My physics teacher used to crack a not-so-funny joke about everything that was impossible. He would say, “it is possible —in a movie.” We used to laugh, mostly to get the physics edge off. It was a dry joke, of course; but we weren’t so brain-rotten then. Four years later I see the sense in what he was saying. I realize he was right all along.

My theologian friend used to tell me about a war being waged between good and evil in the spirit world. That a battle line had been drawn, and the war could only be won in prayer. I found that as fascinating as it was terrifying. Little did he know that even in the physical world battle lines had equally been drawn, with good and evil hooked in a vicious tag of war.

This is the nature of the society that we live in. Our everyday lives are, in a nutshell, a force for good going against a force for evil. It is what makes the earth spin. Man, having been condemned to live in this life cycle, to pursue happiness and to fight evil, then it would only make sense that the product that they would demand most is optimism and a sprinkle of delusion

This is the market occupied by religion and movies. For today, we will talk about movies.

Movies, just like any form of art, occupy a special place in the fabric of our society. The role that the film industry has played in preserving history, fighting injustice, and social change cannot be overstated.

However, there is a dark side. Movies have been used to export culture, brainwash masses, and promote historical revisionism. Entire generations have learned about countries, wars, and people not from books or lived experiences but from a screen.

Far from all this, movies have also become a product designed to auction optimism. In almost every storyline, a battle of good and evil has been presented in a comforting manner. The bad guy loses. The good guys win. Justice arrives right on time. The heroes survive impossible odds. And no matter what they come against, the righteous eventually prevail. This is incomplete. It is what my theologian friend used to tell me about the spiritual wars: you always won when you fought it in spirit through prayer.

The world as we know it is reeking of injustices, yet our eyes are buried in an alternate world. A world where every crime is solved. A world where Lumumba’s killers were convicted, a world where Africa rose as an imaginary powerhouse called Wakanda, which became a force to reckon with. A world where institutions always work and the truth always comes out.

But the reality is history is littered with villains who were never punished, crimes that were never solved, and victims who never received justice. Entire communities have disappeared without an apology. Entire nations have suffered under systems that outlived the people who created them.

Yet every night we sit down with and watch another story where the moral arc of the universe bends neatly toward justice in two hours and fifteen minutes. The reality is people turn the screens on for an escape to hope. And that’s why these comforting stories keep being created. For the ready markets. For people dying for a 2-hour-long way out.

Maybe the physics teacher understood something I didn’t. Maybe the reason so many things are only possible in movies is that movies are not really trying to show us the world as it is. They are showing us the world as we wish it were.

A world where good always triumphs over evil.

A world that, unfortunately, is possible only in a movie.

Hallowed brethren of Substack

You’ve heard that it was said to you a long time ago, ‘be direct,’ and here I verily, verily, say unto you, ‘don’t be direct’

Coz they lied it doesn’t work.

The craziness around the modern-age dating scene has left most of us hopeless and helpless; easy targets and willing prey of love mapping ‘experts’ with 16k followers and a verified tiktok badge. Every other day, someone is offering divine revelation: how to understand men, how to understand women, how to text back in exactly 43 minutes and 17 seconds so as not to appear desperate

At first, hopeless and naïve, you think it’s gospel truth. You follow. Even start to give relationship advice to your friends. And for a brief, glorious moment, they believe you. And to preserve the Dr Love aura you’ve cultivated, instead of admitting you watched all this on a random late-night doomscrolling expedition, you say you read it in a neuroscience textbook you came across.

The word out here is that directness makes you come out as decisive and knowing what you want. This is incomplete. Timing really matters. Being direct before creating comfort makes getting what you want a pipe dream and rejection much more likely, not necessarily because they aren’t attracted to you, but for two reasons. It is the tactical disadvantage Robert Green talked about in revealing your intention earlier on.

First, being direct, for instance, immediately asking someone out, communicates lack. It says ‘I don’t have this yet, and I’m really working hard to get it.’ Whether we like to admit it or not, visible striving is often less attractive than quiet confidence. What they don’t tell you lack and working hard to get are innately very repulsive and cringe.

The Italian writer Baldassare Castiglione called it sprezzatura, the art of making difficult things appear effortless. In The Book of the Courtier, he described it as a kind of studied nonchalance, concealing effort so completely that excellence looks natural. Attraction often rewards something similar, not because effortless people are necessarily better, but because you lived in an abundance where what you wanted, you automatically got, not having to ask.

Secondly, being direct puts much pressure on a person. Most people want to be eased into things, into decisions. That’s the psychology behind introductions in arguments or written work. That’s why buildings have reception areas instead of throwing you straight into the CEO’s office. Being direct and asking someone out immediately forces them into a decision they may not have had enough time to arrive at themselves. They either say yes before they’re sure and later resent being rushed, or they say no simply because they need room to breathe

I’m saying attraction isn’t a legal notice that you serve upon someone. It grows. It unfolds. It likes breathing room. Sometimes the best way to let someone arrive at you is not by dragging them there with a declaration but by letting curiosity do some of the work.

Dedication

This is an absolute power move, not for the naturals. This is for the thinkers. The curators. Those layered people who believe love and attraction may happen naturally, but staying attracted takes deliberate effort. Those who believe hearts need filing every day like old government records. Those who wake up every morning convinced attraction is a war zone and the first thing to do every morning is to armour up.

This is for you.

When I was young, my mom asked me what I wanted to become when I grew up! My face lit up. I could be anything. I could fulfill my biggest and wildest dream. It was my time to shine.

So I said I wanted to be a driver.

I watched her smile dissipate, collapsing into a faint, uneasy grin; bewildered, almost disturbed. How could I want to be that? I had to find something better. Not that I understood what was wrong with being a driver. I just knew that answer wasn’t acceptable. I wanted her approval. I wanted her to be proud.

