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.

Once a sharp tool of political dissent, irony has metastasised into a pervasive cultural mood, a nihilistic shield that prevents sincere engagement with the world. Our culture is overfilled with it, and in its excess, it promotes a quiet malcontent, reducing human suffering to edgy entertainment. So the question is unavoidable: how much irony is too much irony?

We have multiple cases of people being interviewed on Kenyan podcasts. On 27th April, 2026, my favourite irony-maxxer YouTuber, Oga Obinna, posted a video featuring a very interesting kid. Obinna engages in an “unfiltered” conversation with Mnjoro Lasty, traversing a 360-degree range of topics, from his upbringing(he’s a kid bro), life in the ghetto and, basically, why he is how he is. That was a very interesting episode to alot of viewers, but he has had many people come on the channel to just have conversations with him.

In some of the interviews on some Kenyan YouTube channels, some interviewees mentioned starting smoking weed in early childhood and moving to other substances by the time they were in upper primary school. Their moral detachment extends to their view of human life; some discuss the murder of people nearby with a chilling nonchalance, suggesting a world where violence is mundane.

Perhaps most troubling is their overt objectification of women, whom they dismiss as mere sexual objects while bypassing any semblance of human connection or respect. By their own admission, they view the world through a lens of transactional gratification and street-level survival, creating a persona that is “edgy” for an urban upper-middle-class audience, but one that actively reinforces the most destructive cycles of society.

In another — a more sincere world — some of the interviewees would be deeply troubling figures. They would be a subject of concern for social workers, statistics in a report on urban decay, or at least a cautionary tale. They would certainly not be a source of bourgeois entertainment. Yet, in our current cultural landscape, their interviews are framed as compelling content. They are curated as a spectacle for an upper-middle-class audience that can afford to flirt with their darkness from the safe distance of a screen.

For them, their nihilism is not a tragedy but a “vibe,” an edgy aesthetic to be consumed and discarded. Most of the ghetto people who come for these interviews are made to perform a kind of monkey dance for the amusement of the classes that live securely above them. They are the jesters in the court of postmodernism, with their antics repackaged as entertainment.

This ironic gaze does not spare the political class either. Figures like Swalleh Sonko have become staple content for urban audiences, their raw, unfiltered antics repackaged as comedy gold.

The audience watches them the same way it watches the people who appear on those podcasts — as characters in a live-action comedy. What gets lost in this ironic framing is that these men hold actual power, that their words affect real people. They are humanized in the worst way: made relatable, even lovable, precisely because they seem ridiculous. The irony allows viewers to feel superior to politics itself, to dismiss the whole messy business as a circus, while the clowns keep running the ring.

This dynamic represents a profound corruption of what irony was meant to be. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein believed that the most serious and profound questions could be discussed only in the form of jokes. Historically, irony was a tool of the persecuted, a method of writing and speaking under the shadow of power.

As the political philosopher Leo Strauss explored in his book “Persecution and the Art of Writing”, thinkers facing censorship would embed their true meanings between the lines, accessible only to the discerning few. For an intellectual in a hostile environment, or a dissident under an authoritarian regime, irony was a shield and a sword. It was a way to communicate truth while protecting oneself from the consequences. It required a sincere belief in the truth that was being hidden; the irony was a vessel for a message, not the message itself.

Today’s irony is different. It is not a shield for a deeper truth, but an end in itself. When an upper-middle-class viewer watches the likes of Stoopid Boy’s and Swalleh Sonko’s, they are not searching for a hidden critique of the system that created him. They are not learning about the failures of education, the cycle of poverty, or the lack of opportunity. They are simply enjoying the spectacle of their unvarnished reality, framed as entertainment.

The irony lies in the gap between the viewer’s life and the subject’s, a gap that is acknowledged with a smirk but never bridged with understanding. This is nihilistic because it denies the humanity of the subject and the responsibility of the viewer. It posits that nothing is serious, that every human experience is just another piece of content to be consumed.

The consequence of this pervasive irony is a societal malcontent. It breeds a cynicism that disdains any attempt at sincerity. To care too much, to be earnest, is to be naive, to be uncool. This cultural mood paralyses action. If everything is a joke, then nothing can be changed. The problems those interviewees represent — poverty, addiction, nihilism — are real, but the ironic gaze prevents them from being addressed. They are simply consumed as a means of entertainment.

Years ago, someone on Twitter had said that we are living in the nightmare David Foster Wallace had in 1993. In his essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction”, DFW saw that irony began as something valuable. It was a way for writers and artists to expose hypocrisy. Basically, to show the gap between how America pretended to be and how it actually was.

E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction

When television in the 1960s showed us perfect families and noble heroes while the real world had assassinations, war, and corruption, irony became a tool of truth-tellers. It hurt, but it helped. As Wallace puts it, irony was “a grim diagnosis of a long-denied disease,” and the people using it believed that exposing the problem could lead to a cure.

