Belonging is a funny thing. We spend our whole life searching for it in different places, but it’s never ours to take. It’s always something that must be given to us.

The atmosphere in the car is tense. Kim opted not to change his plans for the sake of Family Time and my parents are doing a horrible job of pretending that they are not seething. The small talk is pointless, as always. Kip and I retreat to our …

Dead dried up purple flowers were spread all over the compound. No more were falling, the tree was completely bare. The old man sat beneath the jacaranda tree, looking for what shade that could be found underneath the branches from the scorching sun…

The rain was just beginning when I reached the apartment block. Big, fat raindrops that hit you with a certain kind of impatient ferocity, as if they too had felt delayed up in the skies by the rain gods who resided high up in the mountain of Kirinyaga and who, some farmers whispered among themselves, sometimes slept on the job.

Some youngsters think being gangster is their golden ticket to riches, and more couples are buying into it, perfectly masking their ulterior agendas. I mean, they don’t seem suspect, thug-like; just two people who are in love, what could possibly go wrong?

You stare and move hastily away from the blind, crippled, persons living with albinism; you give way along the streets not because you care but because you don’t want anything to do with them. You absolutely want nothing to do with them.

When I first heard that the theme of this year’s Storymoja Festival was to be ‘Black Peace’, I wondered whether there was a connection to the African American’s ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Or at the very least, a customization of it that would fit our culture. Later, I asked myself, does it matter really?

Are you between the age of 18-30? Do you love reading and books? The Storymoja Festival is looking for you!   The Storymoja Festival has built up a reputation as East Africa’s biggest book party, a celebration of creativity, stories and literature. It started out as the Nyama Choma festival in 2007, took a detour [read more…]