So I surrendered my fantasy; pressing the horn, shifting gears, commanding the wheel, spinning it with reckless abandon like a motherfvcker. I let it go.

I needed something agreeable. Something that sounded right. A teacher, perhaps.

That was the day I lost my life.

Now I don’t have a life. I’m trapped in a cycle of chasing approval, doing what is agreeable. I want to make my parents proud, even if it means doing something I don’t want to do.

Because I don’t have a life.

If this life were mine, I would have died a long time ago, killed myself. Spent my last days as a cautionary tale that begins: there was once a boy who gave up. But I wouldn’t even hear any of that. I would be at peace, rotting away.

But I have to stay alive. I have to be good. I have to work hard. I have to go to church.

Liz thought it was because my parents were strict. But they’re not. I could take them on at the same time.

And yet, with a calm and quiet aura, they’ve got me in a chokehold.

Now I’m like a puppet; performing, dancing, being better, being controlled at the whims of an invisible puppeteer. A puppet dancing, controlled by awe and admiration for my parents.

Liz also said approval isn’t all bad if it drives you to do good. Maybe I would be a driver today, driving women crazy or giving 50 shillings to every traffic police I meet on my way to juja because I don’t have my navy- blue uniform or because my mouth is full of jaba. Then I wouldn’t have to think about this; at least then, I would have my life. Perhaps I would be happy.

So I don’t get it.

I don’t get it when you all say “live your life,” because I don’t have a life. I live to make proud, to please, to seek, to try to connect, to be agreed with.

I don’t have a life. Now, let me ask them which polling station to register as a voter.

I feel like I'm falling, descending fast in a steep black hole with no ending; a lonely, quiet, free fall, save for some ghosts from the future, because I carry no regrets, only consequences. I don't know what's worse: the continuous, endless descent, or the violence of the impact and the pain when I finally hit the bottom. I don't know what to wish for; to continue falling evermore or to get down as fast as possible and quickly end it.

Climbing out of my black hole is not an option. It's like erasure; like death, like losing meaning. I don't want that, I don’t want to disappear. I want to walk exquisitely at the edge of life and death, see if I could finally feel; if my heart could race, if I could come alive, if I could be a lover again, if I could be consumed, if all my fears could go away; if I could be fearless. But then I fall; fall asleep, just to wake up again to fall, fall into temptation, never to find my way back again; just to be blamed and pitied, just to be remembered with candles and be forgotten.

Now I just wish I could be baptized, to be immersed in water, to be brought back to life, to be restored, to shed all the dirty version and throw it to a scapegoat and order it down a cliff so that it could actually fall and break its neck and die; die with my sins.

My uncle breathed his last on new year’s-day; in his last four days his life deteriorated through pain, loss of speech, and the slow humiliation of a body failing. All that I only heard I couldn’t see, I didn’t want to. What I wanted was to be left with memories of a strong and healthy man in his mid-seventies, riding bicycle around and greeting people warmly sharing in the village gossip looking after his animals asking me how school was; not a frail man covered in sheets, engulfed in agony and struggling to breath.

When he died, there was wailing. The whole village seemed wrapped in a cloud of sorrow. Young men broke down, mourning the loss of a man who had been their advisor. Women moaned for a steady hand of authority that had been taken away. Children mourned a man who symbolized the reassurance that everything was going to be all right.

In the days following his death, messages of condolence poured in; I noticed the language surrounding the issue frequently invoked terms such as ‘go well’, ‘reunite with your fellow departed’, ‘rest in peace’, all offering promises of rest, of a better place, of reunion and reward. Yet none of those words seemed capable of accounting for the agony he had endured. They did not speak to his suffering; they seemed designed to pacify the living. The realization I made was; the phantom nature of death has forced human being to gloss over of death and romanticize it, societies has been forced to reach for comforting narratives due to the unbearable uncertainty that comes with it. Everyone looking for a quick fix answer for the same question Eilish had; when we (fall asleep) where do we go?

Death is not merely sad; it is disruptive. It interrupts language, belief, and moral order. Faced with this rupture, human beings often respond with a narrative repair rather than honesty. The promise of peace after death is one such repair. To say “rest in peace” is to suggest that death resolves what life could not; that pain has meaning, that suffering has an endpoint. But this language often fails when placed beside deaths that are sudden, violent, or unjust.

In the final season of Stranger Things, Mike comforts himself and his friends with the belief that Eleven has gone to a “good place,” a place they will never know about, and a place they will never get to see her again; they chose to believe the narrative to quell their melancholy. The power of the moment lies in choice they make to hang onto the narrative and not the material proof that she is indeed alive in the first place. The belief is a psychological necessity, not grounded in knowledge (coz no one has ever ‘lived’ to tell the story). This mirrors how humanity has consistently dealt with death not by knowing, but by choosing narratives that make loss survivable.

Christianity offers a more structured version of this hope, yet even here contradictions emerge. The Bible itself warns that it is difficult for a (rich) person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven; the eternal paradise, a land of abundance and sweetness, of milk and honey. Judgment, a second step verification to see the lands; not even an automatic reward, is central to Christian theology. Yet at funerals, Christians often speak as though the deceased has already arrived in heaven, irrespective of the moral ambiguity of their life. No ones speaks of the most likely weeping and gnashing of teeth nor of the eternal punishment that is on the table as well. This shows the Christianity act of consolation as well, where doctrine gives way to emotional need.

Traditional cosmologies perform a similar function. Many cultures imagine the dead reuniting with ancestors, sharing meals, exchanging greetings, continuing social life beyond the grave. These narratives humanize death, making it familiar rather than alien. They also serve a social purpose: in death, even the most downtrodden person is elevated, respected, spoken of gently; as the adage De mortuis nil nisi bonum ( of the dead speak nothing but good). A saying which elevates death into a sanctifying event, one which could change someone’s (life).

