum as they prepare to open. But today, I’m taken by surprise. I’m in the middle of bathing the kids when the sudden rumble of his V8 engine echoes down the cabro driveway. Inside, Eve goes completely haywire. I have never seen that machine dart back and forth down the hallway like that, blindly knocking into side tables like her sensors were blown. I knew it! I’ve always told my brother back in the village that this plastic demon is not of God. It’s going to finish us today!

The kids leap straight out of the bathtub at the sound of their father’s car. I race after them, spreading their bath towels wide like a fisherman throwing a net. If Mr. Stephen sees them running around naked, I’ll be handed my summary dismissal before sunset. In the kitchen, Madam is panicking. Eve’s screen has frozen, refusing to bring up the cake icing instructions. Madam starts clattering baking tins in frustration, sending a cloud of white icing sugar exploding right into her face. The kids are jumping up and down in the corridor, stark naked. Suddenly, Eve charges full speed toward the front door just as Mr. Stephen steps inside.

“Wait, let me explain! Let me explain!” he shouts, throwing his hands up.

A series of high-pitched, autotuned metallic screeches blast from Eve’s speakers, forcing all of us to cover our ears. Her mechanical arms swing wildly like heavy pendulums, aiming straight for him! Madam screams over the noise:

“Stop it! Just stop! It’s his birthday, for God’s sake!”

Mr. Stephen scrambles backward up the main staircase, knowing Eve’s wheels can’t climb steps. The robot spins out, repeatedly ramming into the entryway wall with dull thuds. Her alert chime blares, and the ceiling sanitizing sprinklers burst open, dousing all of us in a fine chemical mist. Desperate, Mr. Stephen pulls a black remote from his coat pocket and slams a red button. Eve’s tablet face instantly shifts from bright graphics to a flat, dark grey stone pattern. Her motors cut out. She goes completely rigid. I am standing there, soaked and shivering. The children’s teeth are chattering as they cling to my wet skirt. Madam is frozen in the middle of the living room, holding a half-slanted chocolate cake, her face pale white with icing sugar and shock. That’s when Mr. Stephen ushers in the woman standing outside behind him.

She is tall, taller than him, with glowing bronze skin, high sculpted cheekbones, and a waist so tiny it looks like a wrapped present. Her stomach is as flat as an iron sheet, certainly not a belly that has ever carried five children, and her long legs stretch down like a giraffe on the Mara plains. Thick, dark coils of hair fall over her shoulders, and her eyes are pitch-black, shining like pawpaw seeds. Something about the mechanical way she blinks reminds me terrifyingly of Eve, yet she looks so human she could easily pass for a real person.

A new househelp?

An upgraded robot?

Or Mama Mdogo, a second wife?

The questions race violently through my mind. I can’t even catch my breath.

“Honey, it was time for an upgrade,” Mr. Stephen says, his voice cracking slightly as he tries to smile. “This was supposed to be your ultimate birthday present, an advanced AI assistant to take care of everything around the house. Eve must have glitched when she detected the new model coming through the door. You get what I mean, right?”

Madam’s mouth falls wide open. The chocolate cake slips from her hands, landing with a heavy splat right onto the tiled floor.

“Stephen... what is this? What is going on? Is she here for you, or for me?!”

Right at that exact frozen moment, my foolish husband Baba Otis blunders into the sitting room holding the vintage glass vase packed with bird-of-paradise flowers. The sharp orange petals look like the open beaks of angry birds ready to attack.

“Madam! Nimezipata. I have managed! Here are the flowers you asked for.”

Madam doesn’t even hesitate. She snatches the glass vase straight out of his hands and hurls it with all her strength right at Mr. Stephen’s head. With the terrifying reflexes of a predator, the tall new woman reaches out, catches the heavy glass vase mid-air without spilling a single drop of water, and casually sets it down on the mahogany console table to her left. Mr. Stephen remains crouched low behind her back.

Suddenly, Eve’s frozen face screen flickers back to life. A video clip of Dave Chappelle pops up on her display, the exact comedy special Mr. Stephen always watches late at night when Madam goes to sleep.

Dave Chappelle’s face zooms in on the screen, pointing straight at Madam, his voice booming through the quiet house:

“Everybody knows there ain’t no such thing as good 36-year-old pussy!”

Do you ever catch yourself staring at the ceiling at 2:00 AM, the ceiling fan spinning its tired, relentless circle, and ask yourself what the hell we are doing here? What is the actual, unvarnished point of all this?

Because surely, surely, the Good Lord didn’t sculpt man from dust, breathe life into his nostrils, and hand him a brain just so he could sit in a glass tower somewhere in Kilimani, drafting emails that start with “As per my previous email,” while waiting for 5:30 PM like a death row inmate waiting for a stay of execution. We can’t just be corporate hamsters in polished Bata shoes, running on a wheel made of quarterly targets, performance reviews, and HR memos. Where is the soul in that? Where is the bloody joy?

I grew up in a house where “reduce, reuse, recycle” wasn’t some sexy, eco-friendly slogan hatched by a marketing guru sitting in an air-conditioned board office, sipping sparkling water and feeling deeply concerned about polar bears. No, boss. For us, it was just survival. It was called life.

It was taking the yellow Prestige margarine tub, washing it out until the plastic squeaked, and using it to store last night’s leftover sukuma wiki. It was wearing a sweater handed down from your elder cousin, which had already been handed down from an uncle, until the elbows were thin enough to read a newspaper through. Nobody wrote an article about us in a glossy magazine praising our green footprint. We were just living within the margins.

And now here we are, older, tired, wearing ties that strangle our ambitions, wondering when the living actually starts.

Early on, I realized if I wanted to be successful, I had to break free from the rat race. When you don’t inherit wealth, hard work becomes your default factory setting. Sure, there are other ways to make money, but I wasn’t interested in those. Frankly, I can’t risk ending up in jail—I just don’t have the flexibility to use a Kamiti toilet with a partially torn ACL. But how do you escape the rat race? What’s that magical moment when you know you’ve made it?

Ever wondered that?

We all have that cinematic vision tucked away in the back of our minds. You know the one. That blinding, glorious moment when you finally step onto the stage of your own making, chest out, chin up, submerge yourself in the applause, and bathe in the warm, golden light of absolute achievement. The victory lap.

Only, there is a small, inconvenient catch: first, you actually have to find the damn dream.

Because let’s be honest with each other, most people don’t have dreams. They have brochures. They swallow whole those copy-paste, generic rich-guy fantasies sold to us on Instagram by men who wear tailored suits without socks. A five-B house somewhere in Karen with a flat roof, a German machine parked in the driveway, and a flock of silent, attentive people whose sole purpose in existence is to make sure your glass of sparkling water never hits the bottom.

That isn’t a dream, boss. That’s just an expensive lifestyle default setting.

Real dreams are messy. They usually start with a quiet, uncomfortable itch in your gut looking at the rain smears on the windows in that jav, and realizing that the life you are living belongs to someone else’s template.

Itajipa one day, dream big! they say.

When nothing seemed to click, I looked for answers in the past. Maslow’s pyramid made a lot of fuckin sense. He basically said middle-class dreams live at the bottom. You’ve got to climb higher!

But that only took me so far.

I was desperate. Properly desperate. Searching for this elusive, majestic “one true dream” like a man looking for a lost needle in a dark, overgrown compound.

And then, out of nowhere, enlightenment didn’t arrive in a burning bush or a thunderous voice from the heavens. No. It hit me in the form of a fruit.

An avocado. A bloody ovocado.

The green, pebbled-skin Messiah of the Mama Mboga stand. Nature’s ultimate, overachieving answer to all of humanity’s problems. The sacred fruit(I think) whispered into existence by ancient gods in a moment of pure genius, then promptly co-opted by every self-respecting influencer with a ring light, a wooden bowl, and a bio that says “Living, Loving, Plant-Based.”

It’s packed with every nutrient known to modern science and probably a few others only known to high-end dermatologists in Westlands. Good fats. Potassium. Antioxidants. You name it, the avocado has it registered under its name. It sits there on the kitchen counter, dark, heavy, and unassuming, carrying the weight of the health-and-wellness industry on its leathery shoulders.

I stared at it. It stared back. And right there, between the salt shaker and the bread bin, the universe leaned down and whispered its grand punchline.

I knew that the possession of this fruit would give me salvation. I had found my dream at last.

And what did I not do to get it?

I chose arts over science because I needed the writing skills to crack the creative scene in Kenya. Despite my terrible creative thinking skills and my hatred for socializing (at that particular time), I pushed myself through a BA.

I kept my avocado dreams a secret. The evil eye is real. When they asked me in BA interviews, “Why do you want to do a BA?” I didn’t dare tell them the truth. Instead, I gave them a PowerPoint-certified answer about something about career goals, ambitions, and synergy.

But in my heart, I knew the truth: I wanted a BA so I could earn enough money to buy all the fucking avocados out there.

Avocados are everywhere. On your toast, in your sandwich, in your smoothie, on your face, in guacamole, in dark matter, in black holes, hiding in your car’s carburetor, chilling in the ozone layer, and probably sliding into your crush’s DMs.

I cracked my degree, finished my BA, and got a job. But my avocado dream had to wait. because life showed up with a ‘Surprise! Bruda, you have a HELB loan to clear..

Then I got married (not officially). That delayed it further. Expenses, duh. I didn’t even go on a honeymoon. I was too busy saving for my precious avocado.

For two whole years after “the” marriage, I lived like a monk. eating plain white eggs instead of the fancy brown ones. I never took cabs; I always walked. When work-from-home became the norm, I silently rejoiced, man. Fewer expenses, more avocado savings.

You think I’m exaggerating, don’t you? You’re sitting there, shaking your head, thinking, “Owen, it’s just a fruit. It’s green, it’s oily, and it goes well with githeri. Relax.”

But then you go to the market or God forbid, one of those high-end greengrocers where they play soft jazz while you select your tomatoes and you look at the price tag on a single, medium-sized avocado.

And your heart stops a little.

“Why on earth would avocados even cost this much?” You ask mama mboga, trying to sound casual, but your voice cracks on the much.

Because suddenly, buying two good avocados feels like taking out a small SACCO loan. You hold it in your palm like a piece of raw gold mined somewhere in Iten. You squeeze it gently. not too hard, because if you bruise it, you’ve just depreciated the value of a major asset.

It makes no sense. It grows on a tree! It doesn’t require an engineering degree from UoN to cultivate. It just needs soil, rain, and a little patience. Yet here it is, priced like a luxury commodity, staring at you from the crate with the quiet, arrogant confidence of a Mercedes-Benz sitting in a showroom on Mombasa Road.

Well, for starters, they’re imported from the US of the A. Even if they fly economy class, the costs are insane. Add in visa fees, miscellaneous expenses, and emotional baggage charges, and suddenly, an avocado costs more than your self-respect after losing an argument to a 16-year-old.

7 years, 2 months, and 12 days. That’s how long it took me to finally buy my avocado—during a month-end sale, no less!

I had my rags-to-riches story. Publishers wanted to turn it into a bestseller. But fame? Nah. I had transcended worldly desires.

But when you know everything about avocados, you know when something’s wrong. And something was. The fruit was hard as a rock. Avocados are supposed to be softer than a baby’s butt in a diaper ad.

Did I give up? Nope. I did what any smart person would. I left it outside in Nairobi’s December heat. Artificial ripening? No thanks. My avocado deserved only the finest natural sunlight and warm vibes.

And I waited. Boy, I waited.

You know how holding a plank makes time slow down? Try waiting for an avocado to ripen. It’s slower than your friend replying, ‘K, will let you know.’

Finally, the day arrived. I grabbed my knife, ready to cut it open like those fancy cooking show chefs.

This was it. My moment. Forget Forbes 40 under 40. Forget The 40-year-old virgin. I was about to become the self-made 27-year-old who bought and ate an imported avocado by himself. It was about to become my killing two birds with one stone moment first, walking out of the rat race and second, cutting a fruit by myself. Take that patriarchy!

But then, it was rotten.

In my ambition, I forgot one crucial thing: when someone flies from the US of the A to Kenya, they get severe jet lag. My avocado slept through the day—missing all the sunlight it needed.

Humanity has never known a pain greater than this.

I wept. And boy, I wept hard. Bards cried. Crows wailed. Kanairo heat suddenly felt like a Scandinavian winter. cold, sad and depressed. My heart hurt, and nobody was farting rainbows to cheer me up.

I was hurt.

I tried to console myself, but the truth was bitter. much like the taste of that spoiled avocado.

