Independence was supposed to end the shootings. The Union Jack had come down in 1963, and Kenyans were told they were free. But on October 25, 1969, in the lakeside city of Kisumu, it was Kenyan police and the presidential guard who opened fire on unarmed citizens. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of men, women, and children … Read more
Kenya’s independence is usually remembered in color. The Union Jack came down in December 1963, flags waved in Uhuru Park, Jomo Kenyatta declared freedom at last. What rarely makes it into the story is that even as Nairobi was celebrating, another Kenya was already at war. In the dry, endless lands of the Northern Frontier … Read more
On the morning of August 1st, 1982, Kenya woke up to a new government. Or so it was told. A group of low-ranking Kenya Air Force officers, led by Senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka, seized the national broadcaster and declared that President Daniel arap Moi had been overthrown. They named themselves the Kenya People’s Redemption Council … Read more
There are few foods as modest and yet as quietly heroic as kunde. It does not boast like maize or demand attention like coffee. But it thrives where almost nothing else will. In Kenya’s most unforgiving landscapes—where rains fail, soils are thin, and the sun writes cracks in the earth—kunde lives. It doesn’t just survive. … Read more
In the early years of independence, Kenya’s leaders faced a daunting dilemma: how to restructure an economy built on racial exclusion without scaring off investment, stalling growth, or igniting class warfare. The solution they chose was pragmatic, paradoxical, and quietly revolutionary. Kenya would not abolish capitalism. It would Africanise it. This is the story of … Read more
In the grand plan of British colonialism, no policy reveals the racial logic of empire more starkly than the alienation of African land in Kenya. At the heart of this project was the so-called “White Highlands”—a lush, fertile expanse that became both the symbol and substance of settler dominance. But this was more than land … Read more
As the age of independence dawned in East Africa, the region’s political map narrowed. By the early 1960s, “East Africa” had come to mean four core territories: Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar. Rwanda and Burundi, once loosely tied to regional affairs, had been politically rerouted by differing colonial masters. What remained was a quartet stumbling … Read more
Before East Africa could be economically exploited or politically managed, it had to be reached. And not just reached—it had to be connected. But this landmass, hemmed in by its geography and strangled by its infrastructure (or lack thereof), was stuck in a logistical stone age. What followed, then, was not just a feat of … Read more
When we talk about the Swahili, we talk about ghosts. Not of the dead, but of centuries of cross-oceanic whispers, of ships lost and found, of poetry buried under the sand, and of an identity forever stuck in translation. The Swahili are not a tribe. They are not even a “people” in the strict sense. … Read more
The name “Mau Mau” was never the original title used by the fighters themselves. Those who led the armed struggle in colonial Kenya organized under the name Kenya Land and Freedom Army. It was only after British authorities began labeling their insurgents as “Mau Mau” that the term entered widespread use to describe the rebellion … Read more