Indeed, death may not offer resolution at all. It may simply be the end of consciousness, the collapse of meaning, the return of the body to matter; bones, ash, silence, sitting at the bottom of a dark, six feet hole.

To live fully, then, is not to deny death, nor to decorate it with fantasies, but to acknowledge its finality and let that knowledge sharpen how we live. Death should not be the place where dignity is finally granted, truth finally spoken, or value finally recognized. Those things belong to the living.

LIVE!!

The short festive season holiday gave me perspective, forcing me to interrogate one of the most enduring lessons my parents taught me; whether by accident or by intent. I hesitate to call it the most important lesson, but it is certainly the one that has stayed with me the longest, largely because of the central role it has played in shaping how I move through the world.

Growing up in a small town with both parents present, a privilege I only fully appreciate in hindsight. My father, then an esteemed union leader and a fairly comfortable middle-class man. Being a staunch believer of Thomas John Watson Jr’s maxim; you are what you are perceived to be, more than anything, he was deeply conscious of reputation and hence his perception. In a small town, perception was not a side issue; it was currency.

My father had a reputation to protect, and he did so with vigilance. His primary concern, however, was not himself; it was us. He understood that as his children, our behaviour would inevitably be read as a reflection of the kind of man he was. As a result, we were trained, subtly and sometimes explicitly, to act in ways that would preserve a particular public image. We shaved in a certain way, walked a certain manner, frequented certain places and avoided others. We associated with particular kinds of people and kept our distance from the rest. All of it was in service of guarding public perception

Over time, the lesson became clear: we were not asked to do things first because they were right, but because they looked right. Morality was not abandoned, but it was subordinated to appearance. What mattered most was the picturesque display of respectability; evidence, visible to the town’s onlookers, of who my father was.

Fast forward to today, and I have taken that principle a notch higher. As the adage goes, like father, very much the son. I have learned to curate myself carefully: to model my opinions, in order to offend the least and please the most, to soften my edges, to speak like a politician even when I am not running for office. I am constantly aware of how I am read, how I come across, how my words might be clipped, shared, misunderstood, or used against me.

This inheritance has become heavier in the age of the internet; of tiktok, reels, and substack essays. We are told, loudly and repeatedly, that BE YOU, that authenticity is the highest virtue. Upto and including a substack piece I recently read titled Approval vs Authenticity, a showdown in which authenticity predictably emerged as the winner. But to me, that victory feels idealistic rather than honest.

I do not believe human beings can ever be fully indifferent to approval. No matter how loudly we celebrate authenticity, a part of us will always want to be received, affirmed, understood and so we’ll make a point to perform in order to shape an acceptable perception. As a friend once put it, every person harbors within themselves a small but persistent tinge of self-doubt; sometimes even self-hate, and that discomfort is what pushes us to refine ourselves, to grow, to improve

That is the same part of us that resists total authenticity. Not because we are cowards, but because we are social creatures. We are shaped in relation to others. The pressure to “be yourself” often ignores the fact that the self is constantly negotiating its place in the world.

I am therefore sceptical of authenticity that pretends approval does not matter at all. I suspect that those who claim complete freedom from it are either unusually insulated or quietly dishonest. At the same time, I cannot deny the cost of the lesson I inherited; the narrowing of expression, the carefulness that sometimes borders on self-censorship.

What my father taught me still governs me. I am no longer sure whether to call it wisdom or inheritance, discipline or fear. Perhaps it is all of these at once. What I know is this: reputation is not a trivial concern, approval is not an illusion, and authenticity without consequence is a luxury few can truly afford.

Today, squeezed into the backseat of a matatu on what felt like a five-year journey to town, I developed a theory. In that confined space, I found myself trying to dissect the mind of a person who possesses deep love and affection for themselves, not a narcist. The conclusion I drawn to was quite unsettling: we may have been misled; persistently and confidently by mainstream media, popular authors, films, and artists about what the role of self-love is in a relationship.

The dominant message of our time insists that self-love is a prerequisite for loving others. A message that has been repeated in music, therapy culture, and romantic literature enough to immortalize it. Joshua Baraka captures it succinctly: “Who can you love if you don’t love yourself and you feel like you don’t matter?” This notion has been peddled for generations, largely without interrogation, and most people have accepted it wholesale.

But what if it is incomplete; or worse, wrong?

It is entirely possible that 8 billion people believe something because it is comforting, not because it is true. And as a result, as Robert K. Merton says, self fulfilling prophecy occur when, “A false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true.” In other words, when people believe something, they act as if it’s true, their actions make it real. Self fulfilling prophecy implies that if enough people believe in an idea long enough, it becomes real. Yet truth is not created by consensus. If we take the claim seriously, the more accurate formulation would be: who can you love if you don’t love yourself just a little. The distinction matters. Absolute self-love is not only unnecessary for loving others; it may actually make genuine love for another person impossible.

Love, in its fullest sense, demands self-giving. The clearest articulation of this idea in Christian theology appears in John 3:16:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Here, love is defined not by self-affirmation but by sacrifice. It is a movement outward, a willingness to lose something of oneself for the sake of another.

History offers a darker, mirror of this same principle. In Fascist Italy under Mussolini, the individual was required to subordinate themselves entirely to the state. The ideology demanded absolute devotion: personal interest, private happiness, and individual conscience were to dissolve into the collective will of the nation. Every action was justified in the name of the “higher love” of country.

The point is not moral equivalence but structural similarity. Both reveal the same truth: absolute love demands total submission. Something must be sacrificed. Someone must come second. That, fundamentally, is what it means to love.

This is not an isolated moral insight. Across ethical traditions, love is consistently tied to duty, compromise, and the surrender of absolute self-interest. To love is to accept limitation. It is to agree, consciously, to be inconvenienced, unsettled, and at times diminished for someone else’s good.

