The Arrival on the Monsoon Winds Long before Nairobi was a swamp or Mombasa a fort, the Indian Ocean carried dhows on seasonal monsoon winds to the East African coast. Alongside cloth, spices, and ceramics, the Arab and Persian sailors brought with them Islam. By the 9th century, Muslim communities dotted the coast — in … Read more
In the early 19th century, long before colonial railways and highways carved through Kenya, the Akamba (Kamba) people blazed an inland trail from the coast deep into the highlands. Caravans of Kamba traders regularly trekked from Mombasa through the arid Taru Desert into Ukambani (Kamba territory) and beyond, ferrying prized ivory tusks and other goods … Read more
The Ghost of a Word Few words in Kenya’s political lexicon carry as much weight — or as much blood — as majimbo. Born in the 1960s as a promise of federalism, it was betrayed in the first years of independence, then revived as a slogan of eviction and death in the 1990s. It resurfaced … Read more
On the afternoon of July 5, 1969, Tom Joseph Mboya stepped out of Chhani’s Pharmacy on Government Road, Nairobi. He had just bought a bottle of lotion. As he walked to his car, a man approached, pulled a revolver, and fired. Mboya collapsed on the pavement, bleeding out at just 39 years old. By the … Read more
On October 8, 2004, in Oslo, a woman from the ridges of Nyeri walked onto a stage and made history. The Nobel Committee awarded Wangari Maathai the Peace Prize, the first African woman to win it, for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.” The world saw an environmentalist. Kenyans knew her as something … Read more
1. The Problem with Graves Kamiti has two kinds of silence. The first belongs to the prison routine—paperwork, footsteps, the steady hum of an institution that has outlived its purpose. The second silence is the one the state built on purpose. Somewhere beneath the dry Nairobi soil, Dedan Kimathi lies in an unmarked grave. His … 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