Even now, the pain lingers. My taste buds never got to experience that creamy, dreamy avocado goodness. Perhaps the mangoes got jealous and cursed me. who knows?

But I’m not done yet.

I’ve moved on from the avocado dream. I’ve learned my lesson. This time, I’m aiming higher—for the next great exotic fruit in the market.

There is a specific kind of madness that lives in a young man who does not have money but has a throat parched for stories.

You know him. You have seen him along Jogoo Road in his clean outfit, walking faster than the ordinary people working there, or trekking the dusty Magadi Road in Rongai heading to Tumaini when the sun sits heavy and fat in the 2pm sky. He is twenty-six now, looking back at his younger self. Back then, he was just a skinny boy with a pair of fake Converse. He did not walk those seven kilometers from the university gate because he wanted to build his calf muscles. After all, you know, looking fit was also part of bagging premium baddies in school. He did not just look at those noisy nganyas plying his normal route somewhere in Rongai, because he enjoyed the fumes or the sweat running down the small of his back.

He walked because 100 bob was 100 bob.

The 50 Bob he saved by squeezing into a crowded Ongata Line instead of taking an express nganyas mattered. Whatever was left from his weekly allowance for food and transport mattered. Every small saving, stacked quietly on top of the last, would slowly become enough to buy a book.

That “sacrificing” thing was never a once-in-a-while affair. Kwanza, it was a whole lifestyle, a private mathematics only he could explain (not to anyone, anyway). He knew the shortcuts to the very minute; he knew which days going to the mess hall was simply a waste of time, and he tracked his coins the way other men followed PL table standings. Every shilling had already been assigned its mission long before it landed in his M-Pesa.

While the rest of the boys were busy fighting over Man U and totaling their fantasy points at the “locals”, he was busy with his coins. 200 bob here. 500 bob there. He counted them with the kind of tenderness a man uses when scratching his balls. Every single coin already knew where it was headed before it even settled on thst M-Pesa. By the time it landed, it was no longer “just money”; it had already become ink and paper in his mind.

Nobody knew about it. You just do not tell the boys, “Niaje bro,I will be walking to Gallera for fifty minutes for that event gig just so I can buy that one Yassin Adnan book.” It would have sounded off; imagine the boys feeling pitiful,or i’d be poverty-ish. To him it was never pitiful. It was a mission. Something worth the sweat. As if he was quietly building a ladder. coin after coin.

That boy was me. And books, my friend, were more than just bound paper; they were oxygen, life-giving and essential for my growth.

It started with David Maillu's “My Dear Bottle” in Form One. It was my cousin’s.I remember the book was slightly battered at the spine. finished it in three days by the yellow light of a dim bulb despite high school prep and classes running side by side. My father didn’t approve, and for all the right reasons. National exams were the goal. passing KCSE was a matter of household security. Novels were a distraction. He wasn’t wrong. But I had tasted blood, and there was no pulling me back.

With no income to speak of, and exams swallowing every free hour, buying books whenever I pleased was simply not an option. So I got strategic about it.

Back then, Test Book Center waived delivery fees on orders over KSh 1,500. That single policy became the whole of my financial philosophy. I would quietly save over months, coin by coin, and then spend an honestly embarrassing amount of time working out the maximum number of books I could squeeze into one order without spilling over into my extra-tight budget. That is how I ended up reading a good number of local contemporary writers, plus slim classics like George Orwell’s “1984.” Not because I had some crazy literary ambition, but simply because they were cheap. Turns out a tight budget makes an excellent editor of your reading list.

Just a few years later, a dear friend from uni introduced me to Chimamanda Ngozi’s “Half of a yellow sun”, the lady who helped me overcome my fear of not being able to read and comprehend good English. I fell so completely into that world that I chased down every series she had ever written, Purple Hibiscus (2003), Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), Americanah (2013), and the essay We Should All Be Feminists (2014), in the second-hand book dens of Nairobi’s streets. The alleys along Kimathi Street and Moi Avenue, those tight stalls when you are going towards BS(bus station). Where there is books piled 10m high. That was when I realized what it meant to live in an author’s universe and not just to read it. To trust in a stranger so absolutely that you would go with them to wherever they choose to take you.

Good, brand-new English books that everyone around me hyped used to be expensive back then, which led me deeper into East African writing. I found Meja Mwangi, Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, Chinua Achebe, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o before any of those “Cool people” started name-dropping them in conversations at those Westy joints and link-ups for Pan-Africanist talks. There’s a quiet happiness in that. in having found them on your own before the world caught up.

And while we’re being honest, popular commercial fiction deserves more credit than it usually gets. Had it not been for accessible storytellers and dedicated booksellers in the streets in Nairobi especially, the idea that English novels were somehow too difficult, too foreign, and too much would have stayed with me far longer than it did. They were the bridge. I crossed it and kept walking. I’m not embarrassed to say that anymore. It is funny even to think that many of us used to shy away from admitting we enjoyed some of those light reads. I feel like the problem mainly is that you stick only to these books. Once you’ve had a glimpse of literature, especially African Literature, bro, go ahead and explore. There is so much out there that you’ll genuinely enjoy.

Then there is Dust by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor.

At times, when I wanted to see what good money could get me, I would deliberately avoid sorting by price on that TBC website. I wanted to be tempted. And in one such pursuit, I encountered Dust. A book that was critically acclaimed, had a very memorable cover, and was written by an author whose work I badly wanted to read. The only problem was the price. The book was listed at KSh 3,500, and that was just too much for me then.

I put it in my wishlist and waited.

My friend, my patience has never been tested the way that book did. I checked back every few weeks, like waiting for a reply from my then-crush (I hope she’s happy wherever she’s at).

I finally bought it at KSh 3200 (yes, I remember the exact number) after more than two years of waiting. I’d have bought a pair of fresh Jordan 4s cause I wanted them baaad back then. But bro, this book was more important to me at that time than anything. I had been doing content writing on the side by then, small gigs here and there, writing copy for strangers, to have money entirely my own. And 3,200 bob, on that particular day, felt like something I had genuinely earned.

I read it in one sitting, right on my small mattress while the March rain drummed against the roof like crazy. I even skipped the regular clubbing I was used to. It was a Friday too. I still remember the day. It was everything I had hoped it would be. And the waiting, all two years of it, somehow made it feel even more important. Like the book knew I had come for it seriously.

You know one thing nobody warns you about when you’re young and broke is that It doesn’t only make life harder, it makes you even more sharper. More deliberate. Every book I bought carried weight. Every page mattered. I never picked one up carelessly, and I never set one down before finishing it. When you’ve saved Twenty-five days’ worth of smocha money and funds set aside for small small enjoyment just to afford it, you don’t quit halfway.

It is only now, at twenty-six, more than a decade after picking up my first novel, that I have allowed myself to stop reading a book midway if it isn't working for me. That kind of freedom takes a long time to feel earned. Not everyone can ever enjoy this sort of freedom by the way. I keep thanking God that I have this freedom daily.

So when someone returns one of my books with pages falling out of the binding, dog-eared corners,stain, I would rather not investigate, because then I know how a normal book reader would reply. Saying something like, “Ah, kwani iko nini? Ni kitabu tu, bro!” (What’s the matter don’t create such a fuss. It is just a book bro). That shit gets me mad. Crazy mad btw.

Let me make it stop. Please. I wanna tell them about the young boy planning his week around whether he would come across 1600 bob or not. About the afternoons he would walk home in the scorching heat, wishing of books whose first paragraph he still had not reached. About all the low-fee ghostwriting projects he would pick to write at odd times for people he did not or would not know the ones whose compensation he counted in books instead of in money before even seeing the texts on his phone, which disappeared somewhere in an account only existing inside his head labelled as books; before arriving to his M-Pesa.

I want to tell them that when they fold a page corner, they are folding something that costs me more than just money.

But mostly I say nothing. I smile. I look normal, take my wounded book back, and add them to an invisible blocklist. I’ve stopped lending my books. I’d rather avoid the conversation altogether, and honestly, the answer is always going to be no anyway. Some people think I’m being arrogant. Some think I’m odd. What they don’t see is that each one was earned through a quiet, private war that’s hard to explain to someone who has never waited two years to buy a book.

The boy who walked understands. Everyone else will have to take my word for it.

Here is something else about me as a reader: I feel books more than I remember them.

I cannot name all the main characters of Kill Me Quick by Meja Mwangi, a book I have gifted and recommended so many times I’ve genuinely lost count. I cannot quote you a single line from The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives. But I can tell you exactly how both of them made me feel: unsettled. Heard. Like someone had quietly located the words for something I had been carrying around without a name for it.

Manze, there were those long stretches that were just hard. Empty thoughts floating somewhere far, like out in space. Whole years I would read something and still not get what the hell I had just finished reading. Nights when I felt something deep but I had no name for it at all. Did the books give me answers? No. Did they fix anything? No. But what did they do? they made me less confused. Like I and the author have been through that confusion. Those nights made me feel something deep and I know most readers feel me. The author was proof that, if they too survived, I, as the reader, can survive.

It took me hours to commute across the city every day back then. I made the most of that time by reading. I fondly remember standing in a packed peak-hour matatu(5 PM to 9 PM), sandwiched between fellow hustlers, holding Jackson Biko’s “Thursdays” open in my hand while the conductor shouted and the speakers blasted loud music. I was completely immersed in the book. I never had a photographic memory, but somehow the way a book makes me feel stays long after the plot has faded, long after I’ve forgotten the names.

That’s why, when I recommend a book to my friends, I don’t do it for “the plot”. Nada. I don’t do it for “the themes.” I do it for the feeling. That particular feeling that you can be understood by something that you didn’t even know exists. If you feel like the recommendation makes sense, go ahead. Read it. Decide that for yourself. But what i won’t do is recommend a book that didn’t make me question my existence.

Of late, I’ve caught myself doing something that would have once felt unthinkable: marking my books.

I’ve used a highlighter before. That I can’t deny. But I used it cautiously, guiltily, like someone committing a minor crime in broad daylight. And one fine day, in a moment I can only describe as a temporary departure from all good judgment, I marked a page with a brown pen. I know. I know. We all make mistakes. Mine are now preserved in brown ink across a page of a book that deserved better.

The boy who walked home in the midday heat to save fare would be absolutely horrified at the ballpoint incident.

He would also, I think, understand exactly why it happened.

Maybe highlighting is my way of trying to hold on. Of hoping that if I mark something, it will stay with me longer. Maybe the boy who memorized book prices to the last shilling is now desperately trying to memorize the books themselves. Though I’m not sure if it’s working since I still cannot tell you every detail of “Nearly All Men In Lagos Are Mad”.

Writing, I’ve slowly realized, is just another way of loving books. Of giving back to something that gave you so much.

I hope that one day, somewhere in this city, or maybe in a quiet town down in the Rift, there is someone who wants to read something I wrote. Who checks the price and thinks, not yet. Who puts it in a wishlist and waits. Who saves up, counts shillings, watches that listing the way I once watched Dust. And when they finally buy it in whatever year that is, I hope they read it in one sitting. I hope it makes them feel heard. I hope it gives them words for something they’d been carrying without a name.

I hope they feel that, when they turn the last page, the wait was worth it.

Because that boy who used to walk for kilometers under the 2pm Nairobi sun, the one who counted every shilling, who stood squeezed in a crowded matatu with a paperback open in his hand, who waited two years for a book and remembered the exact price he paid... that boy didn’t just fall in love with reading. Somewhere along the way, without quite realizing it, he was also falling in love with the idea of writing. And that, I think, is where this was always meant to go.

1. Shosh

It wasn’t always like this. Stuck in a metal-frame prison disguised as a bed, Ward 4B, Kenyatta National Hospital. There was a time your throat begged for some freshly squeezed orange juice and a boiled egg dripping with sauces and kachumbari, just like those boys at Archives and those dingy streets make it off their silver trolleys. Not this: tablet after tablet, chased down with lukewarm sugary milk in a green plastic Kenpoly mug that always smelled faintly of pine gel. Before the sickness burned through your blood like a grass fire, life was electric.

Remember?

Applying way too much Fair n Lovely powder over a layer of Arimi’s, then wiping the little brown river sliding down your jaw as the Tom Mboya Street sun did its worst. “Eish, aki Mummy!” you’d say, fanning yourself with a handkerchief already ruined by melted foundation. “Kama October iko hivi, December tutatembea uchi Nairobi!”

That laugh. Loud, unbothered, dripping off blood-red lipstick, spilling into the street chaos, making touts on the footbridge turn their heads.