But then something strange happened. Television, the very thing irony was mocking, learned to mock itself. Commercials started making fun of commercials. Sitcoms built their laughs around clueless authority figures getting roasted by hip kids. Pepsi ran ads that were really about how successfully Pepsi had been advertised. Irony stopped being a weapon against the system and became the system’s favourite costume. Wallace argues that when irony becomes permanent, when everyone is always winking, always nudging, always refusing to mean what they say — it stops being useful and starts being a cage. “Irony has only emergency use,” he writes. “Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.”

The real damage, for Wallace, is that irony makes sincerity impossible. If you always speak with a smirk, you can never be pinned down. Ask an ironist what they actually believe, and you look like a fool for even asking. “The ability to interdict the question without attending to its content is tyranny,” he says. The very thing that once helped us see through lies now protects itself from any challenge. Against this, Wallace predicts that the next real rebels will be the ones willing to be sincere — the ones who risk looking naive, who dare to care, who treat real human troubles with actual reverence instead of cool detachment.

This morning, while getting dressed for work, I realised that I had lost a silver ring I had worn almost every day for three years.

I didn’t notice its absence immediately. It hit me the way you notice silence after the fridge suddenly stops humming at 3 am. Not right away, but with this strange, delayed panic that slowly spreads through your body. One second, my hand felt completely normal. The next, it felt oddly bare, like something important was missing.I searched everywhere like a madman. I checked my jeans pockets, my old backpack, the bathroom sink, and that terrifying dark gap between my mattress and the bed frame, the one that has swallowed countless earphones, dead pens, old Safaricom receipts, random coins, and enough emotional debris to reconstruct half my twenties in Nairobi.

Nothing.

For the next two days, I kept unconsciously touching that empty space on my finger, as if my body still believed the ring was there.

I think I’ve spent most of my life losing things during emotionally transitional periods. Earpods disappear when I’m overwhelmed. Power banks vanish during months when I’m mentally unstable but pretending to be “booked and busy.” I lose chargers while falling in love, water bottles during identity crises, and entire hoodies and sweaters after nights out in Nairobi, where I had too much to drink and too many deep conversations that made me temporarily believe I had finally figured myself out.

At this point, my belongings have started looking more like psychological casualties than actual personal property. And honestly, for the longest time I thought it was simply because I was careless. Every adult in my life seemed convinced of that diagnosis. My mother especially talks about my relationship with things the way war historians discuss national tragedies. Every phone I have ever owned has either cracked, drowned in water, disappeared, or developed such strange problems that they sound like they need to be referred to a specialist at AGC Tenwek Hospital.

Once, during an argument, she looked at me holding my backpack with the zipper open, receipts and papers spilling out like emotional confetti, and said, “You move through life like someone escaping a burning building.”

The devastating thing is that she was right. Because when I think about the periods when I lost the most things, they almost always matched the times when I was changing too fast to hold onto anything properly. There is something psychologically revealing about constantly misplacing your belongings. Stable people, I imagine, come home and put their keys in the same bowl by the door every single time. Stable people don’t find their AirPods or earbuds in the fridge or their debit card inside an old notebook six weeks after cancelling it.

Meanwhile, my life often feels like someone grabbed me and shook me upside down while I was emotionally distracted, and all my things simply fell out.I once lost my favourite watch during a season when I was desperately trying to become more disciplined, calmer, and less affected by situationships. I searched for it for three days with the intensity of a man who had lost something sacred. Embarrassingly, it wasn’t really about the watch. It had become attached to the version of myself I was trying so hard to build. Losing it felt like losing evidence that a better version of me could actually exist.

That is the strange thing about objects. Human beings pretend they care about them practically, but most of the time, we love them symbolically. Nobody cries over metal or plastic. We cry over what those things quietly witnessed.

An old commuter train card from the year you survived taking your own life cause of major and repeated fuck ups you have been on.

Movie tickets from someone you no longer speak to.

A favourite cardigan carrying traces of a personality you had before heartbreak rearranged you.

Receipts from those Mugash and Long Islands from Mwendas and Number 7, where you briefly felt like you had life figured out.

Objects become accidental historians. I realised this fully after moving houses a year ago and finding an old backpack filled with tiny remnants of old versions of myself: faded Double M and KBS receipts, unfinished journal entries, a power bank I dramatically swore I would never lose again, and one oraimo earbud from a pair I stopped using after a situationship ended. And sitting on the floor surrounded by all that nonsense, I suddenly understood that my life had not actually been divided by years, relationships, or achievements. It had been divided by objects lost and objects retained.

