1

Like the next newspaper reader, I didn’t know Rasna Warah. I only knew of The Rasna Warah, the feisty Kenyan Asian woman opinion columnist who wrote for the Nation. 

Growing up in the ‘90s, my father, a crossword puzzle addict, would rather the family forgo a meal for him to get a copy of the Nation, which he’d hoard until he was done with the crossword. This is how newspapers became sacred to me, and this is how I placed those who wrote in the papers, like Rasna Warah, on a pedestal. 

There were the Kwendo Opangas, the David Makalis, the Kwamchetsi Makokhas, the Tom Mshindis, the Mutuma Mathius, the Jaindi Kiseros, the Macharia Gaithos, the Philip Ochiengs, and many, many others. The women columnists, though, at least from my teenage recollection, were far in between. A Rasna Warah here. A Lucy Oriang’ there. Later, an L. Muthoni Wanyeki.

And so I second-guessed myself when I wrote Rasna Warah in October 2022, asking whether she’d run a column for a two-year-old digital publication I was editing. Time had passed, Rasna had left the Nation, and those of us who grew up reading Rasna and her ilk were now attempting to do what they did so effortlessly. Would she be kind enough to consider it? 

“Dear Isaac,” Rasna wrote back, “I am really honoured by your offer. Maybe it is something I need to do to forget about my condition. Could we talk more on phone?” 

In 2020, right in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, my friend the journalist Asha Ahmed Mwilu had quit her job and founded Debunk Media. Six months later, Asha roped me in. We folded our sleeves and dreamt as we built. This is how two years later, on deciding that Debunk was coming of age and was ready for op-eds, I’d reached out to Rasna and a bunch of others. 

To start with, there was Tom Maliti, Mwalimu Mati, Njonjo Mue, Bobby Mkangi, Mulle Musau, Reuben Kigame, Vincent Ng’ethe, Jacqueline Kubania, Abigail Arunga, Samira Sawlani, Soila Kenya and Wangui Kimari, later joined by Mwende Ngao, Fatuma Abdishukri, and Suhayl Omar.

As I sent out emails and text messages and made follow-up calls to those I was reaching out to, Rasna Warah said yes after our first phone conversation and asked for the contract, which she signed and sent back immediately. This is how Rasna Warah became Debunk’s first columnist. 

And as has happened whenever Debunk has turned a corner, Asha and I held Rasna’s signed contract in disbelief. The Rasna Warah had found us and Debunk worthy, and the platform would now have an actual op-ed section. Rasna Warah was unaware of what she’d just done.

But then, as mentioned in Rasna’s email response to me when I first reached out asking whether she’d consider running a column with Debunk, there was the not-so-little-matter of what she termed ‘her condition’, which she thought the writing would take her away from. 

Taking the public into her confidence, Rasna announced on X that she had been diagnosed with cancer, and for two years, turned the site into a canvas on which she wrote as she thought and felt, making it an arena where she wondered and wandered; an unending digital column where she critiqued, lamented and lambasted; a theatre where she battled and despaired and stumbled and stepped on toes and stirred things up and faltered and rose and lived and died.

It was also on X that Rasna raised some funds.

Much as she had acceded to the ask to write for Debunk, out of which she would make some little change, the amount was certainly not enough for sustenance. And so Rasna, telling folks on X that all she had for cover was the now defunct National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF), sought assistance, and got some. However, Asha and I thought that Rasna, at a human level, above and beyond being Rasna Warah the journalist who came before us, deserved better.

And so I shot Rasna an email and asked whether Asha and I could buy her lunch, asking if she’d rather we took her out to her favorite restaurant or whether it would be best if we visited her at home and ordered in. There was something we wanted to speak to her about, I wrote. 

This was November 2022.

‘‘That is so sweet of you. I really appreciate what you are doing for me,’’ Rasna wrote back. ‘‘But after a harrowing two months in Nairobi, my husband and I decided to come to Malindi for a break. I needed to not feel sick. So a lovely meal would have been welcome (though my appetite has taken a beating), but it will need to wait.’’

In Nairobi, Rasna went on, she rarely went out unless it was somewhere nearby, on her street. She hoped she’d be well enough with time so she could venture out more once she was back. She’d have loved to meet once she was back, but in the meantime, we could always speak on phone. Mornings were best to call, Rasna said, because she’d normally nap in the afternoons.

And so because we couldn’t meet, and because we had a lot to speak to her about, I thought an email would do us both some good. I once again wrote Rasna a long one, explaining the three things Asha and I thought we and Debunk could do to give her some much-needed relief.  

We consulted and learnt that we could extend her some medical insurance. Would she be keen? Sensing a cash flow challenge, would a monthly retainer in exchange for some manageable writing work, aside from whatever she would make from writing her column, be welcome? Lastly, would she let us set up a Friends of Rasna Warah something-something? 

It was too much too soon coming from us to Rasna. 

“Wow!” she wrote. She needed a timeout.

Why are you being so good to me? She wondered.

It’s the least we could do, we told her. 

Rasna said yes to the first two, and thought she’d pass on the last one. 