Remember, Wanjiku? When your feet still fit dainty polka-dot kitten heels, fifty bob, off a mountain of mtumba in Toi Market. When those heels clicked down hospital corridors carrying plastic bags for a dying relative: Tropical sweets, bananas, a fat jar of Delamere yoghurt. Did you even glance at the graphic NTSA posters glued to every matatu stage? Did you think that giant red ribbon over a skeleton would ever hang over your own head?

When the doctor at Mbagathi said “tuberculosis,” did he say how fast it would move? Stripping the flesh off your thighs, your chest, your face, until you were a ghost of the girl who used to rule River Road on a Saturday night?

No.

And which man left more than just cheap cologne in your one-bedroom in Githurai when he disappeared? Torn-boxer-brief Brayo? Forgetful Kevoh, the one you bumped into at Naivas Spur Mall: ring on his finger, wife pushing the trolley, two kids in matching Crocs?

No.

Maybe Mwendwa. The high school English teacher from campus whose “I’m working on our future, babe” dissolved into nothing.

You grind your teeth, eyes scanning the peeling yellow walls for somewhere to point the rage. Because none of them, not one, has set foot in this room.

What if it was Ciku’s father? Last time you saw him, he was sweating on top of you in a three-thousand-bob-a-night Airbnb behind USIU.

What if it was you? Every time you threw your head back in the back seat of a tinted Subaru, knees giving way?

Awaa! No.

Your eyes land on the faded blue curtains, then the rusty window that lets in Thika Road: matatu horns, birds, pollen, actual air. The mounted TV mumbles Citizen TV, Gachagua and Amin, some other world entirely. The door is shut. Beside you, someone stirs. Cucu.

“Aai, Wanjiku.” She claps her calloused hands. “Umeamka?” Stating the obvious, the way old women do. She’s got a plastic bowl of uji, thick with groundnut paste and Blue Band, and she reaches for the pill bottle, shifting on the creaky wooden chair to get the spoon to your mouth.

You scowl, blinking back tears that burn more than they should.

“Kula kidogo, mwari wa mwalimu,” she says. Eat a little, teacher’s daughter. This was your favourite porridge once, coarse maize meal with fresh milk, before school. But you’re not seven. The Artcafee sliced bread and Plumtree jam are now the new favourites.

The ulcers in your throat won’t let anything down but liquid pain. You keep your eyes on the spoon in her wrinkled, soil-stained fingers and let her feed you until the bowl is clean.

“Enhe, niikwega,” good girl. She pats your head, fluffs the flat pillow. “Now you have strength for the big ones.” Another fight, even crushed to powder in a bottle top.

You nod. Whisper: “Where is she?”

“Atia?” Cucu’s grey eyebrows knit together.

“Wangari.” The name scrapes your throat raw. “Where is Wangari?”

She answers by digging a thumb into the blue Arimi’s tub, smearing it over the cracks on your lips. “Rūūma, just rest,” she says. “Even ten minutes of sleep helps.”

Does she actually believe that, that sleep cures throat ulcers, night sweats, the swelling in your groin? She stands, tucks the stiff bleached sheet around your bony frame. You want to claw your way out and scream.

No.

You want to slap that pious, helpless look off her face. Instead she pushes a stray braid off your forehead, dusts Nivea talc on your chest, and settles back into her seat. From her kiondo she pulls out her Kikuyu hymn book and starts to hum.

Kana ka mwarimu, kũma rũũũi-ini...

The melody puts out the fire in your head. It reduces you back to the infant she used to sling on her back with a leso, rocking you quiet while your mother hustled at the market. Now you’re thirty-two. An English teacher on TSC payroll. Mother of a ten-year-old girl.

Your vision blurs. Eyes fluttering, head swaying to the old rhythm.

Are you sleeping? Wake up. You are sleeping. Wake up.

2. Mama

The lullaby drags you back ten years. 1998.

A muggy Friday, heavy with rain that won’t fall. You’ve screamed until your voice tears, stumbling naked down the corridor at Pumwani Maternity, gripping peeling walls, anything to anchor you, while the contractions come harder and tighter, your stomach knotted like lines braided too tight by an impatient salonist on Dubois Road.

Any other Friday you’d be on the grass outside Jaddah, UoN, half-listening at Christian Union while eyeing third-year engineering guys. You were supposed to be finishing your B.Ed.

Instead you’re here, howling: “Ninakufa! I’m dying! Help me!”

A nurse in a starched white dress bears down on you. “Oya! Wacha kelele!” Fourth warning. She jabs a rubber-gloved finger at her lips. “Some of your age-mates who finished the work are trying to rest!” She hauls you back toward the delivery bed by your limp arm.

“Tafadhali, Sister.” You’re hyperventilating. “Check again. Please.”

She rolls her eyes, snaps on fresh gloves. “Last time,” she says. “Ready?”

No.

You nod anyway.

Something in her face softens, just enough to show the deep lines around her mouth, the wear of a government health worker who’s seen this a thousand times. “I know,” she says, taking your wrist gentler now. “It’ll be over soon. Sasa, sukuma.”

You howl as her fingers check you.

“Save that for pushing, my friend! You’ll need it to bring this baby into the world.” Her stiff nurse’s cap doesn’t move an inch on her afro.

“I want my mother,” you stutter through tears.

She gives you a sad, knowing smile. “I know.”

If it weren’t for the pain tearing between your legs, you’d have clicked your tongue at her. What does this woman know about Mama? About the rage waiting for you when you were sent home from your teaching practice in Kiambu, pregnant, unmarried?

Mama’s small frame would have caved in on itself. She’d have grabbed your ear in front of the neighbours: “Wanjiku, unataka kunifanya nini?!”

She’d have dragged up the time you were sixteen, how she swallowed her own PCEA beliefs to pay some herbalist in Kariobangi, in secret, for a bitter mixture to flush your first mistake down a pit latrine.

She’d remind you what it cost her standing in the Women’s Guild, among the mothers whose daughters actually came back from Alliance Girls with nothing but a metal trunk and revised textbooks. And here you were, doing it again, at university.

“Kwani nikurudishe kwa tumbo yangu tena?!” Do I put you back in my stomach, her voice cracked. A widow at thirty-something, washing clothes in Buruburu to raise two girls alone. For what? “For you to be this stubborn, jumping out of trees like a village boy instead of a Nairobi girl!”

You’d hang your head, drift off somewhere: the pages of Things Fall Apart, ringside at an Ekwensi wrestling match, anywhere, until Mama’s rant landed, as it always did: “Why can’t you be like your sister? Like Ncece?”

But here, in Pumwani, with the nurse telling you to grab your ankles and open your knees, all you want is Mama’s rough palm on your back. Her voice telling you this is just a test of faith, that you’ve always been tough, born underweight during the ‘82 coup, kept alive on milk she hand-expressed and stored in the middle of the cool almost fridge like banana plantations through a week of curfew.

You want Mama’s voice shouting sukuma, telling you she’s going to cut you a little to make room for the head.

Mama should have been here, watching her first granddaughter arrive loud and furious, just as the Nairobi heat finally broke into rain.

By the time news reached her and she walked into the ward, days later, there was no fire left in her eyes. You weren’t even worth her anger anymore. Just a cold, quiet disappointment, proof of your latest failure.

“Is this what my grandchild is wearing?” She clicked her tongue at the acrylic crib. “She’s so small. Hata haukuwa unajiangalia ukiwa na mimba.” She handed you a tin of hot sweet potatoes, a flask of tea and a box of Manji biscuits without meeting your eyes.

Relief is the exact second the dream breaks and dissolves.

.

You wake up. Remember where you are.

Peeling white paint. Concrete floor. The heavy wooden door of Ward 4B.

Mama’s face, right above yours.

Never mind that you’d been aching for her the same way you ache for your daughter. Never mind the smell of her Sunday special, homemade Githeri and waru cooked with Kimbo as usual. Ignore the sudden warmth at the smell of her Imperial Leather soap, clearing your nose for one second from the antiseptics and cheap bleach that live in every corner of this hospital.

You harden your jaw. “Is Wangari coming?”

Mama laughs, your old laugh, the one that used to fill up a whole room. “Mungu ni mwema! Say something else,” she says, taking your hand. Hers are the exact red of Nairobi soil after rain, a dark mole where thumb meets forefinger. “We haven’t heard your voice all week, mama. Thank God. Talk to me.”

She doesn’t stop talking long enough for you to actually talk.

My baby. The phrase is stolen straight off your tongue.

It was yours, first. For Wangari: when her dimples showed, when she brought home a report card stamped Position 1 out of 45, when she rinsed the greasy sufurias without being asked, when she didn’t wet her blow dryd hair for at least a week after you’d spent three hundred bob on it, when she greeted her uncles with a proper “Shikamoo” instead of her usual Nairobi “Sasa.”

You remember exactly when that phrase took root. You were eight, hiding in the shamba, braiding maize-cob silk instead of weeding with your cousins. Mama found you and didn’t slap your hands or drag you out. She just smiled, eyes crinkling. “Niikwega, my baby. You know how to plait now.”

.

You pull your hand out of hers and turn to Cucu instead.

“Water.”

You cup your fingers, mimicking a glass.

Mama’s up before you finish, grabbing a bottle of Dasani, cradling your head with one hand, wiping the dribble off your chin with her pink chiffon sleeve.

You want to spit it back in her face.

What was keeping her so busy at home this whole time? Selling maize at the market? Arranging plastic flowers for the altar?

You watch her performance and wince. Swallow the spit, the metallic water, whatever’s left of your pride.

3. Wangari

The door creaks open and Wangari bounces in, faded grey school uniform, hem torn, knees dusted red.

You swallow hard.

Only her second visit in over a month. Last time she wouldn’t stop talking: estate gossip, whose mother beat them, how she was crushing everyone at kati, how she now beat all the boys at bano. Unlike you, who used to freeze during PE, she swings off tree branches like it’s nothing, lands on her feet when she feels like it. Your legs, none of your knock-knees. Faster than you ever were.

Last visit she’d stood by the bed reciting current affairs to prove she was ready for KCPE: “Princess Diana died last year, Mummy! In August! And Honourable Martha Karua is running for President!”

Now she just stands at the door, mouth slightly open, staring.

“Kuja baby,” you croak.

Cucu fluffs the pillow again, out of habit.

“Kuja my girl,” you whisper, stretching out a frail hand.

She doesn’t move. Panic closes around your throat.

Are you invisible to your own child now?

“Kuja, my baby.”

Only now do you notice how packed the room is. Relatives you haven’t seen since your sister’s bouncing-castle birthday party in Uhuru Park. Aunts who haven’t spoken to Mama in years, hovering at the foot of the bed, arms crossed, lips pursed. In the corner, Ncece, peeking over shoulders like someone dragged her to a museum. Ponytail pulled back tight, she looks eerily like you did two years ago.

She clears her throat. “Ciku.” Her cheeks are raw where a cheap lightening cream has started peeling the skin.

The aunts shuffle, make room for her. She fidgets with her oversized gold hoops, wipes gloss from the corner of her mouth, and fixes her eyes on the small mound your feet make under the blanket.

“We’re all praying for you,” she says.

“Amen,” the aunts chorus, nodding like it’s choreographed.

“Let’s pray right now.”

You watch them close their eyes, palms together, heads bowed. Ncece launches into a loud prayer, calling on God by every Kikuyu and English name she knows.

Back when you were healthy, you were the one on a packed 45 to Winners Chapel every Sunday, dropping to the carpet crying and speaking in tongues at the altar calling for backsliders. You’d run through the week’s sins in your head, drank too much Viceroy in Westlands, talked trash about my neighbour’s messy house, rededicating your life every single week.

Ncece goes to church once a quarter, just to remind God she’s still around. When she finishes praying, you squeeze your eyes shut, clench your fists under the sheet.

“Mama,” you say. Your own voice sounds hollow to you.

“Atia, Wanjiku?”

“Please, leave Wangari and me alone. A minute.”

Mama’s eyes go wet. She smooths her dress down, forces a bright voice. “Haya, let’s give them space.” As if the house you grew up in had a single door that locked, besides Mama’s room and the store.

Cucu’s hunched over a plastic basin of your things, folding and refolding your lesos, your socks, your underwear, for the hundredth time. She hasn’t left this room since they moved you here. Watching you the way you watch a premature baby, like looking away for one second is the difference between you breathing and not.

“Cucu. Tafadhali.”

She nods, joints creaking, and leads the line of women out. The aunts squeeze Wangari’s shoulder on the way past, easing her closer to the bed.

The heavy door clicks shut. The girl sniffles, wipes her nose on her sleeve, and finally bolts, face buried in your chest. When she pulls back, you notice she’s lost her cheap earrings again. Red dirt caught in her uncombed puff.