There are versions of me mapped perfectly through material disappearance. The guy who kept losing earphones because he was always rushing to become someone else. The guy who stopped carrying water bottles because depression made future planning feel pointless. The guy who kept buying new notebooks during emotional crises as though stationery could singlehandedly engineer psychological rebirth. The guy who lost expensive things but somehow preserved tiny handwritten receipts from strangers.

I think people underestimate how much of adulthood is just developing emotional relationships with objects while pretending not to. Maybe that’s why losing things affects me so disproportionately. The object itself is rarely the point. What hurts is the sudden disappearance of proof. Proof that a version of you existed once. Proof that a moment happened. Proof that your life was physically real and not just something you hallucinated while listening to music in matatus.

I still haven’t found the silver ring. A small part of me believes it will randomly reappear six months later inside some old bag, exactly when I no longer need it emotionally anymore. Most lost things eventually return like that, long after the version of you that was desperately searching for them has already disappeared.

Teenage spaces – stairwells, liminal spaces. Places to hang out and be themselves. Kids are not allowed to make too much noise around the apartment corridors, in case they are a public nuisance. But okay, then, where are kids supposed to hang out? Where are they supposed to grow and develop beyond who they are in their families, in their schools?

What about me? Where did I grow up? I find myself thinking about the local music scene. Recently, I caught myself using an analogy from there to think about what frustrates me about the modern media landscape. What happens in the local music scene is this: a group of people come together, some form bands, some are audience members, and everyone participates for a few years. After a while, some bands wind down and break up or just go on indefinite hiatus because they get weary of it all. And then new bands take their place. And this happens over and over again. What I find frustrating is how little self-referencing the scene as a whole does. People reinvent the wheel and have to re-learn almost everything from scratch. There are a few veterans who persist (the old-time music engineers and equipment providers are the real heroes, big shout-out to DJ Pinye and DJ Adrian), but most people don’t seem very interested in the history of the scene as a whole. What I think should happen is that more people should reference the music of the past. They should do covers of artists from 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago(Big shout out to Blinky Bill music and Octopizzo. They do this a lot). This gives the music a depth and continuity that it wouldn’t otherwise have, and it draws in old fans out of the woodwork. It would allow the scene to grow. Alas, this doesn’t really happen. Everyone’s kind of focused on the short-term. When they leave, they don’t leave very much behind. This is beginning to change a little bit I think, because YouTube, etc are much more enduring mediums than CDs, but my frustration is with artists who don’t look back. There should at least be some.

Similarly, my frustration with the media landscape at large is this sort of ahistoricity. Apart from the occasional writer who writes a book and digs into a ton of research review and such (and these people do a great service to the rest of us), most people seem to reinvent the wheel over and over again. It’s a real shame, IMHO. It makes discussions unnecessarily superficial and speculative. We can learn so much just from studying the history of such discussions. We don’t need to go through the same argument all the way through, with all the false turns and dead ends. But that’s what people do most of the time.

This is what I’m trying to do with my weekly rant project, and with my bookmarks and the blog posts that I’ve been sitting on for a long time about the internet and race and gender and whatnot. In essence, I suppose I’m holding these as potential book projects because it’s a lot more work than one would expect from a blog post. I should probably revisit and reimagine how I think about these things. Because I’m not going to find the time to sit down and write entire books from start to finish. So I’m going to have to slice it up, and then connect it all, and then rely on feedback in order to see what works and what doesn’t.

So that’s what I gotta do with regards to my writing. But I came to this point because I was initially thinking about teenage spaces. And I’m thinking about how teenagers are forced to find all these weird, twisted spaces because the world isn’t designed for them. There might be a few, I suppose – but “designated spot for teenagers” is automatically going to be the most uncool place for any teenager to be, because teenagers are by nature supposed to defy authority.

So I suppose my original line of thinking – “tragically, teenagers have to do all these contortions to find spaces of their own” – is a little misguided itself. Because giving them designated spaces probably won’t cut it, unless we somehow just leave spaces for them without particularly making a big deal of it. And the furtiveness of teen life kinda helps you appreciate the more earned, paid spaces of adult life. Or does it? How do rich kids feel about it? I’m not sure if there’s a simple answer. Anyway, this whole thing was really just a reflection or rumination rather than some sort of serious policy suggestion. It will inform how I raise my own kids, if I have kids. I would encourage them to invite friends over for house parties of their own, and do my best to stay out of their way. I would engage them as much as I can, take them out for ice cream, ask them about life, about their aspirations, about their interests, about their fears.

What does this tell me about what I should do with who I am right now? Well, I should start preparing, even if I don’t have children. The broader point is that people need spaces, people need encouragement, people need hope… and if I weren’t given those things, then I can ‘have’ it for myself by giving it away to others.