Modern discourse, however, increasingly equates self-love with placing the self at the center of all decisions. Under this framework, one owes the greatest duty first and always to oneself. Any demand that threatens personal happiness is framed as toxic, oppressive, or unjust. What we now casually call “self-care” often amounts to an uncompromising loyalty to the self. But this is simply another name for selfishness.

A relationship, by definition, is sustained through giving and taking, patience, compromise, and mutual consideration. One cannot enter such a space while remaining absolutely devoted to oneself. As Jim Hopper explains to Eleven (Stranger Things) compromise means being “half happy.” No one who loves themselves absolutely would willingly accept half happiness, especially when full happiness is within grasp.

People who are taught to love themselves above all else are structurally incapable of “fighting for love” under the guise of popular internet maxim ‘what is mine will find me’ The moment love becomes difficult; when it demands patience, endurance, or humiliation they interpret that difficulty as a violation of self-respect. They label discomfort is as “toxicity,” sacrifice is reframed as “self-betrayal,” and perseverance is dismissed as weakness. Because the self has been elevated to the highest good, any relationship that threatens personal happiness must be abandoned. Love, under this framework, is permitted only for as long as it feels good. The instant it resists, it is quit. One cannot fight for love while worshipping the self; fighting requires choosing something other than oneself, especially when retreat would be easier. Those who love themselves absolutely are masters of self preservation, they do not endure love they exit it, calling the withdrawal wisdom rather than what it truly is: refusal to suffer for another.

That is the contradiction at the heart of our culture’s obsession with self-love. The more completely one prioritizes the self, the less capable one becomes of loving another person in any meaningful sense.

Self-love, in moderation, may protect dignity and sanity. But when elevated to an absolute principle, it corrodes the very possibility of love. Love is not the preservation of happiness, but the willingness to risk it. A society that teaches individuals to love themselves above all else should not be surprised when relationships fracture, commitments dissolve, and intimacy becomes rare. You cannot love others deeply while loving yourself absolutely and calling that truth uncomfortable does not make it any less true.

When I revisit Jomo Kenyatta’s impassioned defense of irua, Gikuyu traditional Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Facing Mount Kenya, I find myself caught between two unsettling possibilities. Either Kenyatta deliberately romanticised a practice that carried undeniable harm; writing about it with precision, cultural pride, and selective honesty or the missionary establishment engineered one of the most successful ideological smear campaigns in African colonial history, reducing a mainstay rite of passage to nothing more than “primitive mutilation.” Whichever interpretation one leans toward, the deeper truth remains unchanged: the struggle over irua was never solely that of anatomy, morality, or the physical procedure. It was indeed a political confrontation over identity, power, and the colonial project of “detribalisation,” which sought to dissolve the cultural foundations of Gikuyu society and replace them with European norms.

Long before Kenya passed modern laws outlawing Female Genital Mutilation, battles over the practice were shaping the political, religious, and intellectual terrain of the 1920s and 1930s. The missionaries, most so, the Church of Scotland Mission launched aggressive campaigns against female initiation, claiming theological, medical, and moral authority. The colonial state quickly realized that attacking irua had political value: for as Jomo Kenyatta recounts, it destabilized Gikuyu leadership structures, undermined established norms of identity and belonging, and advanced the larger administrative goal of ‘detribalization’. Families were forced into impossible choices between faith and heritage, ‘education’ and tradition. These tensions eventually splintered communities, producing the ‘mission’ and ‘independent’ school movements that nurtured future anti-colonial leaders.

Although legal prohibition came much later, culminating in contemporary decisions such as R v Mohamed Abdow Mohamed (2019); where Kenya’s High Court upheld the constitutionality of the Prohibition of FGM Act (2011) the cultural war that preceded these laws had already transformed Kenya’s political consciousness. The 2019 case was groundbreaking because the petitioner argued that adult women should have the right to choose FGM as an expression of culture. The Court rejected this argument, holding that the State had an obligation to protect bodily integrity and prevent harm. Yet the modern legal landscape cannot be understood without appreciating the earlier cultural and political struggle that shaped the meaning of irua long before it became a question of statute.

It is within this historical furnace that Kenyatta wrote Facing Mount Kenya in 1938. For him, irua was not merely a ceremony; it was the “irrevocable minimum” of Gikuyu identity. To him, abolishing irua, was nothing short of abolishing the tribe itself. Kenyatta’s analysis of the rite is anthropologically rich: he presents the initiation system as the organizing principle of Gikuyu social, sexual, moral, and political life. At the same time, his writing is unmistakably political. He sought to prove that African institutions possessed logic, coherence, and dignity; qualities routinely denied by the colonial gaze who termed African as savages and their actions barbaric. Many scholars, including Cora Presley, Lynn Thomas and John Lonsdale, argue that Kenyatta softened or reframed the practice. His account emphasizes symbolism, education, and communal cohesion while largely downplaying the physical risks, the patriarchal control surrounding female initiation, and the possibility of coercion. To these critics, Kenyatta’s portrait of irua amounts to strategic romanticization.

Yet another reading is equally plausible: that Kenyatta defended irua not because he denied its harmful aspects, but because he understood missionary activism as part of a broader assault on African autonomy. The attacks on the practice were not merely moral; they were political tools designed to strip Africans of their authority to define themselves. Under colonial rule, to lose one central custom was to open the door to the loss of all others. In this light, Kenyatta’s defense becomes less about idealizing a practice and more about resisting cultural annihilation.