“Mummy?” she whispers, studying your face like she’s not sure it’s actually yours.

Don’t cry. Show her you’re strong.

“Yes, mama. It’s me.” You pull her in, nose in her hair, that Dax pomade smell. Her eyes move over your sunken cheeks, eyebrows drawing into a tight V.

“Mummy, please.” Her shoulders shake against your ribs. “Nataka turudi home. Come back home.”

Here she is: the girl you raised alone in this city that doesn’t slow down for anyone. Fearless, stubborn, all Nairobi. Reduced now to a crying eight-year-old in your arms, the way she used to cling to your skirt every morning you left for the matatu.

You let out a long breath. “It’ll be fine. My baby?”

The question hangs there, dragging a hundred others behind it.

Who remembers the spoon of Blue Band in her githeri once you’re gone?

Who taught her to wash heavy school blankets in one basin without wasting water?

Will she remember the awkward, half-finished talks about becoming a woman, the ones you gave her so no man in this city could ever take advantage of her?

You already know. You know it in the grief bent into Cucu’s back. In the way Mama couldn’t hold your eyes before rushing out. In the slow fire of Slime moving through your blood.

You are not coming home.

You try to hold your daughter’s gaze, but your eyes keep sliding off to the ordinary things in the room: the blue curtain shifting in the draft, a crow on the telephone wire outside, the TV in the corner playing the Citizen TV sign-off, an Orange ball rolling into the Citizen TV graphics.

How do you fit an entire lifetime of Nairobi survival into one minute?

Everything you should have taught her, instead of just nagging her to sit properly, to wash her underwear where no one could see it, to hang it indoors.

“There will be very hard days, mama,” you whisper, barely louder than the TV. “But life, life will be beautiful again. Someday.”

Someone I loved loved with that heavy, quiet sort of devotion that doesn’t ask for permission passed away some five years ago. A few months before the cold hands of mortality finally claimed her, she sent me a long Facebook message. It was a heavyweight text, written under the shadow of her impending departure. It contained, if my memory serves me right, a blueprint. Some instructions on how I should live my life, and what she needed me to carry for her when she was no longer here to carry it. She said, again, I think, that the thought of me honoring this quiet decree helped her make peace with the inevitable.

I have tried. God knows I have tried. I’ve stumbled through what I thought she asked of me; sometimes I’ve failed miserably, sometimes I’ve done alright.

Notice how many times I’ve said: “I think.” I say “I think” because I can no longer be sure.

Recently, for the first time in over four years, I went back into the digital hard drive to find that message. I needed to read her words again. I needed to anchor myself. But the message was gone. Her Facebook account had been systematically scrubbed from the earth. The entire record of our communication, stretching back to when I was just a boy in high school trying to figure out the contours of the world, had vanished into thin air.

In our chat log, the name that used to bring a subtle warmth to my chest had been replaced by a cold, bureaucratic moniker: Facebook User. Her profile picture, once a vibrant snapshot of her smiling face, was now that featureless, grey avatar. Formless. Genderless. A digital nobody.

All her messages,long, thoughtful paragraphs that used to stretch down my old Microsoft Lumia screen back in the day were replaced by single lines of timestamped void. Not even a gray text bubble to mark where her thoughts had landed. Just a sterile unit of empty screen space.

The cruelest joke of all? My own messages are still sitting there.

It gives me a weird feeling. It looks like I’ve been spending years having a manic conversation with myself. I can see my own answers, often sent days or weeks late, the characteristic laziness of a young man who assumed time was an infinite resource.

I see awful, dismissive one-word replies to her deep, loving inquiries about how my semester in Maseno was going. But I can’t see what she said to trigger them. I see myself thanking her profusely for recommending a book she brought me from Nairobi, but I cannot see the title. And now, I will never know. I try to pull it from the dark corners of my brain, but I can’t. The record of her has been hidden in some server graveyard. All that’s left standing in the room is me.

If you’re the literary type, it might strike you that this is a neat metaphor for grief. Death leaves you talking to yourself in an empty room, doesn’t it? This is my constant fascination with the internet: its stubborn refusal to be subtle. The internet flattens real human emotion into cheap clichés.

The whole setup feels too on-the-nose, like a heavy-handed Saturday newspaper cartoon.

Those dumb, blank spaces sitting next to a hollow grey face that GADO had just drawn last night.

And like any bad cartoon, it practically begs for an intellectual autopsy.

There I was, a grown man sitting on the couch in my bedsitter, staring down at my phone, eyes burning, chest tight missing my cousin who left the world almost six years ago when we were still just youngsters wandering the windy paths of Ugenya going to Nzoia market, just across the Nzoia River (where there is now a very massive bridge and she knows nothing about) on those long December holidays.

And almost immediately, I could feel my overthinking brain start working, whirring into desperate motion. I wanted to blame Big Tech. I wanted to drag Mark Zuckerberg and the Silicon Valley oligarchs into the room and make them pay for a pain that was otherwise too vast, too diffuse, too slippery to grasp. Why did they erase her identity off the socials?

Why?

“Surely modernity is to blame for this,” I tell myself, trying to adopt the cool, detached stance of a cultural critic while my face is still hot because a grown man just shed a few tears over there. There’s an essay here about the tragedy of mediating love through digital spaces that I read some months back.

My mind starts frantically pulling books off mental shelves. Baudrillard must have written something about this hyperreal garbage. I recall Neil Postman’s critique of the modern heresy that all human experience can be translated into binary code and data points.

I squeeze my eyes shut. I just want to remember her message. I want her words back. But nothing comes. So I pivot back to intellect: Is my fading memory the fault of these damn algorithms?

Has endless scrolling on TikTok and Instagram Reels fried my attention span? I really need to sit down and read “Amusing Ourselves to Death.”

It’s a brilliant defense mechanism, isn’t it? I cook up a grand, academic theory for missing my beloved cousin who left us far too early: The ideology of information convinced me that love is made of saved data. Tech platforms sold me the fantasy that intimacy can be archived forever on a cloud server. Therefore, my grief isn’t just about loss; it’s about the systemic betrayal of the digital age!

It sounds smart. It might even pass for a column in the Sunday Nation. But when the high of the intellectual performance wears off, I am still left with a small, nagging truth:

Loss has always been a bastard.

Long before smartphones ever came to Kenya, our parents and grandparents were losing the records of the people they loved. People lost handwritten letters when the main house burned down. Studio-taken photos that dads used to carry on the pocket in the front area of their shirts dissolved in the April rains. Love notes written on those yellowish foolscaps slipped behind heavy wooden kabatis never to be found again until decades later, or were unknowingly used to light the jiko to make breakfast tea and nduma by a well-meaning auntie clearing out old boxes in the store.

Big Tech might be different in its scale and corporate indifference, but it didn’t invent the tragedy of a lost memory. The critique doesn’t fix the hole in my chest. The pain remains. So I am stuck trying to hold two conflicting thoughts in my hands.

On one hand, I believe in cultural critique. I believe the personal is political. There is value in pointing your finger at the systems that commodify our relationships, strip our lives of quiet depth, and trade our intimate moments for ad revenue. It feels good to channel heartbreak into righteous anger against the machine. I really, truly believe in calling out the forces that cheapen our existence.

On the other hand... I suspect that my obsession with finding a hypermodern villain is just a clever piece of theater. A sophisticated trick my brain plays to keep me from feeling the actual, unadulterated weight of the loss. Turning real, bleeding human grief into a neatly packaged essay is my default way of coping. It’s how I survive. But watching myself look up academic citations while still processing grief, I have to ask: Am I just trying to mechanize the incomprehensible? Am I trying to turn an existential tragedy into a problem with a control panel?

Smartphones might be soulless, but they didn’t invent death.

There’s an essay I read that argues if a man refuses to sit in the hell of his own pain, he ends up trapped in a static, perpetual despair. It’s our compulsive need to rationalize, explain away, or intellectualize our deepest agonies that actually makes life unbearable.

Maybe that’s what I’m doing with all this theory. I’m using cultural criticism to stay comfortably in despair while keeping my feet safely out of hell.

Because recognizing that I am simply part of an ancient, tragic line of human beings who have loved, lost, and had their hearts broken by mortality... that is terrifying. It offers no easy targets. Hating Facebook gives you a villain; accepting the fragile brevity of human life just leaves you naked in the wind. You can always indulge the wild fantasy of blowing up a server farm. You can never trick death into giving back the people you loved.

Fredric Jameson famously told us to always historicize. I’ve been dragging myself through his heavy texts lately, wrestling with complex philosophical concepts, feeling the tight limits of my own intellect like a cheap jacket that’s two sizes too small across the shoulders.

But in my effort to historicize, one simple, stubborn fact remains:

Men throughout history have tried to build brilliant, impenetrable machines out of their minds to make sense of the universe. And not a single one of those machines ever stopped a person they loved from slipping away into the dark.

While the tendency in Iranian films of the past had been towards the pensive and poetic side with less dialogue, heavy use of visual metaphors, and nonlinear or experimental narratives, “A Separation” is a heavily dialogue-driven film. Its themes of dissolving bonds and the disconnect between the middle and working class are poignant in a time when the spread and prevalence of mass communication had not mended the riffs in a world that remained decidedly fractured.

However, even with its universal message, A Separation is a film that can be viewed as a rich and layered character drama that focuses primarily on the dissolution of marriage between the progressive Simine( and her more conservative soon to be ex-husband Nader.

The narrative shifts abruptly to a legal dispute between Nader and Rea, a woman taking care of Nader’s ill father after she is accused of stealing money in Nader’s house when he was out working. This scenario gives the nuances of class and societal divisions wherein each character is given equal weight in terms of expressing their side of the story, as miscommunications and a deep-rooted class divide start to give more and more importance to the issues at hand. But beyond this, the thematic message of the film may transcend the classism and marital issues apparent on the story’s surface in that, they may potentially allude to ideas of Iranian National identity and the turbulence of the country’s political past.

Brief History;

The film can be seen to draw Visual and thematic parallels to two previous Iranian political movements. One, a faux Progressive and the other a more Grassroots Uprising that originated outside of the political system, much like the characters in the film. These two movements existed in opposition of one another, pitting one class against the other.

When we step back in time and look into Iran’s history, back in 1963, a movement dubbed the White Revolution was meant to give power back to the poor and working class, emboldening the people often forgotten through a series of wide-reaching reforms, while neglecting the people of the city and the middle class. However, even though this movement was touted as seeking to remove traditionalist thinking, it was bred and built within an ulterior political agenda and the perpetuation of a traditionalist kingship according to Iranian historians, say(I am Kenyan).

The white Revolution therefore contributed to the rise of a conservative and fundamentalist mindset, creating a Schism within Iranian culture and leading to far-reaching consequences that came to the surface in 1979. The Iranian Revolution overthrew the Western-backed monarchy of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and replaced it with an Islamic Republic led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and still resides today. Conversely, the Green Revolution of 2009 was a Reformation made by the middle class and the youth within major city centers that never took hold among the rural class or those who were more conservative-leaning and therefore ultimately a movement that was unsuccessful.

The Film Review.

With all this said, how does it relate to “A Separation”?

As a Cinephile, I believe that these two movements and their respective “color schemes” are entrinsic to how the film operates and explores their themes. Nader’s elderly and sickyly father(who has Alzheimer’s) can be seen as the head of this domineering ideology that is slowly losing power. The reasoning that once held it in place now slipping away.

The characters who are placed in charge of nurturing and caring for him are the more conservative or devoutly religious of their respective pairings. Nader’s wife Seine in general, rejects the traditionalist views of her husband and strives instead for a place of equality. One which is routinely denied to her.

We see the room of the dementia ridden father features mostly white decor and furniture, and his devoted son often wears white when attending to him. This whiteness, however, is not restricted to his sleeping quarters but also creeps into the various societal institutions such as the courtrooms and waiting halls and the home of the religious Resa and her husband. The influence of this dominant ideology can also be seen in the white hair coverings of Resa’s daughter, who is seemingly fated to remain within this traditionalist institution.

One scene in particular succinctly alludes to the cultural and societal divides as Nader washes his sick father; the entire scene is drenched in whiteness from the clothes to the walls of the bathroom itself( As shown in the video above)

On the opposite side of the spectrum, the color green is visible in the background of various scenes. A detached reminder of the movement that took hold in Iran almost 2 decades ago(When the film was being released). However, the most noticeable of these green tones are aptly used in the kitchen of Nader’s apartment. A location so often used in media and literature as a symbol of feminine oppression now takes on new meaning with a fresh coat of paint as this area becomes an ironic setting of Liberation. In such spaces in this film, with its green confines, women lash back at the patriarchal figures of their societal institution. From Temra(Nader’s Daughter) instructing her father how to use the laundry machine to Simine fighting back against her husband’s refusal to grant her a divorce and even the initial fight over money between Raaza and the husband begins in the kitchen.