A nagging thought though – what if people who are given things don’t appreciate them? The quote comes to mind – hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times. Is this inevitable, inescapable? Can you help your children appreciate what they’ve got? I’m sure it’s POSSIBLE, but it requires voluntarily entering hardship. It means bringing your kids to orphanages and even random hospital visits and such, helping them see from day one how lucky they are to have what they have – and not in a preachy, bullshit way, because kids see through preachy bullshit very easily.

I guess the thing about having kids, if you’re serious about it, is that they force you to confront your own bullshit. And you WILL end up bullshitting them about some things to keep the peace, as Paul Graham pointed out in his essay about lies we tell kids, and taboos and whatnot. Maybe it’ll be a good habit to keep a list of times you bullshit your kids. At least then you can be conscientious about it, and you can let them know about it when they become adults.

I think my biggest wish for any kids that I might have is that I’d want them to be the sort of people I’d love to hang out with.

Time passes incredibly fast. I was at work a few weeks ago, maybe around 5:30 pm. Next thing I knew, it was 7 pm, then 7:30 pm. And I left. I got home. Decided to run some laps around my neighbourhood for like 20 minutes. And then it’s 9:30 pm. So I shower and prepare to go to bed. I thought maybe I ought to write a blog before I slept. Hopefully, I’d have been able to finish by 10:30 or 10:45 and be asleep by 11 pm. But now it’s 11:59 pm, and I’m only just starting to write this.

Clearly, I’m incredibly time-blind. My sense of time passing is completely mistaken, mislaid.

I find myself wandering through the bookshelves of my mind, running my fingers along the various books and essays I’ve read about the nature of time. The book that features most prominently is A Sideways Look at Time by Jay Griffiths. She spoke eloquently, at her own pace, about the ills and perils of man’s obsession with colonising time the same way he’s colonised space – and how we all live in tidy little demarcations – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. 9-5 jobs, 5 workdays a week, 10 days of leave a year. Public holidays have become commercialised routines. Everything goes according to plan, everything is planned to bits, and calendars are filled out in 15-minute intervals. The Earth itself is not precise enough for man, with its imperfect rotation requiring the addition of leap days and seconds every 4 years.

I’m not sure where I stand on this. I think there are a few points on a continuum. At one end, we have a sort of total idleness and indifference to time, which few people ever really get to experience. Getting to that state either requires a sort of renouncement of everyday life – becoming a nomadic wanderer type, a wildling –or it requires (I think) having a substantial amount of resources. Fuck You Money. What that precise $ amount is, isn’t quite so clear. But when you get to that state, then yeah, maybe you can really operate entirely on your own internal rhythm.

Internal rhythm. Now that’s a phrase I hadn’t thought about when I started writing this. I was just thinking, what is up with me? Why is time passing me by so quickly? Why is so little getting done, and why do I feel a little bit neurotic about it? I feel like I should be more productive, like I should carve up my time into little blocks and then get very specific things done in those little boxes.

And there’s a part of me that’s very against all of that. Like there’s a part of me with a death wish of some sort, wilfully just refusing to follow orders, to obey, trying to sabotage almost everything I do. Some literature has pointed out that this saboteur is really just fear, trying to maintain stasis, trying to keep things familiar, and avoiding anything challenging. And I know in my life that too much stasis is basically death. You can get too comfortable with any one thing, and too much comfort is also basically death. I need to get myself uncomfortable.

And yet at the same time, I find myself feeling chronically, deeply, spiritually tired. So I gotta run through my checklist. How is my sleep? It’s okay, I think. How is my exercise? Ah, I haven’t been exercising as much as I should. So I hit the bench press earlier today, and I do feel better in a ‘deep physical way’ – I mean, under my skin, the engine seems to be purring. What about diet? I think I’m eating okay. I don’t think I’m drinking too much coffee. What about hydration? I’m drinking water, but probably not enough. What next? I need to be doing these vomits regularly and get them out of my system, because they’re cathartic. It doesn’t matter if I don’t reach the end-goal with tremendous perfection. I just need to get there, and then I can drop.

But gosh, I do think I need a bigger break. I think I need to get away from home and go somewhere else, maybe by myself. I took a break last year around Christmas time, and I mostly spent it just lounging around the house for a day or two I think. I didn’t get a lot done. A part of me regrets that, feeling like I wasted my time off. A part of me felt like lounging was precisely what I needed. But it’s been 5 months later and I’m already feeling lethargic. I’ve gotten a lot better at dealing with lethargy and listlessness – I can function despite it – but I also think the point is to get to a state where I’m NOT lethargic. Like, that’s just not how life should be.

With just about 3.5 weeks left on this intense season, my days have become pretty demanding. I’ve been waking up very early and leaving the house every morning, and by the time I get back home, I am usually drained with little energy left to handle things around the house. This period has made me deeply appreciate just how much time, effort, and quiet discipline it takes to keep life running smoothly. Something as simple as laundry and dishes can easily eat up hours if left unchecked. What used to feel like small daily tasks now feels like serious work.