The missionaries, for their part, approached the issue with a blended moral absolutism and political intent. They viewed irua through Victorian sensibilities; sexual purity, Christian womanhood, and a deep-seated conviction that civilization required African customs to die. Colonial administrators openly acknowledged that African “tribal institutions” impeded their ability to govern. Detaching people from their cultures made them more malleable, more Christian, more employable, more colonizable and more governable. Irua became the perfect pressure point because it sat at the intersection of identity, sexuality, social order, and communal authority. If it fell, so too would the entire structure of Gikuyu self-understanding.

This ideological war placed defenders of the practice in a difficult position. Although today the harmful nature of FGM is widely recognized, the defenders of the 1920s and 1930s were motivated by arguments that, within their worldview, carried significant weight. They insisted that irua was the gateway to adulthood, a marker of citizenship, and a communal covenant linking generations. They viewed missionary interference with deep suspicion, interpreting it as a plot to undermine Gikuyu autonomy. They argued that severing the practice would cause a collapse in marriage norms, moral education, and social belonging. Whether or not these arguments remain convincing today, understanding them is essential to understanding why Kenyatta fought so hard to preserve the ritual.

The colonial agenda against irua also unfolded within a broader campaign of Westernization that targeted even benign or socially productive African traditions. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga captured this hypocrisy vividly in Not Yet Uhuru, where he summarized the colonial attitude with biting clarity: “This one of mine is bad, and this one of yours is good.” The implication was unmistakable; African customs were condemned not because they were harmful, but because they were African. Missionaries and administrators dismissed indigenous conflict resolution, communal child-raising, environmental knowledge, and age-set governance as “primitive,” forcing communities to abandon practices that posed no threat and were often socially beneficial. This overreach weakened the legitimacy of their criticisms against genuinely harmful practices. When every aspect of African life was attacked, defending culture became both emotional and political.

In the end, the struggle over irua forces us to confront two equally compelling narratives. One possibility is that Kenyatta intentionally magnified the virtues of the practice, believing that cultural survival required strategic storytelling. The other is that missionaries weaponized Victorian morality to break the backbone of Gikuyu identity, reducing a complex rite to a grotesque symbol of barbarism. Both possibilities are politically charged, historically plausible, and profoundly consequential. Neither side was neutral, and neither argument can be separated from the broader power struggles of colonial Kenya.

Looking back, the debate was never only about FGM. It was about who holds the right to define African identity. It was about whether a society can modernize without erasing its past, and whether cultural change must arise organically from within or be imposed from above. For Kenyatta, abolishing irua threatened the very existence of the Gikuyu. For missionaries, preserving the rite meant preserving the “darkness” they had come to eradicate. For both sides, the body of the African girl became the canvas upon which a cultural war was painted.

Today, Kenya rejects the harmful elements of FGM not because missionaries condemned them, but because African women, activists, scholars, and lawmakers fought to end them. Communities have reformed initiation rites, preserving cultural identity while eliminating harm. Yet understanding the historical conflict remains essential because it shows how colonialism weaponized morality, how nationalists weaponized culture, and how Africans navigated impossible pressures between the two. It reveals that the real question was never simply about irua, but about power, self-definition, and the struggle over who gets to tell the story of Africa. And even now, that struggle continues.

It’s 21/11/2025, and the declared presidential candidates heading to 2027 are: William Ruto (Kasongo), the United Opposition lineup with Gachagua–Kalonzo–Karua-Wamalwa–Matiang’i Muturi, and then the activist quartet: Boniface Mwangi, Okiya Omtatah, Dr Ruben Kigame and David Maraga. Peter Salasya, Bob Njagi and Morara Kebaso are somewhere in the mix too, because of course they are. It’s important I mention the date because by the time we get to 2027, we may be lucky to get someone new and genuinely deserving and able to lead the country emerge. But right now, those are the names shaping our political imagination. And that imagination, frankly, is trapped.

Let’s start with the ‘activist’ candidates: Mwangi, Omtatah, Maraga, Kigame. These are the people I could wish to give the reins of leadership of the country in an ideal situation. They are inspiring, represent moral clarity, and a clean break from the status quo. But we are not in an ideal situation, in fact we are far from it. The bleak and uncomfortable truth is; their presidential bids aren’t pragmatic. Even if one of them won (and that’s already a long shot), then what? First, they’d walk into Parliament as a minority president surrounded by legislators from UDA, ODM, WPF-K, DAP-K, you name it. The same players, the same incentives, the same games. The leaders of these parties would leverage their position either to get into government or frustrate their presidencies. And given their tried and tested moral and integrity high ground they’d probably refuse to budge drive the country to a political stalemate.

The highest-impact thing these three highly qualified, progressive leaders can realistically do in 2027 is not the presidency, it’s the other four elective seats: MCA, MP, Senate, and Governor. Take Okiya Omtatah for instance. He, in a single Senate seat, he has done more to protect Kenyans through public interest litigation and encourage progressive debated in parliament.

So, with that out of the way, we’re left with a dynamic well known in the Kenyan political space: a two-horse race. Kasongo vs. the United Opposition. A choice between two evils, a predicament too familiar as well in Kenyan elections, only that this time it’s a choice between two extreme evils. And yet, I’m going to say it I believe Kenyans should vote out the incumbent evil. Not because the opposition represents anything transformative. They don’t. They are simply the other side of the same worn-down coin. Same cloth, different tailor. Actually, it’s the same tailor. Worse even coz they’re going to tamper with the country’s policy continuity in matters of Affordable housing and Universal Health Coverage. But voting them in would send one important message: an incumbent, no matter how powerful or well-resourced, can still be defeated. That message alone is politically healthy as it will but the new faction in check.

The Kenyan constitution did, by accident, I presume, created an imperial president, ‘the big man syndrome’, which has made the presidential election erroneously high stake undertaking and dangerously so as well given the violence and unrest witnessed in the country after every election cycle, which climaxed in 2007/2008 and intern the people and the politicians have focused on scrutinizing and gravitated towards the presidency so much that every good thing and every misfortune has been attributed to the presidency.