“A Separation” became the first Iranian movie ever to win an Academy Award, and the reaction in Iran was so intense that theaters were packed for months, with some screenings reportedly starting at 7 a.m. just to meet demand. Even crazier, the actors were given intentionally incomplete scripts. The director Asghar Farhadi withheld key emotional beats so their confusion and frustration on screen would feel real. The courtroom sequences weren’t filmed on a set at all; they were shot inside a real judicial office, where the cast had to adapt to the unpredictability of the working building, including random interruptions. And despite the film’s global acclaim, it sparked fierce debate in Iran: some critics accused it of being “too real,” while others praised it for showing life so honestly that audiences forgot they were watching fiction at all.

Shot Selection

However, beyond color, the film also explores these elements through its use of shot selection and framing women are often shown to be behind glass and mirrors and much as we saw in the thematically similar film Carol. These seem to reflect the overbearing institutions around them. It also suggests a barrier between them and the male figures in their lives. A disunion that is becoming increasingly difficult to negotiate.

This divide is also seen in the use of doors and entrances. While they can be seen as a metaphor for transition and the potential for a positive future, in “A separation” numerous compositions are presented through doors which are repeatedly obstructed by individuals and often times closed again. Showing the division between class and gender and the lack of progression.

Past these barriers, these two elements are ultimately combined within the events that drive the narrative in the second half of the film as Raaza is pushed out from the entrance. The way the action of her falling or what truly happened is denied to the viewer as the windows of the Green Door are obscured, the white Revolution earned its name due to its bloodless nature and likewise the acts of violence committed against Raaza, which caused her to lose her child are not shown on screen, hence denying us the viewers the clarity of seeing for ourselves what really happened, the film presents us with the same dilemma as it does its characters allowing doubt and skepticism to prosper in place of certainty.

Also within the shot selections themselves, the characters seem to be deliberately disconnected.

There’s alot more that can be decyphered when you decide to watch this work of art. I would like to talk about everything I saw and felt was well done in the film, but that wont be a review anymore. So I will just let you watch it and tell me what your thoughts are., Especially females who get to this part of the blog.

When I was a boy, my parents made a critical tactical error: they indulged my every whim.

I don’t blame them entirely. It was love, I suppose—that mushy, unreasoning affliction that strikes people the moment they bring a child into the world. But looking back, I wish they had applied a bit more iron to that velvet glove. I wish that when I begged my mother for something fancy to eat like Fries for dinner on some days, she had unceremoniously served me whatever boiled vegetables were sitting in the kitchen or some Githeri just cause she can. I wish that when I demanded a lollipop as a bribe just to sit still through a haircut, my father had simply looked at me and said, “No.” Plain. Cold. Unblinking.

Because getting whatever you want as a kid is a dangerous thing.

A young boy needs to face rejection. He needs a few of his grand ambitions nipped cleanly in the bud, a few cherished desires crushed beneath a heavy boot. If you don’t teach him how to take a hit early, he grows into a man who collapses the first time the world tells him “Sio leo, bro.”

My first real trial should have been romance. Schoolyard crushes, with all their tragic pining and dramatic unrequited love, are excellent at building character. I have friends who had their hearts thoroughly pulverized in Class 5, and by the time they hit their late teens, they were hardened souls. Weathered. Invulnerable.

Unfortunately, I spent my youth tucked away at an all-boys’ school somewhere in Western Kenya. Romance wasn’t on the curriculum.

My first real opportunity came later, during holiday tuition. (Kenya 8-4-4 veterans know the drill). She was in my class. I was smitten within three days. Over the next four years, across Form One and Form Four, I maintained a fierce, steadfast devotion to this girl, despite having spoken fewer than twelve words to her in total.

Soundtrack Of The Day;

I made up for the silence with intense, non-verbal cinema(I was 14, it’s normal). I stole glances during break time. I threw shy, practiced smiles across the room during Computer practicals. I did everything a classic Bollywood hero would do to win the heroine, short of bursting into a choreographed dance in the rain.

To my absolute dismay, she did not run into my arms.

I never gathered the courage to actually speak up, so the whole affair remained suspended in limbo. unexpressed, unrequited, completely unfulfilled. It wasn’t even a proper lesson in rejection, because I never gave her the chance to say no. In fact, knowing what I know now, she probably liked me.

She liked me because of my French character.

In Form Two, a friend and I performed a play adapted from P.G. Wodehouse. It was meant to be our masterpiece, staged at the regional drama festivals to impress girls from neighbouring schools, specifically a girl from Booker Academy(I hate how this is how you are finding out about this, you). My friend played an English nobleman. I was his French valet.

Now, conveying French elegance on a high school stage in Kenya is no small feat. A lesser actor would have relied on a fake accent, but my ambitions soared higher. I wanted panache.

The problem was, after weeks of rehearsal, I only managed to memorize a single line of actual French.

So, I improvised.

Whenever my turn came to speak, I simply punctuated every single sentence with maximum theatrical energy: “Ooh là là, Monsieur! Ooh là là!”

After the show, I approached her, clammy hands wringing the beret I’d worn for the role.

“Did you like the performance?” I asked.

“Oh yes! You were the best,” she smiled. A smile that could easily outshine the Nairobi sun.

“Merci, mademoiselle!” I declared, bowing deeply. “Merci boku!”

She would have made a terrible theatre critic, bless her heart, but she would have made a wonderful girlfriend. If only a crippling fear of embarrassment hadn’t kept my mouth shut back then.

My first actual brush with rejection didn’t come from a woman though. It came from a job interview after completing university.

A top-tier German media company had come to a particular campus I had a couple of friends in to recruit. I had volunteered with them during a previous campus break, so I walked in feeling like an insider. I cleared the written test with ease. When my turn for the panel interview came, I strode into the room with the casual confidence of a man whose victory was already scripted.

For ten minutes, we discussed media theory. When they asked about digital culture, I concocted sophisticated, high-sounding answers, throwing around names like McLuhan and Neil Postman. I gently reminded them of my six weeks at their Nairobi office. When one panelist nodded and said he remembered receiving a favorable report about me, I did a subtle fist-pump under the table. Done deal.

Then came the fatal question: “So, what other interests do you have outside of media?”

Had I been nervous, I would have given a brief, sensible answer. But confidence is a drunk driver. I launched into a long, passionate monologue about sports. I started with football, took a scenic detour into tennis, and spent the next ten minutes breaking down the 2008 Wimbledon final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer—a four-hour-and-forty-eight-minute epic that I recreated play-by-play.

When I finally paused for air, the panel was staring at me.

“You must like tennis a lot,” one editor said, giving me that cold, dead-eyed stare that all seasoned editors possess.

“Not as much as football,” I grinned. “But yes. Absolutely.”

“It seems so,” he said softly. “Because you spoke about that tennis match with far more passion than anything else in this interview.”

The air left my lungs instantly. I registered a weak, desperate protest about my deep, burning love for journalism, but it was too late. The ship had sailed. That evening, when the list of successful candidates was posted, my name was nowhere on it.

Since then, as a writer, rejection and I have become close acquaintances. Too close.

You get used to it after a while. You expect the editor to ignore your pitch. You expect the literary magazine to pass. When you accept the inevitability of failure, you build a thick skin. It’s the hope that kills you.

Which is why the rejections you don’t see coming hit the hardest.

Take, for instance, applying for a visa. Applying for an overseas visa on a Kenyan passport is already a spiritual endurance test. For all our raw athletic power and all the fine tea from Kericho we send across the globe, our passport requires you to surrender your soul, your bank statements, your tax filings, and your dignity(Nothing more embarrassing than sourcing bank statements to prove you’ll afford living out there) just to get an appointment.

Two years ago, I applied for a Schengen visa to Sweden for a Master’s program interview. I assembled a mountain of paperwork, pulling in favors, gathering salary slips, proving to the Swedish authorities that I was not a security threat. I gave them my fingerprints, took an unflattering mugshot, and handed over my personal phone number.

10 weeks later, an envelope arrived.

Twelve unstapled pages. Deep inside was the execution sentence: “Your visa application is therefore refused.”

The reason? A single line: “Failure to provide a satisfactory explanation as to why you chose to travel to Sweden specifically.”

I stared at the paper. What do you mean ‘why Sweden’? It’s a Master’s program interview! Are you implying your own country isn’t worth visiting for a student who just wants to go to school and leave?

I wrote them an impassioned appeal. I told them I held their nation in high esteem. I praised their culture, their landscapes, their education system, while politely assuring them I had zero interest in overstaying my welcome.

A fortnight later, they wrote back. Decision upheld. Stockholm was off the table. The scholarship dream I had quietly, not even people close to me like my mom and dad knew I had spent the bulk of my 2-year savings from gigs and my job preparing for was gone.

Now, I try not to be a petty man. I don’t hold long, burning grudges. So when Sweden got knocked out of the World Cup this year, I didn’t celebrate. I didn’t watch the Swedish fans weeping in the stands and clap my hands, shouting at the television screen. I am better than that.

I will admit, however, that my desire to study abroad has completely vanished. If they don’t want me on their shores, I don’t want their shores either.

The only exception I might consider is an invitation from the Nobel Committee. Should that ever happen, I will carefully review their request and decide whether to accept or reject it.

Flying from Nairobi to Kisumu in forty-five minutes had always been a brainless routine for Maina. Predictable. Uneventful. The kind of flight where you plug in your earphones, pretend to read a book you bought at Kasuku Center, and wake up just as the tires kiss the tarmac over the lake.

Until the sky decided to throw a tantrum.

He sat by the window in Economy, a man who clearly knew his way around Kenya Airways’ Embraer 190. He understood the rhythm: the low, mechanical throat-clearing of the jet, the chaotic shuffle of hand luggage, the bored voice of the purser telling everyone to turn their phones to flight mode, a directive universally ignored by half the cabin finishing their M-Pesa transactions.

Then came the storm before the storm.

A woman, breath ragged, as though she’d sprinted all the way from the security check at JKIA, tumbled into the aisle and collapsed into the seat next to him.

“Eeeh, waki-nianyaganye! I thought they’d leave me!” she blurted out, clutching her chest, her chest heaving like a bellows.

Without missing a beat, she grabbed her seatbelt and began to wage war with it. She flipped it, twisted it, examined it like a complex piece of Chinese machinery without a manual. Her hands were frantic, a blur of panic and frustration, searching for a secret code to unlock a mechanism designed for six-year-olds.

Maina took a deep breath. “The belt goes across your waist, madam.”

She froze, looking at him with wide, bloodshot eyes. “So… it’s not like the ones in a matatu?”

“No,” Maina said, his tone dripping with the dry, measured patience of a man who has seen too many first-time flyers.

“This one is simpler.”

She clicked it into place, a flash of relief washing over her face.

At least we will take off in five minutes, Maina thought, closing his eyes.

The plane lifted, cutting through the heavy Nairobi smog and climbing into the sky. But Kenya’s weather is an unpredictable mistress. The blue skies dissolved into a dark, suffocating labyrinth of clouds. The light inside the cabin dimmed. The aircraft began to shudder, a violent, metallic vibration, as if it had strayed into a neighborhood in the heavens where it clearly didn’t belong.

The first jolt hit like a blow to the ribs. Maina stiffened.

And then, because the universe loves a cruel double-whammy, another problem arose. It wasn’t just a mild discomfort; it was a biological uprising. His bladder, and something deeper, darker in his gut, which had been quietly behaving until now, suddenly staged a coup.

The pressure pressed forward insistently.

He shifted in his seat, sweating, trying to reason with his internal organs.

Another, nastier drop. The woman shrieked and grabbed his wrist with the grip of a drowning sailor.

“Is it supposed to shake like a Mbukinya bus on a dirt road?!” she whispered wildly.

Maina exhaled through his nose, maintaining the impassive face of an elder at a dowry negotiation.

“It’s part of the local air transport experience, madam.”

The plane dipped again, dropping twenty feet into thin air. Maina’s muscles locked. The terror was real, but the pressure in his gut was realer. In that moment of sheer, unadulterated gravity-defying panic, his body betrayed him.

It started subtly. A quiet breach of defense. Then came the fallout.