At the same time, I’ve also realised these chores don’t have to be pure exhaustion. Some of my best thinking and learning happens while washing utensils or folding clothes — especially when I have a good podcast or an insightful video playing in the background. There’s something almost meditative about it.

Still, it has given me a much greater respect for the invisible labour that goes into maintaining a home. I’m looking forward to regaining some rhythm once this season ends.

What I do need – what I do remember thinking was – that it’s important to fix the little things. To be mindful and to make changes to the small things that repeat themselves.

As children, we meet our fathers in their final form. Strong, serious men who know how to fix things, who come home tired but still ask if you’ve done your homework, and who somehow always find money for school fees even when things are tight. You assume they were born that way — carrying the weight of the family like it’s normal. Always saying “tumia akili” and “usikae ukiwa hivyo.”

Then adulthood hits you, and suddenly your father starts looking painfully human.

It happens in small moments. He casually mentions how he wanted to study engineering but had to drop out to support his siblings. You hear him laughing with his old friends about crazy adventures in his twenties and realise that laugh belongs to someone you have never met. One day he buys himself a new shirt after years and keeps adjusting it, checking how it looks in the mirror, the same way you do when you’re trying to impress that one random babe you have a date with.

And it hits you hard. your father also once had big dreams. He had a life before he became “Baba.”

For most of my life, my father existed to me in fragments. The sound of his voice leaving the house before 5am. The smell of his old leather jacket. His hands rough from years of work. The tired sigh when the KPLC and water bills came. He felt as permanent as the morning cold in Nairobi. Always there, always providing, even when it cost him.

Then one day, he says something that stops you in your tracks:

“I wanted to own my own business full-time by the time I was thirty.”

“I used to play football very well in my younger days.”

“I had so many plans…”

Past tense dreams coming from your father’s mouth feel heavy. Because Kenyan sons are rarely raised to see their fathers as men with abandoned ambitions. We inherit them at the point where sacrifice has already become their lifestyle. By the time we’re old enough to really see them, they have already spent decades shrinking their own lives so we could have a better shot.

That’s why sons become softer with age. Not immediately. In your teens, you can be rebellious and ungrateful. You think he’s too strict. You complain he doesn’t understand you. You don’t see the silent battles he fights every single day just to keep the lights on.

Then your twenties humble you properly. You start facing bills. You understand what it means to carry responsibility. You get disappointed by life. And suddenly, your father’s silences, his stubbornness, and his constant hustle start making painful sense.

The early mornings.

Refusing to rest.

The saving money instead of spending it on himself.

The “I’m fine” even when he’s clearly exhausted.

The pressure he puts on you, not because he wants to punish you, but because he wants you to go further than he did.

I remember watching my father fall asleep on the sofa in his work clothes and feeling this deep ache. He looked both strong and fragile at the same time. His face reminded me of the young man he must have been before life started demanding everything from him.

Fatherhood in Kenya is silent warfare. Nobody gives fathers enough credit for how much they carry while pretending everything is under control. They hustle for opportunities they never got. They work jobs they don’t like so their children can dream bigger. They postpone their own comfort, their own health, and sometimes even their own happiness.

Sometimes I look at old photos of my father and feel emotionally ambushed. The sharp haircut. The hopeful eyes. The way he stood like someone who still believed the future belonged to him. Then responsibility happened — marriage, children, school fees, hospital bills, sending money home to the village.

Men like my father postpone themselves with painful discipline. And we, their sons, often notice it too late.

You only begin understanding your father when you start carrying some of what he carried. When you feel the weight of providing. When you catch yourself using his exact words. When you worry about money, even when things are okay.

The older I get, the less I want to judge my father and the more I want to honour him properly. Not just for what he gave me, but for what he gave up so I could stand where he never reached.

The young man with big plans.

The guy who wanted to travel.

The one who had dreams before he became everything for everyone else.

I think sons grow up believing their fathers are unbreakable. Then life reveals the truth: your father has also been surviving. Hustling. Carrying your future on his tired shoulders while smiling and saying, “it’s okay.”

Honestly, I don’t know how our fathers do it without becoming quietly haunted by the versions of themselves they had to bury.

As I finish writing this, my chest feels heavy.

If your father is still here, go talk to him. Ask him about his dreams before you were born. Tell him you see the sacrifices. Tell him you appreciate the hustle.

He deserves to be seen too. Not just as Baba, but as the man who fought so you could go further.

So, I’ve been reading The Fountainhead, and I’m halfway through. It’s interesting. I get it, I understand why some people are crazy about it and why more people are crazily against it. (It’s quite meta. The book is about an architect who’s relentless about his ideals– which some people love, and most people hate.) There are a bunch of valid criticisms about the book– it might be a bit oversimplistic. The characters might be a bit predictable, simplistic, and a little humorless. Ayn Rand sets up strawmen to knock down in a really nice, orderly way.