‘‘I already feel guilty and embarrassed,’’ she wrote. ‘‘You’ve already done a lot for me anyway.’’

Much as she’d thought writing would get her away from cancer, when she got down to it, Rasna started sensing that maybe she didn’t have the stamina and concentration to get the column off the ground, let alone sustain it. ‘‘It may be a challenge,’’ Rasna wrote, ‘‘as I have good and bad days. But I will certainly try.’’ Came the first email. There was no pressure, I’d reassure her. 

‘‘Hi Isaac,’’ Rasna wrote hours later. ‘‘I’ve been meaning to call you. I thought about it, but I don’t think I will be able to do a weekly column simply because I am focused on improving my health, and do not have the energy or concentration levels to do so. I would have loved to write for you under different circumstances. I may take up your offer once I feel better. I am sorry.’’

No need to apologize, I wrote. This was totally understandable. 

‘‘Was thinking a column every two weeks might work better,’’ Rasna wrote.  

A few hours passed. 

‘‘Dear Isaac,’’ Rasna wrote. ‘‘I had started writing this column last week and then finished it this morning after sending you the email. I don’t know if it will be a one-off or whether I can sustain a column, if not on a weekly basis then fortnightly.’’

We published the piece. 

In that same email, Rasna had toyed with an idea for a potential future column.

‘‘I wanted to write about why Rishi Sunak is not Barack Obama,’’ Rasna wrote, ‘‘but could barely write a paragraph, though I know there is much to say. I will see if I can send that too.’’

Rasna wrote and sent the piece, and became unstoppable.

In the end, it was I who slowed her and let Rasna down with delays in publishing, coupled with elongated publishing breaks, pitfalls of a small digital newsroom that was ill-equipped to carry the weight of its grand ambitions, including becoming a home for Rasna Warah’s writing.

I failed her in that way. I had found and lost The Rasna Warah.

2

The first time I spoke to Rasna Warah on phone I was either stuttering or breaking a thin sweat, or both. Or maybe I am being dramatic. I cannot recall which is which – whether I broke a sweat or stuttered, or did neither – but all I remember is that I wasn’t fully composed. Not because Rasna was scary or cold on the call or anything like that, but because when you’ve grown up reading someone’s words, lionizing them, there can be no way, at least for me, and at least at that specific juncture, that I would simply pick the call and pretend like it wasn’t a big deal.

But what made that call even more surreal was the certainty in Rasna’s voice. If you’ve seen Rasna’s photo, the one inescapable thing is her piercing eyes, which somehow matched her hoarse, roaring voice. It was as if she could see through you even as you spoke on phone.

After exchanging emails inviting her to write for Debunk, Rasna had grown curious about the publication and those behind it, and our earliest calls were about background checks, who are you guys, what is your big idea about media, and everything in between. As if indulging yet another bunch of dreamers, Rasna listened, never pouring cold water on our naivety but always cautioning that we shouldn’t repeat the mistakes committed by those who came before us. 

‘‘Please be good to writers,’’ she’d say. ‘‘People out here are nasty and treat writers like shit.’’

Before long, the calls became regular, and they weren’t about her writing.

‘‘I heard there was a party and I wasn’t invited,’’ Rasna would say, laughing.

At the end of 2022, we had had a staff party and invited the handful of opinion columnists who had started writing op-eds for Debunk alongside Rasna. We hadn’t invited her because Rasna had already informed us that she had taken a break in Malindi, but this was possibly her showing that even if she was away, she was still plugged in and we should keep her in the loop.

As time went by, the calls became longer, heavier, and personal.   

‘‘I was told you took care of Binyavanga,’’ Rasna would say.

‘‘Who told you?” I’d ask.

‘‘I can’t reveal my sources,’’ she’d say. ‘‘But is it true?’’  

We’d then go into how I had known Binyavanga Wainaina, and Rasna would tell me stories of how, while she took care of her ailing mother, one time they had a dinner at her house, which then turned into an overnight shindig, with Binyavanga staying over till the next day. ‘‘And I kept telling them to keep the noise down because my sick mother was sleeping in the next room,’’ Rasna would say, bursting into that rapturous laugh, punctuated by a long cough or two.

Or that time Binyavanga showed up at her place in Malindi with a car full of artist friends.  

Then, on another call, as Rasna meandered and went on tangents about this, that, and the other, I randomly asked her, trying to make conversation, whether she’d eaten. ‘‘Oh my God!’’ she exclaimed. ‘‘That’s the most important question you can ask anyone.’’ Rasna then went on and on about food and about taking care of people, and she suddenly had an idea. We should organize a surprise party for her husband, the journalist Gray Phombeah. He likes nyama choma. Is there a good nyama choma spot I know of where we can get the best nyama? She’ll work on the guest list and make kachumbari. He really deserves a good party, Rasna went on. 

Between the trips from Nairobi to Malindi and back, Rasna started lamenting about how she couldn’t stand Nairobi. The place is literally falling apart, she’d say. But she didn’t know what to do. Then one day a solution came. She found what to do with her place in Nairobi, and could now move to Malindi. The relief in her voice was palpable. But now we couldn’t do the party for Gray. Maybe when they got back to Nairobi at some point. We talked and talked and talked, until I entered a phase where I couldn’t pick calls or I’d take long to return calls or I’d ask Rasna to speak to Asha, and she’d wonder what kind of editor I was, who wasn’t speaking to his writers.