The smell didn’t just arrive; it occupied the space. Thick, invasive, heavy with the unmistakable aroma of a bad decision involving street-side mutura and cheap hot soup from the previous evening.

The woman froze mid-breath. Her expression shifted rapidly: sheer terror, confusion, and then a profound, horrifying realization. She turned toward him, fanning the air with her inflight magazine.

“Ghai! Was that the plane’s engine, or was that you?!” she asked, sniffing the air around his shoulder with deep suspicion.

Maina didn’t flinch. He kept his eyes locked on the seathead in front of him.

“Madam, let us remain focused on survival.”

She leaned back, disgusted, her fear momentarily eclipsed by outrage.

“Whatever spirit you just released is not helping anyone survive! Ghai! At least respect the oxygen we are sharing!”

Before he could craft a clever retort, the plane lurched violently to the left, reclaiming their undivided terror.

BZZZT.

The pilot’s voice came over the speaker, calm, British-inflected, completely detached from the chaos in row 14.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are experiencing a bit of rough weather over the Rift Valley. Expect about fifteen minutes of moderate turbulence. Cabin crew, please take your seats.”

It was the longest fifteen minutes of Maina’s life.

Time stretched like hot rubber.

It wasn’t ordinary turbulence; it was an airborne exorcism. The plane bucked and dropped, overhead bins rattled like old iron sheets in a storm, a baby started wailing near the front, and somewhere behind them, a mama began a fervent, high-pitched intercession in fast Luo.

Maina sat petrified. Outside, he was a statue of African male composure. Inside, he was a burning building. Between holding his breath, holding his stomach, and holding on for dear life, he was a man operating at maximum capacity.

The woman grabbed his arm again, her eyes wild.

“Can the captain not just park this thing on a cloud for five minutes so we can all step out and breathe?!”

Maina turned slowly.

“There are no parking slots in the sky, madam.”

“Well,” she hissed, “there should be!”

Another sudden drop. The entire cabin gasped in unison.

Panic overtook the woman completely. She snapped her seatbelt open and scrambled to her feet, swaying violently as the plane pitched.

“I’m opening this door! We need air!”

She reached toward the emergency exit handle next to their row.

“Madam, hapana!”

Maina snapped, grabbing her wrist with authority and yanking her back down.

“At this altitude, opening that door will not give you fresh air. It will give you an immediate, personalized tour of the Rift Valley floor.”

She hesitated, hyperventilating, before buckling herself back in with trembling fingers.

She looked at him, her chest heaving.

“You... you are not even panicking.”

“Panicking is a luxury we cannot afford,” he lied smoothly.

She let out a long breath, clutching his sleeve like a rosary.

“If you are calm, then we are okay.”

Slowly, mercifully, the skies smoothed out. The violent shaking died down to a gentle vibration. The cabin’s collective sigh was palpable.

Maina unbuckled his belt immediately.

“I need to use the lavatory.”

“Me too,” she said, unbuckling instantly and standing up beside him.

What happened next was an act of tragic, mathematical precision.

She took one step, lost her footing on the carpet, her face turned a horrific shade of pale green, and before Maina could react—SPLASH.

A full-course, hot, liquid baptism of half-digested airport samosas and anxiety vomit.

It hit his shirt, his chest, his arms. Maina stood there, dripping, petrified in the aisle.

“Eserian! I am so, so sorry!” she cried, clutching her mouth. “I didn’t mean to!”

Maina looked down at his ruined designer shirt, then up at her.

“It is... remarkably clear that you didn’t plan it.”

He retreated into the tiny lavatory. He scrubbed his skin, splashed cold water on his face, wiped his clothes with dry tissues, trying to erase the physical and psychological stains of the last forty minutes. He emerged, retrieved a spare polo from his carry-on, changed in the back, and found an empty seat three rows away, leaving the crew to deal with the biohazard in Row 14.

He leaned his head back against the cold window, closing his eyes. It’s over. God, it’s over.

Then the intercom clicked again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing a minor issue with cabin pressure. Please remain seated while the crew reviews safety procedures.”

Maina opened his eyes. Before he could process it, the woman slid into the empty seat next to him again.

“Again?!” she whispered in despair. “What did we do to this plane? Did someone not pay their tithe this Sunday?!”

“We have paid enough price for one ticket,” Maina said through gritted teeth.

Outside, the familiar brown waters of Lake Victoria appeared. The runway of Kisumu International Airport stretched out below them. A wave of relief began to sweep through the cabin, until the captain’s voice returned.

This time, the fake corporate calm was gone. His voice was grim.

“Attention passengers and crew. We have a technical indication that the main landing gear has failed to lock into position. We are going to attempt an emergency landing. Brace for impact. I repeat, brace for impact.”

A dead, heavy silence fell over the plane. The kind of silence that precedes a thunderclap.

The woman reached out and squeezed Maina’s hand so hard her knuckles turned white.

“Will we make it?”

Maina looked out at the approaching tarmac.

“I really hope so. Because I cannot die in a ruined shirt.”

The impact was violent.

The plane slammed onto the runway with a sickening crunch. Metal scraped concrete with a sound that tore through the cabin like a physical blade. Sparks flared outside the windows. Passengers were thrown forward against their belts, then slammed back into their seats. The plane skidded, swerving wildly, screeching, dragging its belly across the tarmac until, meter by agonizing meter, it slowed... and shuddered to a complete halt.

Silence. Heavy, suffocating, absolute silence.

Then, the cabin erupted. People wept. Someone shouted “Hallelujah!” Passengers threw their arms around strangers.

Maina collapsed back into his seat, drenched in cold sweat, every muscle in his body aching from the tension. He was alive. He took a long, ragged breath. It felt like winning a jackpot.

“We made it,” the woman whispered, a tear cutting a clean line through the dust and pale sweat on her cheek.

Maina nodded, incapable of speech.

The engines whined down into a dead quiet. The collective adrenaline began to recede. And then, Maina felt it—a soft, prickly sensation at the back of his neck.

The woman sniffed. “Do you... do you smell that?”

Maina looked up.

A thin, lazy snake of grey smoke was crawling along the plastic panels of the ceiling. It moved quietly, curling into delicate rings, advancing silently down the aisle from the front of the aircraft.

Murmurs spread like wildfire. The smoke grew thicker, descending onto the passengers like a slow, toxic mist.

The woman turned to him, her fingers digging back into his arm, her eyes wide with fresh, absolute terror.

“We are not done, are we?” she whispered.

Maina didn’t answer. He just watched the smoke roll toward them, realizing that in this life, sometimes the universe doesn’t just want to test you; it wants a full season finale.

Last month, my mother and I called each other thirty-two times.

Thirty-two.

On paper, that looks impressive. It looks like the kind of stat a dutiful, polished African son boasts about over a cold White Cap at a noisy bar in town.

“Me? Oh, I speak to my mother daily.”

It suggests intimacy. It suggests a warm, running narrative between a mother and her adult son, swapping updates about life, love, and the price of tomatoes.

It’s all a lie.

If you put those thirty-two calls on a scale, they’d weigh less than a feather. Most lasted two minutes. Two and a half, tops. The longest call, the monster, was eight minutes, and only because she couldn’t find her reading glasses and wanted me to wait on the line while she checked under the sofa cushions.

Add it all up. All of June. One hour and twelve minutes.

That’s it. That’s less time than I spent sitting in standstill traffic on Argwings Khodek Road last Tuesday, watching a guy in a faded suit try to sell steering wheel covers to people who clearly didn’t want steering wheel covers. It’s a fraction of the time I spent at some hotel in town last weekend, listening to people explain why they’re going on a keto diet.

When we speak, it’s dry. Perfunctory. Staid.

“Uko Mzima?”

“Niko poa sana, Mama.”

“Nairobi inakupeleka aje my son?”

“It’s okay, Mama, Ni kung’ang’ana”

“Mbona sauti iko hivo? Uko na homa?”

“Hapana, Mama. Niko mzima. Sina homa.”

Then, Silence.  The kind of thick, uncomfortable silence that makes you pretend your battery is dying. The well ran dry a long time ago. And if I trace the crack in the foundation, it started with that one, infuriating, persistent question: “What did you eat for dinner?”

When I packed my small life into a duffel bag and my small suitcase, left the damp, green quiet of Gachie, and moved to start something small on my own, having spent my formative years anchored in her shade back in Kisumu and later Kimabu, I used to call her twice a day. Religiously. Once in the morning before the city fully woke up, and again at night when I retreated to my small, boxy apartment. I didn’t realize it then, but we were drifting. The rhythm of our lives was falling out of sync.

I was in Nairobi now. A city of noise and hustle, of rent deadlines and fake smiles, where everyone is constantly running toward something or away from someone. I was trying to figure out how to be a man here. She, on the other hand, remained in that old, familiar space; only now, no boy was hovering near the stove, lifting sufuria lids and complaining about the food. The truth is, I didn’t have the words to explain Nairobi to her. How do you explain the silent, terrifying weight of adulting to a woman who raised you? How do you tell her about the performative fatigue of showing up every day and pretending you have things under control?

Soundtrack Of The Day

She’s a mother. She’d lived it all. She probably had the exact answers I needed. But young men are arrogant creatures; we like to believe our pain is brand new, invented solely for us. So, I shut down. I took the easy way out.It was simpler to say, “Work is fine, Mama,” than to explain the soul-crushing panic of realizing I’d just hit ‘Send’ on an email to a client where I meant to type ‘invest’and accidentally typed ‘incest’.

But she never stopped reaching. She wanted to know about my housemates. My job. My meals. Especially the meals. God, that question used to irritate me. Here I was, wrestling with the existential dread of making it in the capital, and she wanted to know if I’d had sukuma wiki or managu.

“Nimekula food Mama,” I’d snap into the receiver, cold and short.

I was an idiot. I didn’t see what she was doing. I didn’t realize that question wasn’t about food at all. It was just an ice axe. A mother swinging blindly into the smooth, glass wall I was building around myself, trying to find just one tiny toehold to pull herself up into my world. We were off-key. And for two and a half decades, off-key was never our vibe.

In 1998, a little movie called Titanic was causing a quiet riot everywhere. I wasn’t even born yet. There was one specific scene, the one where the Upper-class redhead looks at the broke, boyish artist and says, “I want you to draw me like one of your French girls”, that had completely hijacked the imagination of every adolescent boy with a burgeoning mustache at that particular time. From what I hear, South B, the estate, was buzzing on that particular year. Local video den operators, resourceful fellows with questionable legal ethics, had procured bootleg VHS tapes. On Sunday afternoons, boys would crowd into dark rooms, eyes wide, waiting for the magic moment. But right when Jack reached for his charcoal, someone’s elder brother would burst in and send everyone on an errand to buy bread, robbing an entire generation of cinematic enlightenment.

I was eleven when my mother took me to watch Titanic at the Mega City Theatre, near Kachock in Kisumu. People had warned her. “It has scenes,” they whispered. She didn’t care. She just wanted to sit in a dark theatre with her son and watch a masterpiece. She had faith in her convictions and, more importantly, in the Kenya Film Classification Board. The censors didn’t disappoint. They hacked that scene to ribbons. But even the butchered, PG-rated remnants were too much for my fragile eleven-year-old sensibilities. The moment Rose lay down on that sofa, I dived under the cinema seat like a man dodging shrapnel, pretending I’d dropped a piece of chewing gum. I stayed down there in the dust, heart pounding, until I was dead certain Rose was fully clothed again. When I finally surfaced, my ears were even hurting from the sounds I had heard while down there.

Our bond survived my teenage years, too.

I could lie to you right now. I could invent wild stories of late-night escapes, bad company, and dramatic arguments over burnt beans because I went out when I was supposed to look after the boiling beans on the Jiko. But if you read me, you know I don’t do that. I am, and have always been, vanilla AF. A flock of homing pigeons had more rebellious energy than I did as a teenager. No hormonal explosions. No slammed doors(Until after high school)

Back in Gachie, she knew everything. I was her shadow. I’d tag along when she visited her friends, sitting quietly in corners while the women drank tea and laughed. Her house was the house where my friends wanted to hang out, mostly because she was cool, and mostly because her cooking could make a grown man weep. We had no secrets. In fact, and it hurts my pride to type this, I was the guy who sat his mother down to tell her about his high school crush. I gave her a full post-game analysis of my first date. And now? Now, I sit in Nairobi, staring at a phone that rings thirty-two times a month for two minutes at a time. And when she asks who I went to the cinema with over the weekend, I take a slow sip of tea, look out at the grey city skyline, and say: “Oh. Just some friends, Mama. You wouldn’t know them.”