The tragedy is that while we obsess over presidents, Parliament has been quietly steering the country into ditches with almost no scrutiny. The full scope of the role that the members of parliament have played in fucking up the country has completely been unnoticed by the vast majority of Kenyans. Kenyans describe eras by presidencies: “during the Kibaki presidency,” “during Uhuru,” “during Ruto.” Nobody talks about “the 12th Parliament” or “the 13th Parliament,” even though those bodies pass the laws that structure the entire economy.

Everybody talks about and castigate Uhuru Kenyatta for significantly raising the national debt and rightfully so. However, very few people talk about the role of the 12th parliament in aiding and abetting this “crimes” by passing the Public Finance Management (Amendment) Act, 2015 which not only allowed an increase in the national debt ceiling from 50% to 55% of GDP but also allowed the treasury to borrow domestically and externally without seeking parliament’s approval provided it stayed within the statutory debt limit. Ten years later, Kenya is grappling with the question of odious debt and the same political players, in a clown-like fashion they relish, are the first to point fingers, even CS interior a co-sponsor of this unfortunate bill pointing fingers at the Uhuru presidency.

So yes: Kenya is short of a clean, obvious presidential candidate right now. And a lot of people are losing faith in democracy because the presidential race feels like a bad rerun with a worse script every five years. But here’s the part we forget: democracy is not only the presidency. The country can still be saved by electing sane, competent, independent-minded legislators. People who are willing to do the slow, boring, institutional work that actually determines whether this place collapses or recovers.

Because, and this is the core truth— the presidency won’t save Kenya, not in this coming election cycle. Parliament might.

That’s why I say Wantam. Remove the incumbent, send a message, break the myth of presidential invincibility. And then, quietly elect the kind of Parliament that can actually fix something in this country. If Kenya has a way out of this mess, it’s through the side door—not the big dramatic one on the hill.

I knew the sea and was sure to make it to the bank
Then quickly lose interest; cast off, sank

In a splash the expedition was unfolding

It was from the start exceptional for my eyes beholding

Attracted by the allure of bioluminescent waters
And the haunting angelic patters

Hardly did I know it would be a man in a confinement of his own making

For the control I had was long yours for the taking

I attest this was never the plan

Being lost in the tide of needing you was a stun

In the wake of three turning moons

I’ve instead built stronger booms

Equipped to exploit the once diminutive quest

To the ends of the world and I’d need no rest

Sunday —
the seventh day, or the first
depends on who you’re asking—
maybe love is like that too,
circling back to where it started,
calling an ending a beginning.

It’s been seven days
since I saw you —
Well, since I knew you saw me back.
Coz, I’ve always seen you,
but the past seven days
have been different.

What did I expect
when I flew that close to the sun,
when I actually touched it,
embraced it,
and somehow come back unscathed?
When I kissed the moon
in her highness
and fell without breaking a limb?

Now, your memories loop —
the warmth of your lips
still cling to my tongue,
your perfume lingers
on my bedsheet.
And it’s just been three days,
or seven,
I don’t know.

For a forgetful person like me, memories rarely linger. Yet September 30th, 2023 refuses to leave; etched deep, like a wound that won’t heal. And just how could it ever heal and be forgotten? To most, it was just another forgettable Tuesday, the kind where the sun drags itself up in the east and sinks quietly in the west, marking the end of yet another ordinary day, the kind that slips unnoticed between yesterday and tomorrow.

But for me, it was the day my world fell apart. How do such memories drown and such wounds heal and be forgotten? It was the day I discovered my boyfriend’s betrayal with my best friend, Mandy. I still see it, the moment I pushed open Mandy’s door and found them tangled in her sheets, skin slick with sweat, their clothes scattered like discarded truths. Their bare bodies curled together, wrapped in the kind of intimacy that used to be mine, glistening in the dim light, the room thick with the scent of betrayal.

I for a moment couldn’t breathe, I forgot how to. My chest swelled painfully as I stood rooted to the ground, transfixed like a scarecrow beneath the blistering heat of September, motionless. Instinctively, I turned the blame on myself. It was my fault for deciding to drop by unannounced, for opening her door without knocking, for violating her privacy, for having eyes that refused to look away. Perhaps some things are meant to stay hidden and unknown; or, as Justin Miller said, better off buried, never to see the light of day.

How could he? He said he loved me. He said his eyes only saw me. He said his heart had learned to whisper only my name. He said he would give his bakery to get a piece of my pie. Was this what that was? Giving away his bakery, me, to have a piece of my pie, my best friend Mandy?

And Mandy, how could she? I trusted her with my life: told her how much Don meant to me, how we talked about our future together late in the night, how he had taught me how to love and be consumed by it.

I searched for an explanation. I desperately wanted to believe there was a reason, a mistake, a lie I could forgive, any logic that could make the scene before me less cruel. But there wasn’t. The two people I loved most had stabbed me in the back and were now gloating in their victory, radiant in each other’s warmth, while I drowned in the cold of their betrayal; holding hands and kissing as I bled to death.

This was too much for anyone to bear, especially for someone already clawing her way out of the pits of depression, anxiety, and loneliness: someone who had once flirted with death. I stood and watched as the little light I had flickered out, as the only bright spots in it were now threatening to turn off their love and trust that had hitherto brightened my desolate life. It wasn’t just betrayal; it was the final unravelling of hope.

Had I been a bad friend all along? Or was I wrapped in my own hunger for love that I couldn’t see the emptiness in theirs? Perhaps I’d been too needy, too desperate to be needed. Maybe I failed them both. Maybe my friendship had been a mirror reflecting only my own need to be seen. Was I too lost in my desperation to notice their quiet discontent? Or merely a restless soul feeding on affection whenever it sparked. Maybe they were reaching for what I had failed to give. Or was it normal for your boyfriend to lie naked with your best friend in bed? To kiss her so tenderly? Was all this just friendship? Was I simply the jealous, broken girl; seeing betrayal where there was only closeness, inventing storms from my own insecurities?

