roadside streams

Photo credit: Janko Ferlic- Unspash Times have changed. I might not have the true statistics but I believe over sixty percent of the youth today cannot construct a full sentence in their mother tongue. The very same thing can be said about Swahili, with English being the most common language spoken today. While many people are taking their time to paint this as a crisis, they do not pause to see that they are flogging a dead horse. Time is too far removed, and we are moving from a Luo and a Maasai man to more of a Kenyan, an African, and an International citizen. Even amongst those who speak their mother tongue, how many adhere a hundred percent to their society’s cultural norms? How many of them can call themselves a pure Luhya or a pure Kikuyu? Boys are turning into men in hospitals, the pain of manhood being blurred by injections, and they are fed with bland and tasteless knowledge that has no practical or moral grounds in our current society. Men and women are intermarryi...

Life is made up of blocks, a thin line separating one block from another. No matter how old one is, the inner child is and always will be a part of them. So here are some of the blocks that I believe everyone can relate with. 17-19 years- the all-knowing stage Photo by Scott Webb- Unsplash You are fresh out of high school, or at least teetering towards the edge of the most torturous period in the history of your existence. At this point, you have a boyfriend or girlfriend stashed away somewhere, and you can swear by Apollo that you will get married to each other. Once you say ‘I love you’ however, you realize that it is all you have to offer. You still cling on to that good old feeling until you are out of high school and you realize that your boyfriend or girlfriend was the ugliest person you had ever seen. When you were in love with them, it was paradise, but growing up has given you alternatives. Now your mother is mad because she saw you with Kelvin, and...

It has always filled me with disgust and wonder, the hurry that people are in to post of the demise of ‘friends’ and ‘loved-ones’ on social media. A person is barely dead, and the images are already flooding the pages, images from the years back and now. It is only then that somebody you barely talked to becomes your girlfriend and boyfriend, when the brother you fought all the time becomes beloved, or the mother you called names becomes the greatest ever loss. Some of these people you have not contacted in years, some you have not seen. Others you could not see eye to eye when they were alive, but the moment they die, they become your beloved brother, best of friends. Your grandmother was walking barefoot while you had the best of lives in the city. You could not visit her in the village when she was sick, save for the measly Christmas visits where your desire is to show off to the low-lives that were left behind when you went to the city, to show off your car and your babies, ...

Friends, I am calling to thee, for I have run into hard times, oh I have. Grief has engulfed my house, trapping me and my family. Hard times have arrived. The wineskin has gone empty, and my granaries are all dried up. There is no more for my plate, and there is no more for my table. Time has truly caught up with me. Wake up now, my friends. Stir from thy deep slumber, and keep vigil with me, as I stir my pot of sorrow. Stay a while longer, while I heave in grief. Stay with me, ere sorrow overruns me, and I get lost in my blues, and I lose my way in this thick forest. Wake up friends. I desire thy company now, but alas, why is the space around me so empty and cold? Where art thou, all ye that ate at my house, when we had a feast, all ye who spent with me the days when wine was flowing? Where are you, right now that I am in sorrow? That disease and loneliness assails me? Where are you, friends, now that the world has come crashing down, and rain is coming through my roof and into my h...

African Peculiarities: Soap Operas Over the years, my stand on this has refused to change. Years of trying to comprehend why this craze has consumed our people have all been futile, as my heavily biased senses have refused to renege on their long-suffering stance. It has been a long race, in an attempt to comprehend the vile desecration that fills African screens and African minds, filth slowly seeping into African lives, Soap Operas. Our students in school, high on this illicit content, cheered on by some equally deluded teachers are participating in the wanton rape of creativity, a plastic generation that cannot be satisfied with the realities of life, because they have been binged on false and skewed perceptions of the basic human emotions, half-baked crap from Mexico and the Philippines, which informs their general perspective on life. Any person with a sane mind and a little understanding of Literature will know what I am talking about. A typical soap opera creates one dimension...