I have always had a thing for trains. There is a specific, unhurried rhythm to a train. A slow, metallic heartbeat that forces you to sit with your thoughts. Lately, I have been leaning my forehead against the cold glass of the Madaraka Express, watching the standard-gauge tracks slice through Eastlands, thinking about how our lives are exactly like this. One long, unpredictable safari. A series of screeching halts, sharp bends, and a cabin filled with people we didn’t choose to travel with, but must sit next to anyway.

Imagine the Syokimau commuter train during the evening rush. The air is heavy with the scent of damp wool and roasted maize from the station outside. The scenery changes as the train pulls away from the city’s concrete teeth into the yawning dark of Machakos. At every stop, Makadara, Imara Daima, the cabin exhales. Some passengers board with loud, aggressive energy, smelling of cheap cologne and boardroom victories. Others alight quietly, slipping into the neon-lit drizzle, leaving behind a cold, empty seat. This rhythm of arrival and departure never stops. Yet, a few steady commuters remain, staring straight ahead, in it for the long haul.

In my own journey, I have met brilliant minds at these different stations. The drafty lecture halls at Maseno, a chaotic shuttle ride to an ALX tech summit, the shared flasks of tea during those endless field assignments, or a packed evening class in Nairobi where the hum of the traffic outside forms a baseline for our ambitions.

Some of these connections start like a slow diesel engine, fueled merely by proximity, by the sheer convenience of sharing a desk or a mutual dislike for a boss. Others hit you like a sudden thunderstorm; a swift exchange of Instagram handles, a WhatsApp text that reads “Nice meeting you, chief,” and suddenly you’re in each other’s digital spaces.

Is it not fascinating how we can never truly predict what a first “Niaje” will morph into?

Will we be the guys who pull up at each other’s weddings, holding a goat by its horns? Or will we fizzle out after six months? Will we go from strangers to brothers, and then, by some unspoken cruelty of time, back to strangers who merely know each other’s old secrets?

Some faces strike you once, vibrant and memorable, then vanish into thin air like Nairobi mist. The ones who stick around longer leave you wondering what it actually takes to maintain a friendship in adulthood. In this town, everyone’s hands are full. We are all chasing the shilling, dodging the landlord, managing private anxieties, or nursing silent heartbreaks.

If you were to ask me for a tip on how to keep the fire burning, I would tell you it is grace. Absolute, unconditional grace.

Yes, communication is key. Shared values matter. But true camaraderie? It is the willingness to tolerate a friend’s metaphorical bad breath because you made a choice. Because there is an unspoken pact signed in the trenches of your youth. You stay because you’ve seen them at their worst, and you didn’t alight.

But then, how much grace can a man give before his own tank runs dry? Do we follow the Sunday school script and forgive seventy-seven times seven? And even if you choose to forgive, what happens when the other person simply decides to get off at the next station without looking back? It takes two to dance the tango, after all.

So we do what we always do: we open the doors of our lives with a smile. We let strangers into our living rooms. We lock hearts. We completely forget the vulnerability of the contract that people are not fixtures. They are visitors.

They might leave this world too soon, victims of a sudden illness or a rogue matatu on the highway. They might sink into a dark, suffocating depression that makes it impossible for them to show up as the bubbly friend you once knew, and so they ghost. They might outgrow you, or a sudden shift in social class creates a chasm too wide for a casual phone call to bridge. And just like that, the midnight tête-à-têtes slip through the floorboards of the train. Only a handful of souls make it to the final terminus.

As the landscape changes outside the window, we pick up new passengers and keep moving. It reminds me of a high school teacher who once sat me down over a cup of lukewarm tea. She said, “Owen, people come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.”

It sounded like a cliché then. It feels like scripture now. The wisdom lies in knowing how to categorise the seating arrangement.

Unfortunately, we do not possess the gift of prophecy. We cannot look at a man at a bus stop and know he will hold our hand through a midlife crisis, nor can we tell that the one laughing loudest at our jokes will walk out the door next month. And when they do leave, the burn is real. You are left nursing a hollow space in your chest. You are forced to unlearn their phone numbers, to pretend you forgot their birthdays, details you once memorised with absolute glee.

How do you even teach your mind to forget?

How do you offer silent prayers into the night for someone who no longer knows your address? What happens to the old photo albums, or the grand plans you had of your children growing up together?

How do you safely love someone from a distance without it tearing you apart?

It is hard to love a ghost. It is difficult to stare into the void they left behind and find peace. But perhaps the secret is to sit with the hurt. Let the grief of the lost friendship wash over you. Let time do its slow, agonizing work.

You must not hate them because the season ended. For your own peace of mind, you must honour the memory of who they were when they loved you. Honour the imprints they left on your soul.

Heal from the scars of the severance, brush the dust off your jeans, and stand at the platform again. Show up for the next train. You do not need a crowded cabin anyway. You only need two or three true souls who share your compass and possess the stamina to ride out the storms. Show up with kindness for the new commuters. Accept that some are just traveling two stops down the road and that, in itself, is beautiful.

Thankfully, God gave us family. The ones who are stuck in the cabin with you, whether they like the view or not, until the final stop.

Our grandfathers,the old men who smelled of snuff, cheap tobacco, and hard work in the shamba,had religion. It was simple. You were either a sinner heading straight for the furnace of hell or a saint with a reserved seat in the clouds. Their identity was anchored firmly in the wooden pews of Presbyterian or Catholic churches on Sunday mornings.

Then came the Boomers. They chose the noisy, chaotic theater of politics. They wore party colors like second skins, shouting themselves hoarse at rallies, convinced that a politician’s promise was a solid foundation to build a life upon.

And then, the Millennials. They split the difference. The broke ones among us looked to the heavens. They blamed Mercury’s retrograde for their terrible dating choices and empty bank accounts. “I’m a Scorpio, it’s just how we are,” they’d say, completely straight-faced, while nursing a cold Tusker. The rich ones,the ones who drink oat milk in sleek Westlands cafes and use corporate words like bandwidth, preferred the sophistication of MBTI tests(Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). They wanted you to know they were INFJs(Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling, Judging), wearing those four letters like a designer label.

But my generation now, the Gen Z?

Gen Z looked at the stars and the ballot boxes and decided they weren’t dramatic enough. They went straight for the pharmacy.

They took the DSM-5, a heavy, dry psychiatric manual meant for sterile clinic rooms, and turned it into a high-end fashion catalogue. They flipped through the pages, picked a diagnostic code that fit their aesthetic, and built an entire empire of self around it.

Now, you aren’t just shy; you have social anxiety. You aren’t just organized; you are OCD. You aren’t sad because life in Nairobi is occasionally a heavy, unforgiving beast; you are clinically depressed.

We no longer have moods, flaws, or quirks. We have symptoms. And we wear them like badges of honor, dared to be challenged, quietly demanding that the rest of the world handle us with fragile, sterile gloves.

Nobody is saying these things are fake. Let’s get that out of the way immediately. ADHD is real. Autism is real. So are the quiet, private ways people choose to love.

But something has shifted in the air. We’ve stopped treating these things as quiet medical realities and started wearing them like heavy winter coats in the middle of a Nairobi heatwave. We don’t just carry a diagnosis anymore; we’ve built a house inside it. We’ve taken ordinary quirks, a preference for quiet, a stubborn habit, a fleeting sadness, and polished them into elaborate badges of identity.

It’s no longer about what you have. It’s about who you are when you walk into a room. We’ve traded having a condition for letting the condition have us.

What Happened To Traditional Identity?

Why has this happened? Because the old world crumbled, and we panicked.

Modernity came in with a sledgehammer and broke down the big, steady pillars that used to tell us who we were. our villages, our churches, the comforting weight of tradition. We suddenly found ourselves standing in the cold, completely naked, holding a screaming question: Who am I?

And in our rush to find a coat to wear, we got confused.

We looked around the ruins and stumbled upon a new kind of currency: victimhood. We convinced ourselves that to have a story worth telling, to have a life that matters, you must belong to an oppressed tribe. We took neurological wiring and sexual preferences, things that used to be just quiet, private facts of a person’s life, and turned them into political battlegrounds.

Once upon a time, you didn’t have to go looking for yourself. You didn’t spend your twenties searching for “your truth” over an expensive cup of coffee at a fancy cafe on Ngong Road. Identity came pre-installed. It was handed to you at birth, wrapped in the dust of your village or maybe Pumwani Maternity hospital for people born in Nairobi, the heavy hymns of your grandfather’s church, and the unspoken rules of your community.

You didn’t “curate” a self. You didn’t sit in a room trying to brand your soul. You were a Catholic or a Muslim, a villager or an aristocrat. These labels were bigger than you. They didn’t care about your fleeting feelings, but they gave you a floor to stand on. They gave you meaning, and more importantly, they gave you a duty to the people around you.

But then the modern world arrived with its loud engines and tarmac roads, and we all packed our bags for Nairobi.

Industrialization pulled us away from our soil. Globalization shook the foundations of our local stories. The internet came along and poured all our unique, vibrant colors into one giant, lukewarm digital soup. And somewhere along the way, the gatekeepers of modern culture decided that holding onto the old things, the things that kept our ancestors anchored, was backward. Embarrassing. Dangerous, even.

Now, if you believe in anything too deeply, you’re “cringe.”

If a young man kneels in a church with genuine, unironic devotion, we smirk and call him regressive. If a woman is fiercely proud of her dusty upcountry roots, we dismiss her as “Kienyeji.” Even patriotism is treated like a disease, something you can only talk about if you wrap it in five thick layers of irony on X (formerly Twitter) so nobody thinks you’re actually serious.

The result is a civilization filled with people who are materially connected but spiritually uprooted. And uprooted people desperately search for new ways to define themselves.

The Rise of Diagnostic Identities

And then, into this cold, empty vacuum, walked the language of therapy. It didn’t just knock on the door; it took over the house.

Before this, we used softer, gentler lies to explain ourselves. We had the stars and those neat four-letter corporate personality tests. People sat in bars obsessively trading zodiac signs or declaring themselves INFJs(Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling and Judging). It was a harmless way of turning yourself into a character in a book. If you called yourself an ISFP(Introverted, Sensing, Feeling and Perceiving), you were telling the world you had an artistic soul and a complicated heart. And blaming your terrible, toxic behavior on being a Scorpio? That was astrology with absolute legal immunity. We befriended people, fell in love, and broke hearts all based on “compatibility” charts.

But the modern soul is greedy. It needed something heavier. Something that could cover every single corner of a messy life. And so, we found psychological labels.

Unlike astrology, a clinical disorder comes wrapped in the shiny, untouchable armor of science. Unlike religion, it asks absolutely nothing of you. no fasting, no kneeling, no moral rules to keep. And unlike nationality, nobody can call your diagnosis backward cause you grew up somwhere in Khayega or Mulot or Kirigiti or Kwavonza neither can someone call you “Kienyeji” without looking like a cruel, insensitive monster.

A medical label gives you the most valuable currency in the modern world: an airtight alibi.

Suddenly, every single flaw, every awkward silence, every personal failure is blessed with deep, clinical meaning.

Can’t focus because you’ve fried your brain scrolling through fifteen-second TikToks and Reels until 3:00 AM? It’s not a lack of discipline. It’s ADHD.

Socially clumsy and unable to look people in the eye because you grew up behind a screen? It’s not a lack of social practice. It’s autism.

Are you just, at your core, a difficult, horrible human being to be around? It’s not your character. It’s trauma.

What our grandfathers simply called temperament, laziness, or just having a bad attitude has been thoroughly sanitized, medicalized, and packaged into a brand-new identity. We no longer have personalities. We have charts.

Why We Want Labels

Under the cold, bright lights of the modern world, we have become incredibly self-absorbed. We are hyper-individualized, lonely, and deeply narcissistic. We don’t just want to live; we want to star in a movie about our own lives. We want a narrative. We want a script that makes our mundane struggles feel cinematic.

And a diagnostic label? It does three powerful things at once. It is the ultimate three-in-one package for the modern soul.

• First, it explains your suffering. It takes your private pain and sanitizes it. Instead of the heavy, embarrassing admission of “I am painfully awkward and struggle to make friends,” you get to say, “I am neurodivergent.” Just like that, the struggle is no longer a personal flaw. It’s objective. It’s external. It’s biology, not character.

• Second, it builds an instant tribe. The internet is a vast, lonely desert, but a hashtag can build an oasis overnight. A diagnosis allows millions of strangers to gather in digital corners, forming support groups, subcultures, and fandom-like communities. You are no longer alone in your bedroom; you are part of an army.