A sudden impulse nudged me to violence: to slam their skulls together, bundle them into a hidden shack in the woods, tie them to chairs and make them tell me why. Why of the six billion human males Mandy thought Don was the one she had to sleep with, why Don had to do this to me and with my best friend, what was it that she could not get from me that only Mandy generously offered; demanding the truth until they bled it out.

I clenched my fists until my knuckles ached and forced the words back down. I let the horrors play out only in my head. In the body, I only turned to head back, banging the door behind me with the rage that had then gotten the better part of me. I stood outside the door for a minute to see if either Don or Mandy would make an attempt to run after me. To stop me, to apologize, to explain; but no one came out. Perhaps they were too embarrassed to move a muscle; or they just thought I deserved none of those.

I strolled back to my house in what turned out to be the most laborious walk to my little haven; each step heavier than the last. The walk stretched into a slow penance, a punishment which I happily accepted. I struggled with my vision smeared into a blur, pooled and broke into smudges; my thoughts wandered until a honk, sharp and angry, dragged me back from whatever dark place my mind was.

When I got to my house, the relief I had so desperately anticipated eluded me the moment I entered the door. The bedsheet on my bed, innocent as it seemed, unlocked a floodgate of endless memories we had once woven upon it; memories long tucked away, resting quietly until my throbbing heart disturbed their sleep. Now, they came rushing back, tormenting my weary mind. I remembered the night Don texted, saying he wanted to come over and spend the night. My heart nearly skipped a beat, seized by a tide of anticipation; as though I were waiting for an angel to proclaim I would bear the son of God. I remembered his warm smile, the faint scent of his deodorant, his tender embrace, and the soft kiss he left on my forehead.

All that was now gone. Gone without a warning. Or perhaps there was a warning, only that I was too blinded to see them, Blinded by love . To see how Don’s eyes lingered longer than usual every time he looked at Mandy, how absurdly quiet they would get every time I walked in, to notice how much of an outsider I was becoming, with the constant nudge that I was always interrupting something between them.

They say, when doom is due, even fortune turns foe; and surely doom was due. Even the fortune of sleep turned into foe. I kept tossing on my bed like an epilepsy patient, my mind taking advantage of the quiet to roam endlessly to my own peril. Every time I closed my eyes all I could see was Don and Mandy’s treacherous faces staring at me, both of them clad in their bloody wedding robes. Bloody robes, what? I always had a rich and avid sense of imagination which had a few unpublished short stories to show for. It is crazy how even my creativity did not want to be associated with me. Indeed this was the end.

I felt like I was falling; falling like autumn, painfully bleeding through the branches of my end, and in the crimson hush of surrender, I knew there was nothing left to fight for. Just as Shakespeare said, death will come when it comes. Was this it? My death? The end of me? In that case, then this was a painful way to go. Very much like I was dying by a sword even though I didn’t live by it.

How unfortunate!

I work hard.
I keep things simple.
I know what my priorities are.

But there’s this person —
she’s not even in my life,
only at the edges,
making everything blurrier.

She doesn’t tempt me to drink.
But more of she feels—
like what it was when I was drinking —
when I couldn’t get enough,
no matter how many drinks I had—
I wanted another

I don’t want to be with her.
I mean, I do.
But I should cut her off.

It’s no accident that World Suicide Prevention Day falls in September. The ninth month of the year echoes the old saying that a cat has nine lives — perhaps a quiet reminder of how many times people fight to keep going before despair overwhelms them. September, then, symbolically represents a final chance, the last step for those who have battled tirelessly through life’s struggles. Each time they stood up again, through their ‘nine lives,’ until one day they could not — weighed down by despair. It feels fitting, then, that this month is dedicated to refueling hope for those on the precipice of giving in to suicidal thoughts.

One of the most overlooked pandemics today is passive suicide — when someone constantly contemplates suicide without necessarily formulating a concrete plan to act on it. Studies show it is at least twice as common as completed suicide. Some people, at the slightest inconvenience, find their mind jumping to one thought: to end everything, to shut it all down, to seek silence from the suffering. And yet, something holds them back — a sibling, a lover, a parent, a friend, or even something as simple as a favorite show. These fragile anchors often stand between survival and tragedy. But passive suicide is still a dangerous state to be in. It’s like standing on a fragile bridge: one step too far and the ground gives way. According to the World Health Organization, for every completed suicide, there are more than 20 attempts. Most people experiencing passive suicidal thoughts never share them with those around them, making it even riskier, as relationships inevitably shift. When those anchors break, passive thoughts can turn tragically active.

It is deeply ironic that, despite centuries of human advancement in health, technology, and peacebuilding, suicide remains a silent epidemic. We have created vaccines, modern medicine, advanced industry, peace treaties and international organizations, yet the quiet enemy of despair often hides in plain sight. Even well-meaning people may fail to recognize the signs — not out of indifference, but because the symptoms are so well disguised.

In Kenya, the statistics are particularly sobering. The Ministry of Health has reported that suicide is the leading cause of mortality among teenagers aged 15 to 19. The thought of a 15-year-old burdened with passive suicidal thoughts is deeply alarming. Kenya is losing its vibrant, ambitious youth — not to disease, but to despair. Consider this: in 2020, COVID-19 claimed 1,681 confirmed lives in Kenya, and an extraordinary national effort was mobilized to fight it. Yet, just a year before, in 2019, the World Health Organization reported 3,214 suicide deaths in Kenya — nearly double the COVID-19 toll, despite the likelihood of underreporting.

