On the map, Nanyuki sits neatly astride the equator, but history placed it squarely on another dividing line — between empire and nation, race and belonging, memory and erasure. The equator sign at the edge of town draws tourists to pose for photographs, yet few realize that this flat line of latitude once marked the … Read more
If cities had mirrors, Nakuru’s would be cracked straight down the middle. On one side, pink flamingos flocking in their tens of thousands across the alkaline waters of Lake Nakuru, a paradise scene so delicate it adorns postcards. On the other side, scorched earth, barbed wire, and the ghosts of ethnic clashes that turned fertile … Read more
Kisumu’s story begins in the waters of Lake Victoria, but it is not a neat beginning. Like most Kenyan cities, Kisumu is both ancient and recent — a place of barter long before it became a town, and a stage of betrayal long after it became a city. Today, it is remembered as the third … Read more
Nyeri is a place where Kenya’s history folds in on itself. It is both the pride of the White Highlands and the birthplace of the Mau Mau rebellion. It gave the country presidents, bishops, and generals, but also sent thousands of its sons and daughters into detention camps and forests. If Nairobi was the swamp … Read more
If cities had nine lives, Mombasa would be on its fifteenth. It has been razed, looted, and conquered so many times that by all logic it should have drowned in the Indian Ocean centuries ago. Yet it endures — stubbornly, defiantly, perched on its coral island like a cat that refuses to die. Every empire … Read more
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
Every empire begins by pretending it brings order. The British said they were bringing “civilization” to Kenya; what they brought to Kisii in 1908 was the hut tax, whips, and the rifle. Today, when Kenyans talk about colonial resistance, the story usually jumps straight to the Mau Mau in the 1950s, or maybe the Giriama … Read more
Nairobi should not exist. At least not in the way it does now. Before the 1890s, the land that would become Kenya’s capital was a swampy plain, a stretch of flat grassland with patches of marsh. The Maasai called it Enkare Nyirobi — the place of cool waters — but to British engineers building the … Read more
In the narrow lanes of Old Town Mombasa, behind carved wooden doors and beneath veils of clove-scented gossip, a musical revolution once took root. It was not loud. It did not march. But it sang—about cheating husbands, co-wife envy, secret pregnancies, and the quiet wars of marriage. And its fiercest combatants were women. Kenya’s Swahili … Read more
Nairobi in the 1910s was a small but rapidly growing colonial town, just a little over a decade old since being established as a railway depot in 1899. This decade marked Nairobi’s transformation from a muddy settlement into the administrative and commercial hub of British East Africa (later Kenya). Here is what characterized Nairobi during … Read more