• Third, it gives you individuality. In a massive, crowded world where we all wear the same fast-fashion clothes, scroll the same feeds, and feel entirely interchangeable, a label makes you stand out. Let’s be honest: most of us don’t actually have personalities. A diagnosis gives you one. It makes you distinct.

This is why we cling so fiercely to these hyper-specific, micro-categorized identities. Modern culture is a cruel parent: it constantly screams that you are special and unique, while simultaneously stripping away any real purpose or direction. Diagnostic identities solve this riddle. They take your quiet, terrifying existential crisis, slice it up, and package it into neat, highly marketable lifestyle brands.

Social Media and the Performance of Identity

The internet accelerated this process dramatically. Social media rewards identities that are emotionally charged, visually recognizable, and endlessly discussable. Nobody builds an online persona around being psychologically ordinary. But “autistic genius,” “trauma humor,” or “queer” are great for creating content.

Soon, conditions stop being private struggles and become personal branding.

ADHD becomes associated with quirky creativity and colorful disorganization. Depression becomes self-deprecating humor. Autism becomes intellectual eccentricity. Anxiety becomes relatability content because who among us has not felt anxious from time to time?

Even therapy language has become our local social currency. We toss around words like “triggered,” “gaslighting,” “attachment style,” and “safe space” over mimosas at Sunday brunch in Kilimani, using them like intellectual spice to flavor our everyday complaints.

It is a lucrative business, too. A quiet revolution has taken over Nairobi’s private therapy practices. Young professionals between 25 and 40 are pouring into clinics, paying anywhere between KSh 3,000 and KSh 8,000 per session to unpack their “character development” and “heal their inner child.” On Kenyan YouTube, psychotherapists feature on popular lifestyle podcasts to discuss whether we are actually depressed or just deeply stressed by the political and economic climate.

But there is a quiet, tragic casualty in all this branding: the people who are actually, genuinely drowning.

Severe schizophrenia, crippling OCD that bleeds your hands raw from washing, or devastating bipolar episodes are not “aesthetic.” They cannot be packaged into a cute fifteen-second video with a catchy lo-fi soundtrack. They are dark, messy, and terrifying.

When we stretch the word “neurodivergent” so wide that it includes anyone who finds loud parties draining, or the woman who gets nervous talking to men, the word loses all its descriptive force. The student whose mild inattention earns them a self-claimed ADHD identity blunts the urgency with which society should respond to those facing severe, devastating psychiatric crises.

Furthermore, there was a recent study and regional surveys that showed that nearly half of young Kenyan adults suffer from moderate-to-severe depressive symptoms. In the informal settlements of Nairobi, six in ten youth experience crippling panic attacks and deep anxiety. These are brutal, structural, and heavy realities. not quirky online aesthetics to be monetized on TikTok.

And perhaps worst of all, the identity model absolves the individual of the difficult work of self-improvement. Being chronically late is no longer a basic discourtesy you might work to correct with an alarm clock; it is “time-blindness,” a protected trait against which any criticism is labeled as ableist.

The Real Rainbow and Its Hijackers

The same theater plays out, with even more dramatic lighting, when we talk about who we sleep with or don’t.

Let’s not pretend. To deny that gay and trans people have faced real, bone-crushing violence and exclusion is to slander history. Their identities weren’t built in comfortable internet forums; they were forged in the fire of actual, dangerous struggle against a hostile world.

But today, we’ve bolted a dizzying number of new seats onto that original bus. Many of them are so elastic, so incredibly ordinary, that they stretch the concept of being “queer” until the seams start to rip. And in doing so, they threaten to turn a history of real blood and tears into a trivial Sunday afternoon hobby.

Take the rise of “asexuality” or “demisexuality” as political identities.

A low libido, a disinterest in casual hookups, or a simple, old-fashioned need to actually like someone before you jump into bed with them, these are not sicknesses. They aren’t crimes. They are just the normal, quiet variations of human desire.

For generations, a man who didn’t think about sex much was just a guy with a slow engine. A woman who couldn’t sleep around without an emotional connection was just a person who valued intimacy, not a “demisexual.”

But today, those same people can march under the grand LGBTQIA+ banner, wave a custom-designed flag, and paint their entire dating lives with the brush of historical marginalization.

By taking an ordinary point on the human sexual spectrum and rebranding it as “queer,” you get an instant upgrade. You buy a ready-made community, a set of villains, the cold, hyper-sexual majority, and that warm, intoxicating moral glow that comes with being the underdog.

To see how ridiculous this has gotten, you only need a simple thought experiment.

Imagine a man who happens to possess a penis of exactly 5.61 inches. Statistically, this puts him in a minority. Most men are slightly smaller; a few are larger. Now, what happens if this gentleman names his condition “FivePointSexuality”? What if he designs a flag, marches in the streets, wraps himself in a keffiyeh, and claims the status of a persecuted minority?

Would you take him seriously? Would you feel his pain?

Of course not. There are no historical records of men being dragged behind trucks or denied housing because of a 5.61-inch measurement. Simply being part of a statistical minority does not make you oppressed. Yet, our modern logic treats every tiny detour from the average as a political struggle. Not because these people are actually hurting, but because the modern identity machine runs on two fuels: rarity and grievance.

And right now, business is booming.

The bill for this theatrical inflation, however, is paid by those who fought the real battles.

When the rainbow coalition expands to include anyone who simply prefers a quiet cuddle to a wild night between the sheets, the edge is gone. The word “queer” loses its gravity. It dissolves from a marker of shared, dangerous struggle into just another lifestyle brand.

Something has curdled here. Just as the casual TikTok self-diagnosis of ADHD dilutes the urgency of severe, crippling mental illness, the inflation of sexual orientations weakens the case for the actual minorities who still need our protection.

A relationship rarely dies all at once; mine ended the day I was no longer trusted with her ordinary thoughts. This was a few months ago

In the beginning, it didn’t feel like heartbreak. Heartbreak is supposed to be loud, isn’t it? It’s supposed to feel like a door slamming shut when your angry roomate leaves the house. This just felt like… a shift in the wind.

Because look, Nairobi relationships today are weird, manic little engines. They are held together by the glue of modern anxiety. Instagram reels shared at midnight, half-baked WhatsApp conversations that go nowhere, screenshots sent without context, and that classic, low-fat reassurance of a ‘reached home safe?’ text sent at 1:07 AM.

As long as the blue ticks are coming in, as long as she still remembers to ask ‘how was your day, babe?’, or drops a song link while stuck in Mombasa Road traffic in a Bolt, you think you’re safe. You think the engine is running. What you don’t know, what they never teach you,is that a woman can emotionally pack her bags, move out of your life, and cross the border long before her name disappears from your chat history.

Earlier, I existed inside the most boring parts of her day.

That’s the thing about real intimacy. Nobody writes poetry about it because it sounds too ordinary, too unsexy. But that is the real fuel. She would call me just to vent about the absolute madness of Ngong Road gridlock at 5:30 PM. Or she’d text to say she’s at some café in Westlands, staring at a woman wearing a heavy puffer jacket in thirty-degree Nairobi heat like she’s a detective straight out of a Nordic noir film.

My WhatsApp was a graveyard of the mundane: photos of well prepd runny eggs, screenshots of a chaotic gossip and mems on KoT (Kenyans on X), voice notes with the background hiss of the Java espresso machine while she waited for her latte. Tiny, useless thoughts. They had absolutely no commercial value, except for one thing. Her mind went to me by default. Instinct.

That’s the tax of love, man. You become the first person they tell the stupid things to.

I think that is the real beginning of love, actually. When somebody becomes your first audience before they become anything else.

Then slowly, so slowly that I kept convincing myself I was imagining it, I stopped receiving pieces of her life in real time.

On paper, we were still winning. The scoreboard looked fine.

We still spoke every day. The ‘goodnight’ texts still arrived, right on schedule. There were just enough crumbs of affection dropped along the way to keep a man hopeful, and trust me, a man in love can be remarkably stupid when it comes to reading the signs.

But if you looked closer, the lag had begun. It felt like watching a live broadcast with bad internet in the middle of a thunderstorm. I was no longer getting the raw footage of her mind; I was getting the edited, sanitized director’s cut. Stories about her day arrived only after they had been thoroughly chewed and processed somewhere else first. Entire dark moods would sweep over her, and I wouldn’t find out until the weather had already cleared.

Think about it. This is a woman who used to narrate her boredom to me in forensic, cinematic detail. Now? It took her six hours to mention things that actually shifted her world.

And the worst part? Nothing was technically wrong. No shouting. No cheating. No dramatic showdowns. So you sit there in the cab, staring at your phone, feeling like an absolute lunatic for even noticing the silence.

Let me tell you about a very specific kind of loneliness. It’s not the loneliness of an empty bed; it’s the loneliness of being systematically moved from the master bedroom of someone’s life into the guest wing, while they still smile at you in the hallway. They are still speaking to you lovingly. The tone is right, but the frequency is off. You can’t even accuse them of leaving because, technically, they are still sitting across from you at the table.

That kind of heartbreak does things to a man’s head. It turns you into an investigator of things that don’t matter. You become a forensic accountant of microscopic changes. A woman who used to fire off six rapid-fire WhatsApp messages suddenly sends one. Just one. She still laughs at your jokes, yes, but there’s a one-second lag in the text. A missing beat. It feels like the conversation has to travel from Juja to Ng’ong before it hits her screen. You realize you are no longer the person she thinks aloud with, you are just a contact she replies to out of habit.

I became pathetic during this phase. Let’s just call it what it was.

I’d spend entire evenings buried in my phone, scrolling back to 2024, reading old chats like they were holy scripture. I’d send a meme, crack a joke, and then stare at that glowing screen, waiting. You just know from the energy of that first word whether you still matter or if you’ve been downgraded.

But then, and this is how they get you. She’d suddenly turn the heat back on for one night. A long voice note. An unexpected phone call past midnight. She’d speak with that old, familiar softness, and within fifteen minutes, I would foolishly rebuild the entire future of the relationship in my head like a total amateur.

That’s the cruelty of a slow death. It leaves behind just enough warmth to make you forget you’re freezing.

I think one of the cruelest things about emotionally fading out of somebody’s life is that it leaves almost no visible evidence behind. Friends understand cheating. Friends understand breakups. Friends understand “she fucked up.” Nobody understands “I think she has started metabolizing me into memory while still speaking to me every day.”

Yet I swear human beings can feel this happening physically.

The thing is, nobody pulled a trigger. The relationship didn’t die because the love ran out overnight. It died because the plumbing changed.

One day, I wasn’t the first destination anymore. The funny thing that happened at the office? It went to a WhatsApp group first. The bad day? It got processed over drinks with someone else. Those tiny, random thoughts that used to fly straight to my phone during a random Tuesday afternoon just... stayed inside her own head. Love changes its entire geometry the moment she stops reaching for you by default.

And let’s talk about modern technology, because it makes this whole thing a special kind of torture.

Back in our parents’ day, when someone left, they actually left. There was absence. It was clean. Today? We have this toxic, permanent partial access to each other. You sit there and watch someone emotionally drift out into the deep sea in crystal-clear high definition, while their chat is still stubbornly pinned to the top of your WhatsApp.

You open Instagram and there she is on her stories—laughing with her squad at Alchemist, posting screenshots of a movie playlist, moving through Nairobi with a perfectly functioning appetite and undisturbed sleep. She is existing perfectly normally in the world, while you are sitting in the dark, trying to pinpoint the exact Tuesday afternoon the ice began to form.

I remember being on a City Hoppa one evening, watching her repost some stupid, low-effort TikTok meme on her status, and feeling this irrational, violent ache in my chest. Not because it was offensive, but because of how devastatingly ordinary she seemed.

Somewhere in my head, I thought the death of a three-year relationship would come with a cinematic score. I thought the sky above Nairobi would turn dark, or at least that the emotional fading would feel dramatic enough for both of us to bleed at the same rate.

Instead, you learn the hard way that life doesn’t pause for your private earthquakes. People don’t stop. They still dress up for birthday dinners at Artcaffe Gastro Bar, they still banter in the group chats, and they still pull up to those small, glowing containers in Kasarani at 2:00 AM to eat late-night shawarmas while entire worlds are collapsing silently inside them. They are chewing on chicken wrap and garlic sauce while your shared history is being turned into ash.

That’s twenty-six for you in this city. You’re old enough to see the ghost leaving the room, but young enough to still sit there hoping it will turn around.

Because that was the hardest pill to swallow: relationships rarely end at the same time for both people. While you are still holding on, trying to figure out how to fix the plumbing, the other person has already spent six months quietly turning you into a memory. all while still replying to your texts in the present tense.