Suicide in Kenya is still heavily stigmatized, often ignored as a cause of death. Rarely will you see it acknowledged in obituaries. Many still view suicide as a weakness or an act of cowardice, despite global data showing men — traditionally seen as the strongest providers — make up the majority of victims.

A study in the UK found suicide to be the leading cause of death for men over 40. The contrast is stark: from dying proudly in battle centuries ago to dying silently, alone, and ashamed today.

A small but important step was taken on January 9, 2025, when the High Court of Kenya declared Section 226 of the Penal Code, which criminalized attempted suicide, unconstitutional. Before this judgment, individuals who survived suicide attempts could face up to two years imprisonment, or a fine, or both. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and the Kenya Psychiatric Association argued rightly that those attempting suicide are already victims of mental health struggles and deserve compassion, not punishment.

The stigma around suicide should belong to the past. With today’s access to information, awareness campaigns, and social media, Kenyans should already be breaking free of outdated myths. Anyone can be touched by suicide — friends, neighbors, colleagues, even family. The solution must be holistic: love, care, and gentleness should guide our approach. Checking in on loved ones, being kind, and showing patience can save lives.

Suicide is a silent epidemic in Kenya, and ignoring it only allows it to claim more lives. The government has committed to reducing suicide mortality by 10% by 2026, in line with the Sustainable Development Goals. But laws and targets alone cannot save us. Prevention begins with us — with kindness, with listening, with refusing to stigmatize. If each of us extends a hand of compassion, far fewer lives will be lost in silence.

The journey began while she looked the other way,
Intriguing and distant—yet I stepped in anyway.
Some trust their instincts, but I trusted the skies,
Believing the Universe had set us a prize.

Then suddenly her gaze turned forward again,
She hid her sorrow, but I felt her pain.
Her eyes grew wet from the dust of the past,
I said, “Take my hand, I’ll lead you at last.”

She radiated joy though she had known sorrow,
Her laughter contagious, her light hard to follow.
She healed me, and I held her tight,
Two souls becoming what fate made right.

Her sadness drew me to her like a moth to a flame.
Her brokenness — the dark cloud hanging over her head.
I wanted to be the one who made her smile,
her silver lining,
her haven in the vicious storm life had generously thrown her way.

She brought out the best in me
with nothing but a half-smile.
And me the best in her,
every time I held her.

The minute I laid my eyes on her,
I was scared to lose her.
Because as much as love felt good —
loss felt like it would hit harder.

Before I jumped, I looked back,

There they were, staring, standing like a pack.

I had thought myself to be the solution,

But there I was — misery in my hands, an addition.

The last three years had been tough,

Mum wailed, saying she had seen enough.

“If I had pushed you, I didn’t intend for you to fall —

But you intend to bring remorse to all.

All this because you haven’t seen the Eternal Flame,

And the absence of it has driven you insane.”

Falling was painful,

And so was receiving dissent in mouthful.

Of course, I was conflicted,

Wondering if my sentence would be lifted.

It was the pretty little fears

That made us shed tears —

Like the ones I saw when I turned on their faces,

Like the ones I’ve shed in all my life’s phases.

Then I saw light and looked — it was a smile,

So big, so radiant, you could see it from a mile.

One step, and all that would be gone,

Then I understood why they had been born.

I held their tiny hands and was lifted up,

And I swore never to jump.

I’m not dying.
So I better find a way to live, right?
I mean—
I can’t stay in bed forever.

It’s true what people say:
You never know real pain
Until you lose yourself.
Until you’re begging the heavens
To heal your heart—
Or just take it.

It’s not easy,
Waking up one day
And realizing
You’ve lost the part of you
That used to bring a smile to your face.

It’s not easy to wake up
And realize you’re back to being alone—
Because the one who made you feel less alone
Is gone.

Fvck.
This feels worse
Than being bled dry.

I can’t get up.
I swear I’ve tried.

Probably the second face I ever knew.
A leader—
Stepping ahead like a war general.
I watched him from the back,
Admired him… but not too much.
Close, yet always out of reach.

He was the flame they always tried to snuff out.
Everything he touched turned to reprimand.
Even when he meant well,
They said he didn’t.
Was that the toll of straying too far
From the path laid out in silence?

And then—
That moment.
The kind that rips time apart.

We were undone.
his birth givers wept quietly.
Others shattered in their own way.

Of course, it had to be for love.
Blood was spilled in its name.
And they said he was a killer.
A murderer.
A name not to be spoken again.

He who once trembled at cockroaches,
Who couldn’t touch a lifeless rat,
Now stood soaked in something
That would never wash off.

In dreams, I still see his face—
Terror carved into it.
Shock frozen in his eyes.
I never stood before him.
I should’ve.
But I didn’t.
I wasn’t strong.

Maybe none of us were.

That wasn’t the cost of defiance.
I broke rules too.
Still do.
Maybe mine’s coming.
Or maybe the world just spins sharp for some of us—
Carving deep in places no one can bandage

O Captain, not my Captain,
Leading us on endless, fearful trips—
Far from the port,
Away from the prize we seek,
Into storms no ship could weather.
While the protest grows louder,
While the vessel bleeds drops of red,
While the people are crying—
Wishing you would fall,
And lie cold and dead.

O Captain, not my Captain,
Take a moment and listen.
Hear the mourning voyagers
Decrying the crew you’ve carnaged.
They rise, flying the national flag—
Hear them, Captain:
The widowed young women,
The fatherless infants,
The wounded youth.

But the Captain does not answer—his lips sealed and still.
He does not feel our plight; he has no heart nor will.
The ship remains in chaos, its voyage undone,
And we continue the fearful trip.
Our hopes for a nation—hopeless—
Fill the streets and fly the flags,
Until the Captain listens, and vacates the ship.
Until the Captain is fallen—
Drained of warmth, of will, of war

.