I lost Rasna again. Because all she wanted was to speak on phone, and I couldn’t.

3

This is not one of those pieces one writes to absolve themselves once someone dies. 

But at the onset of 2025, Rasna Warah was among a long, long list of individuals who I needed to call and speak to, apologise to, explain things to, tell them they needed to write better or differently, tell them about the things that were happening in the background, tell them about the amount of juggling I had to do, share with them the grand plans we had been laying ground for. 

I knew majority of them were pissed off at me, or thought I was pissed off at them – for not answering or returning calls, for not texting back, for not responding to emails, for taking longer to edit and publish, for sins of omission and commission which I may or may not beware of – all of which I had learnt that I must fully accept and seek atonement for, because that is what someone who asks Rasna Warah to write for them and breaks their heart must do. Everything else – explanations, plans, circumstances, life – were just details. And nobody cared for them.  

But then the year started, days turned into a week, a fortnight, and before I knew it, Rasna Warah was dead. And now I can’t return her calls and hear her admonish me while simultaneously ask me if I am OK, like she did that time when I disappeared on her and she sent me acres of literature on burnout, because she thought I didn’t take good care of myself and was dying under a pile of work. It was over. All I had to contend with were memories.

And so what do you say, or write, or do?

In 2023, during a one-day trip to Cape Town for a series of work meetings, I frantically looked for Ntone Edjabe, the founder of Chimurenga. Could we see each other briefly before Asha and I left Cape Town? Yes, absolutely. And so after jumping from one meeting to the next, late in the evening, Asha and I made our way to the Chimurenga Factory in Woodstock. It was, easily, one of our most important meetings, if not the most important meeting. But then it wasn’t a meeting.

‘‘Can I offer you a beer or a whiskey?’’ Ntone had asked.

‘‘A whiskey will do,’’ I answered. 

What followed was a long winding conversation, many whiskies later, about the Kenyan literary scene, its glory and glorious days of festivals and things, the memory of Ntone’s old Cape Town comrade, Binyavanga Wainaina, and everything we could get our minds on. Books. Music. Life. Things. People. We started talking with power on, and then the power went off – South Africa and load shedding – and then back on, and we just couldn’t stop. And oh, Ntone had seen whatever we were doing with Debunk. ‘‘That’s some good work,’’ he said. ‘‘I have seen Rasna.’’

It landed, soft like snow. 

For people like Ntone, all the way in Cape Town, their memories of Nairobi and the once-upon-a-time buzzing literary scene – it is still buzzing, and it will still buzz, inshallah  – were made of encounters with the Rasna Warahs of this world, and if a little platform on the come up like Debunk had the Rasna Warahs writing for it, then wasn’t it something? 

It wasn’t that Debunk had to have a Rasna Warah, but Debunk also needed a Rasna Warah.

I shouldn’t explain Ntone’s ‘‘I have seen Rasna’’, but it simply just hit differently, perfectly.

Because aside from being Debunk’s first columnist, Rasna was also the first person to ever do a Q&A for Debunk, which gave birth to Debunk Speaks To, as we came to label our Q&As.

Of course, Rasna Warah was a normal human being – gifted in her ways and flawed too – but to us, the honour she and others gave Debunk by agreeing to write for us was deeply invaluable.

But then, why and how and why did I lose Rasna Warah?

Rasna’s death reminds me of the passing of Ali Zaidi and Binyavanga Wainaina because their endings had so many similarities, I think. The lives were rich and glorious – without erasing the problematics, the scandals – but the endings were slow, hazy, mostly lonely even if surrounded by their loving cores. These giants of writers and editors had opened their doors and homes and hearts and offered food and drink and warmth and conversation and books to tens of writers and artists and folk, but then in the end, the multitudes weren’t necessarily present, and maybe for good reason, maybe because this is simply how it goes, and it’s all good and cool and OK.

I had met Ali Zaidi only once, at a party in Binyavanga’s house, and only spoke on email once or twice thereafter, including when he asked me to write something for him when Binyavanga died. I had spent a lot of time with Binyavanga. I had exchanged tens of emails, texts, and calls with Rasna. I had heard of Ali’s last days from mutual friends, how he was fading away slowly, how they were planning a visit or two or three. I had visited Binyavanga during his last days, when he’d ask me to take his phone and call so and so, when he’d ask about so and so. I had felt and experienced the same need for community in my calls with Rasna, until I failed her.

And so much as I am eternally grateful for finding Rasna – maybe the same way others found Ali Zaidi and Binyavanga Wainaina and others – I will remain pondering over what it means to lose Rasna, the same way I suspect others reckon over how they lost Ali Zaidi and Binyavanga Wainaina – to use them as a motif – and many others, and what this meant. What shall we do? 

To Rasna Warah, here’s to the few good days. Travel safely.

To Gray Phombeah, these words cannot be enough. Pole.