But I believe Rand wasn’t claiming to describe reality as it is (which I think Honore de Balzac did a much better job with, with Lost Illusions). She was trying to put forth a vision, her personal ideal of how man should be, or might be. And I can respect that as an intellectual pursuit, as an exercise in hypothetical thinking. Such thinking and projections can be really useful thought experiments. That’s the lens that I’m choosing to read this book through. Rand is making a bunch of propositions, which may not necessarily correspond perfectly to reality (and now I’m thinking of the Ender’s Game series, which is similar– a bunch of characters who behave with almost supernatural efficiency. And can’t the same be said for Aaron Sorkin’s characters?)

That’s what fiction does, isn’t it? It shows us what is true by exaggerating things out of proportion and using unusual circumstances, fringes, borders, etc. It doesn’t have to be immediately, directly true to be useful.

Anyway.

So the interesting thing for me about The Fountainhead is how its protagonist– Howard Roark– behaves. I’ve read a bunch of books by now, lots of different characters, lots of different ways of exploring different minds. But there’s something slightly different about Roark. It’s a sort of intense, relentless fixation on self-respect. He has his personal beliefs, his view of the world, his view of what is acceptable and what is not– and he lives by those principles as perfectly as he can. What’s interesting is how he navigates conflict with other people. He doesn’t enter some sort of difficult moral conflict as protagonists often do. He doesn’t debate internally. His decisions are practically pre-made. He walks into difficult situations with his decisions pre-made, and he’s calm and unfazed, and this calm threatens and frustrates the people around him. His dramatic foil is his childhood friend, who, while successful, is hooked on the opinions of others. He derives his validation from others.

Rand turns this into an extreme black-and-white affair. There are a few people who truly have self-respect, who are truly principled, who really care. And everybody else is shamefully deficient in some way. [1] You can see how this must be really exciting to brooding, overthinking young teenagers. And how it might seem outright wrong or dangerous to others. Blah blah.

I think it’s important to view it through the lens of “This is a thought experiment.” When we do thought experiments, we distort, twist, exaggerate, amplify, and dramatize things for effect. In a sense, we all have a little bit of all of the characters inside all of us.

Anyway, again.

The point I want to get to is– what I think has been interesting, compelling, and useful for me. And that is the fictional idealism of Roark’s intense self-respect. What will life be like if you strongly, clearly know exactly what you want, and don’t give a fuck about anything else but getting that? What is life like if you refuse to allow other people’s input to sully your thoughts and perspectives? What is life like if you refuse to compromise on anything that really matters to you?

Of course, realistically, it’s not quite possible to do that unless you’re wired a little differently from everybody else. Or is it? We probably wouldn’t be able to turn into Howard Roark just by reading about him, and I’m not sure if it’s really worth it even if it were possible.

But is there something I can learn from him? I think so. By embodying a sort of extreme, fierce, radical self-respect, by extension, he’s gotten me to think about what my personal equivalent of that would be like. I mean, I’ve read all of the Ender’s Game sequence, and I do appreciate Ender’s perspective and thoughtfulness and insight and maturity… but there’s something quite different. There’s something about Ender’s mind that is left a little unexplored, I think. Doing a proper comparison will take a lot more effort than a throwaway blog. It might be this– Ender is constantly trying to survive in his environment, and he’s trying to do right by others, within a context of a very large, looming existential threat. Roark, on the other hand, isn’t under nearly as much of an existential threat (though he might disagree). He has more of a “spiritual” problem– his context is closer to Lucien’s from Lost Illusions.

I guess the question I’ve been posing to myself at the back of my head is– what does self-respect look like, to me? What do I need to do to earn my own respect? Why have I not thought about this earlier?

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

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[1] There are a couple of antagonists who haven’t quite revealed all their cards yet, so they’re kind of outside the scope of this until I read further. I wonder what Toohey is really all about, in the end. And that Gail dude. We’ll see.

That’s a very loaded statement, I know, so let me qualify that and narrow the scope dramatically. I don’t mean it in a blunt, “you cannot be free without hurting other people” sort of way; rather, I mean it in a much more nuanced sense. Let me just riff on the etymology of violence for a while-

Old French violence (13c.), from Latin violentia “vehemence, impetuosity,” from violentus “vehement, forcible,” probably related to violare, violation -> c.1400, from Old French violacion and directly from Latin violationem (nominative violatio) “an injury, irreverence, profanation,” from past participle stem of violare “to treat with violence, outrage, dishonor,” perhaps an irregular derivative of vis “strength, force, power, energy,” from PIE root *weie- “to go after, pursue with vigor or desire,” with noun derivatives meaning “force, desire”

So you see, if you trace it all the way back- freedom requires force, vigour, some element of irreverence, violation, ‘injury’.

