Why I Didn’t Like My Hair Sometimes
I have a toxic relationship with my hair. My 4C, tightly curled beautiful hair. I don’t always feel like it’s beautiful. I think it is partly because 4C hair is only praised when it’s long, and only on social media.
The Covid-19 pandemic, lockdowns and all, forced me to sit with my unbraided hair for months as I couldn’t leave my house to go to my braiding lady at Kenyatta Market, tied to the fact that I also do not know how to braid my own hair. Isn’t it sad that I mostly feel beautiful in my braids or cornrows? Only occasionally do I enjoy wearing out my afro.
Unsafe Abortions Are Costing Kenya and Killing our People
Today, communities across the world are marking International Safe and Legal Abortion Day, a day which draws its origins in the Latin America struggles of the ‘90s in pursuit of the decriminalisation of abortion.
From Perfect Plans to Unexpected Motherhood
As I sip my coffee and stare out at the parking lot from my office window, I reflect on how, years ago, I had imagined that by the time I get to 30, my life would be perfectly figured out. This is not to say that my life isn’t great, it just took a very […]
A Few More Words About Breasts
Sprout I’m 11 when I first feel an unusual tenderness and slight swelling on my chest. It happens by accident when my hand grazes my nipple and sets little ripples of thunderbolt across my body. The pain is sudden. The discomfort, unmistakable. I know what it is because my friends and I endlessly discuss it […]
Martha Karua
On the state of politics and the economy in Kenya today from the “Iron Lady” of Kenyan Politics.
Idumi Irakuduma. Manhood Undoes Itself
The word culture, as used and practiced by Hip Hop artists, shows me just how detached I am from the people who produced me, my fathers. It shows me the amount of debt I owe the people I have produced, my sons; my father calls me brother these days.As regards the incident I mentioned earlier; It gives me a perspective as to why my village folk, elegant in expression and strangers to verbosity, once in 2021 thought me a stranger and mistakenly branded me a child trafficker. I had used my father’s instead of my grandfather’s family name when asked about my identity after a teenager from my clan ran away from me while I was in an anxious state, a flight that almost cost me my life, had I not re-introduced myself as my grandfather’s son.
