People Archives - Page 5 of 20

Schizophrenia, Depression and Pill Fatigue

Wairimu Kagichu

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression on 17 January 2020. The first two drugs I got on were olanzapine (an antipsychotic) and mirtazapine (an antidepressant). Initially, I was very disciplined with my adherence but eventually I got less and less consistent around the third month. In March 2020, the world shut down due to the Covid 19 pandemic and I couldn’t get the medication I needed. And so all I did was struggle to be human in a time where everything reminded me that I had to be.

Colonel Mustapha and the Case for Universal Healthcare

Mwende Ngao

If there’s one thing that Kenyans love it’s gossip, especially when that gossip is around a celebrity. Even better when that gossip is around something

Shakahola Is The Kenyan Jonestown

Chia Kayanda

Guyana, 1974. Nearly a thousand worshippers at the People’s Temple Of The Disciples of Christ follow their leader, the charismatic Preacher Jim Jones, from the

Wanjira Wanjiru

Rasna Warah

WANJIRA WANJIRU is a grassroots activist who co-founded the Mathare Social Justice Centre and the Matigari Youth Book Club. She is a BA student at

Surviving Nairobi As An African Immigrant

Akello Odenyo

I slide and lean back on the leather seat watching my feet soak in a pedicure massager. It is a few minutes past 2 p.m. My eyes pace around the room on the fourth floor of a building on Nairobi’s Moi Avenue.

Nabalayo

Karwitha Kirimi

Nabalayo is the fairy godmother of the Nairobi Underground. She’s a multi-talented artist whose self-produced debut album, Changanya, is well on its way to being a classic. She creates immersive soundscapes, her music a feast for the senses, a salt bath, a continuing reverb moving through everyone who partakes. Karwitha Kirimi speaks with Nabalayo for Debunk. The talk process, community and originating culture.

HIV/AIDS. A Kenyan Short Story

Lilian Mutinda

On 15 January 1985, the front page of The Standard newspaper carried the headline: ‘Killer sex disease in Kenya.’ That headline referenced the story of the first HIV-related death in Kenya. Cited in the East African Medical Journal, the story went that the deceased was a 34-year-old Ugandan journalist who had been hospitalised at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, who had died on 8 May 1984. Two years later, Joe Muriuki (the future Dr. Joe Muriuki) went public with his HIV status, becoming the first Kenyan to openly share that he was living with the virus. It was also around that time that the National AIDS Control Council that had been formed in 1986, became fully operational and was renamed the National AIDS/STD Control Programme (NASCOP).