What about freedom? Old English freodom “power of self-determination, state of free will; emancipation from slavery, deliverance.”. Old English freo “free, exempt from, not in bondage, acting of one’s own will,” also “noble; joyful,” from Proto-Germanic *frija- “beloved; not in bondage”, from PIE *priy-a- “dear, beloved,” from root *pri- “to love” (cognates: Sanskrit priyah “own, dear, beloved,” priyate “loves;” Old Church Slavonic prijati “to help,” prijatelji “friend;” Welsh rhydd “free”).

Interesting how love got all tied up in there. Etymology is really a beautiful thing.

I don’t know about human communities and societies. I don’t know about nations and tribes. I’m writing about this from the perspective of a single human mind, my own. And by freedom I mean, loosely, the ability to do what ‘I’ (which is itself a complicated and messy concept, very likely to be fiction altogether) wants to do.

Pause. Let me reframe that. There are two kinds of freedom- ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’. The latter is messy, and I want to rule out discussing it for now. I just want to talk about ‘freedom from’.

Freedom from what? From base appetites. From anxiety. From fear. From social expectations. From all the things that typically keep you from doing the things you otherwise say you want to do. (Saying you want to do something is a whole new can of worms, though.)

I’ve always thought of myself as a pacifist. I don’t like fights and fighting, and I’ve shied away from every single one that I’ve ever encountered. I typically just apologise, claim responsibility and strive to be as diplomatic and neutral as possible(I’m lying. I’m out here picking fights cause I can).

But I’ve come to realise that there are some circumstances in which neutrality does not work and is not relevant. There are some circumstances in which negotiations get you nowhere.

This applies at many scales of reality. I’d prefer to talk about the less contentious ones. Consider, for example, running an online community. And consider censorship, editing, deletions and bans as acts of violence. (Edits can be artfully done, using subtle, consensual persuasion. But bans and deletes are definitely violent acts, at least in the context of an online forum.

Imagine a world where the only way to communicate with other human beings was through an online forum. Now imagine being arbitrarily banned by a powerful moderator without warning. You get a sense of why that might be considered a violent act. Isolation and exile are known to be some of the most torturous things you can do to a person.

Any online community that gets sufficiently large becomes used and/or exploited for marketing purposes. It’s simple economics- the larger a community becomes, or the more apparent the purchasing power of the members of a particular community, the more lucrative it becomes to advertise on that channel. Reddit and Quora are great case studies for this.

What do you do once your forum starts attracting spam? You have to moderate and delete, because otherwise you drive off your most valuable contributors. The forum suffers from the evaporative cooling effect and dies a slow, painful death. You might say that your forum has some ground rules or basic standards- fine, fair enough, that’s just preemptive, institutionalised violence. It’s an order that’s instituted by the looming threat of violence, which hopefully nobody will have to use, witness or be subjected to.

Let’s leave forums for a moment and think about neurons within a brain. Okay- I’m no neuroscientist, and I don’t actually know how the brain works. Let’s think about thoughts and how different thoughts coexist in the mind. The mind is rich and full of all sorts of messy, convoluted thoughts. Happy thoughts, sad thoughts, angry thoughts. Positive thoughts, negative thoughts, thoughts about thoughts. Base thoughts, sublime thoughts. Many of these thoughts should be able to safely coexist.

But what happens when some thoughts are volatile to others? When do some thoughts “damage” or “disrupt” the “community” of your thoughts? Again, you can’t really have a complete anarchy of mind- there’s some sort of order that emerges, some central control or semblance of control, some order. These things seem to be socially divined- we keep ourselves from burping and farting and belching and defecating in the presence of others, we make it a point to be civilised, blah blah- all of that is for the smooth functioning of society. We destroy a certain uncouth, ‘barbaric’ part of ourselves in the service of social relations. This is rarely framed as a loss, because it’s always implied that the highest status people of any social group are the most civilised of all, and the rest of us ought to aspire to be so refined. But is refinement necessarily a good thing, and necessarily something that we should desire, and most importantly, do we lose something in the process?

I make the case that any time we seek to do something, to achieve something, to build something, we have to get rid of something else. That’s creative destruction. You have to break eggs to make an omelette. You have to kill a smoker inside of you to live healthily. You have to kill the resistance to make art. I’m not doing this justice, and I’m going to end the essay here so that I can continue working. The basic idea is-

Aren’t the demons in your head equally valid denizens, citizens? And isn’t it basically impossible to live a happy, healthy life without bludgeoning them to death? You can’t peacefully co-exist with those who will have you hurt. Freedom requires violence.

