Our Stories, Our Selves
Dr. Manu Chandaria is a year short of celebrating his 80th birthday. If we are to work with stereotypical behaviour, we would expect that by now he would have taken a back seat from his vast business and philanthropy interests. Yet, his pace has yet to slacken, and he puts in as much time he [...]
In the last ten days of January, as the violence in the Rift Valley spread from Eldoret to Nakuru and then Naivasha, the nature of the aggression changed. From political, the rationale became personal – and as a result wildly out of control. By the beginning of February, as helicopters circled Naivasha, the outskirts of [...]
Mugo Kibati sits in the office of East African Cables’ Group Chief Executive Officer, and looks like a modern-day young Alexander, always moving forwards searching for new worlds to conquer. It is not the office itself that gives this impression, it is sparsely furnished and restrained and about a quarter of the normal size of [...]
Daniel Nduati’s phone was ringing when he and his brother, Peter, met me in Dagoretti on a recent afternoon. I’d come to visit the rescue shelter the two young men had opened for children displaced by the new year’s violence, but an unrelated matter came up first. “There’s a lady who says she wants to [...]
For three days after the hurried December announcement that Kibaki was to be president, Mercy Gichangi sat in her house, stunned and afraid. As 2007 gave way to 2008 she could find no cause for celebration. All around her, chaos was in charge. Day and night she could hear shouts and wailing, could see bashed-in [...]
Soon after the post-election violence in Kenya started, Ochieng’ Nyawire took up the role of roving peace-maker in the streets of his Kiambui neighbourhood, armed only with his Bible and his prayers. He argued endlessly for peace, facing down angry police officers and equally angry neighbours as he preached reconciliation and calm even at the [...]
When I met her, nothing in the lovely smile that never seems to leave her face betrayed the things that she has experienced. Yet something, maybe her dry wit, gives her the ability to let go of wounds and wake up each day with fresh enthusiasm. I stumbled into Uzima Foundation in Kibera by coincidence [...]
No one would ever call her pretty. She is too strong, too urgent, too passionate for that. No one would ever deny, however, that she is exceedingly, even disturbingly, beautiful. Sitting under a maroon Java House umbrella, I watch as she talks. She listens as if attempting to mine a hidden heart of meaning, her [...]
Mention the Kenyan GSU, and images of red-bereted, combat-geared policemen waving batons chasing rioting university students amid plumes of choking tear gas come to mind. It is not clear where the tagline fanya fujo uone (just try to make trouble, and see)came from, but it stuck so indelibly in the Kenyan psyche they might have [...]
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