This seems to be surprisingly hard for some people to grasp.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing this is that I saw something on X(South African Twitter mostly) about how it’s become socially acceptable to be racist towards white people.

Racism is complicated, man.

It’s tempting to say that everybody’s got their own problems, everybody faces some sort of discrimination. But is that really true? And if it were true, is it really a useful statement? What are we trying to achieve here? What are we trying to do? A lot of the time, I think a lot of people just want peace. If someone’s complaining, they want the complaints to stop. (Whoa, I just surprised myself a little bit there. I’m not sure why this particular perspective never quite occurred to me in this specific context.)

Not many people really want justice for all. What they really want is quiet. They might SAY they want peace, but if peace turns out to require a lengthy, drawn-out process of engagement and behavioral change, they’d much rather just insist on quiet.
This helps to explain something that’s always confused me: when someone says something like “why must you bring up race”, “why must you be so divisive”.
Every person who’s experienced racism or sexism or some form of prejudice would really much rather never have to bring it up. Bringing it up is uncomfortable, tedious, and has unknowable social costs. We’d all rather make puns and dad jokes that everyone can enjoy (or cringe at). But we only bring it up because _it is a problem_.
Many people never quite relate to this. Here’s an insultingly silly analogy that hopefully gives a slight idea: it’s like interrupting an entire lecture to announce that you need to go and pee. Most people in that situation would much rather just hold it in. Until they can’t anymore.
A parent/child analogy is probably problematic, but it keeps coming to me again and again: Getting frustrated with people speaking up about racism is like getting frustrated with a child for crying. You assume that she’s crying because she wants to annoy you, wants to spoil your day, wants to make a lot of noise, and likes the attention. It’s a lot harder to believe that she might actually be crying because she’s in pain, she’s hurt, she needs help.
It’s been quite well established by now that people tend to seek out comforting beliefs literally. (This explains victim-blaming to some degree. Many people want to believe the comforting lie that the world is fair, that bad things don’t happen to good people, so if something bad happened to you, you must’ve done something to deserve it!)
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I rewatched a video earlier by Cameron Russell, the swimwear model who gave a TED talk about beauty and body image. She was quick to say that she benefited from winning a genetic lottery and from a legacy of beauty standards and so on. She gets a free pass on things because of how she looks. And yet, despite being so close to what is considered to be physical perfection, she feels insecure about her body. And she says the same is true for any group of models, despite having the thinnest thighs and so on. So people with all the advantages can still be unhappy. Perhaps deeply, profoundly unhappy, in the depths of dark-night-of-the-soul despair.

I find myself thinking now about an article about the son of a wealthy Chinese family – I can’t remember the specifics, but I think he was saying something like, life is miserable when you’re rich. Nobody sympathizes with you; everybody assumes the worst of you, and you can’t trust your friends because everybody wants your money. Your parents have very high expectations of you to run the family business, to get married to someone good for the family (rather than necessarily good for you), and so on.

Poorer folk might say, “ Well, if you don’t like all that stuff, why don’t you just walk away? Why don’t you just quit? But is that ever really a fair thing to ask of somebody? You don’t like how your countrymen treat you; leave the country! Well, it’s your country too, why should you have to leave? Exit decisions make tonnes of sense in nomadic situations, but it’s really drastic and costly within a tightly meshed civilization. Maybe things will continue to change in the coming years.

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Time to start wrapping up. What am I trying to say here? Most people just want peace and aren’t quite aware of just how messy, complicated, and difficult the world is, and how difficult other people’s lives can be. We are all intimately aware of all the things that are difficult and painful about our own lives, but it’s not so obvious that other people are suffering too, and probably worse. I mean, if you have internet access, you probably also have clean water, food, and so on, and you’re doing okay.

But then and again, are the comforts of civilization actually good for us? I’m thinking now about Sebastian Junger’s points about how people who experience great social trauma collectively end up rallying together and improving their relationships with one another, and suicide rates drop, murder rates drop, people just seem better and more whole and happier. And there are all those things about how people in villages have happier relationships, a better attitude towards life in general, they’re healthier in many ways… I guess the thing is that we shouldn’t be too quick to start getting all certain about whose life is better and whose life is worse. Some things might be objectively terrible – malaria is obviously a bad thing that ought to go away. Anyway, am I even very seriously interested in figuring that stuff out? That’s the thing I think I’m beginning to get at. I think eventually you shed your BS moral posturing and come closer to your personal truth about what you really care about. I’m sure I have some moral goodness in me somewhere, to the degree that I am a social animal and all social animals care about the broader group. And I am trying to do a bunch of signalling to the “Greater Human Tribe”, because I don’t quite feel like I belong in any Minor Human Tribe. Something to think about. That’s more interesting to me than “how to save the world from malaria”. So in that regard, I’m a selfish bastard, obviously.