sunset saga

  After taking his last sip of that Thursday night 16 years ago, Albert staggered to the car tapping his pocket should he have dropped his key. Somewhere at the second fourth or fifth floor was a woman half a sleep waiting for her husband to get home. Arranging words that sting like bees that she wanted to unleash on her 3am man. At the Bomas junction Albert rammed into some vehicle. The offended got out in full rage confronting Albert. Maybe he had hired the car or just bought it the other day with hefty loan from some unforgiving microfinance because wueeeh that guy was furious. They started arguing shortly before Albert withdrew a pistol and fired. Because it was in Gods plan that the offended had to finish paying his car loan, Albert missed his target and hit another guy who was driving home. A guy who I won’t judge, maybe he was just waiting for everyone to get out of town so that he switches off the streetlights – they also need to sleep.  In his head thinking of what he...

Have you ever been at an accident scene? A fatal crash that is. Was the music playing ? Was the horn hooting or was the smoke just coming from the engine silently?  Were there screams of survivors seeking help or were they in the wreck silent and lifeless ? *** It has been my experience that almost all of the time, when a collision has resulted in a fatality, the radio was off - I think this was secondary to the battery probably being smashed to bits or mechanically disconnected. Now it is, however fairly common for the horn to be blowing non-stop and I never really understood why the horn was going, but the radio wasn’t — perhaps radios just aren't made like they were before. In the few instances that the radio was on, I will tell you it was beyond eerie. There was one call where a drunk driver was racing a friend on a back country road, and hit a family of 4 head on. I was the first on the scene. I was able to crawl into the wreckage. The mother was driving, the son 11 was in the...

  You guys ! Is this our own Larry Madowo eating panya in Malawi while we have , smocha, gonga mbili, and mushogi in Kenya?  I don't even mention kuku paka and mshikakis. Let me tell you about Mbewa. Mbewa is a name for roasted mice in some parts of Malawi. It is such a great snack that during the peak season, vendors come out in their numbers along the major roads to sell the delicacy targeting travellers. The main Lilongwe-Blantyre Road, especially between Ntcheu-Chingeni-Zalewa is a major market. Seasoned and cooked to a crisp, Mbewa are also easily found in major cities of Blantyre and Lilongwe. The mice are typically found in maize fields, where they grow plump on grains, fruit, grass and the odd insect. After crops are harvested, hunters burn bushes to identify mice holes so they can trap them. Diet diversification is key to achieving food and nutrition security. Mice are nutritious and contain various nutrients among them proteins.  An average mice of 100 gms conta...

The Darien Gap is a dense and dangerous swath of tropical rainforest located in Central America, between Panama and Colombia. It is a region of impassable terrain, including swamps, rivers, marshes, and mountains. The area is notorious for being very difficult to navigate due to its rugged landscape, lack of infrastructure, and the presence of drug trafficking and other criminal activities. As a result, there is no road or highway connecting North and South America through the Darien Gap. Travelers looking to move between Panama and Colombia must either fly or take a boat around the gap. Some adventurous souls have attempted to cross the Darien Gap on foot or by bike, but it is extremely dangerous and not recommended due to the risk of getting lost, encountering armed groups, or being exposed to diseases and harsh conditions. Efforts have been made to address the issue of connectivity in the region, with proposals for building a road or a railway through the Darien Gap. However, these ...

  I have a single red shirt in my closet. I only put it on when all my other shirts are dirty or if I feel a certain way on a warm, sunny morning. This time, I put it on because it was the only one within my reach. The bus conductor was yelling gibberish into my ears with a heavy Kisii accent. He was saying something about how I had kept them waiting for one hour at the stage, yet my watch told me I was only two minutes late. It sounded almost as if he was crying. To save him his tears and vocal chords, I grabbed the closest shirt and left with my luggage. I realised later it was a red shirt. Childhood was fun before the advent of flat screen TVs and smart phones. We lived every moment to the fullest. Unlike these cerelac babies, we had hands-on experience with life. Our knees and feet were moulded into hard pads due to the continuous interaction with the coarse ground. Back then, when we did something, we genuinely loved it. We would pour our hearts out to derive pleasure from ev...

Adede Owalla is an educationist whose pieces I find very helpful and inspirational. He's an all round author and a thespian who has mastery of literature. This is a story by him about a school girl who lived miserably because of being misunderstood.  In a school whose name won't be of much significance... One Friday evening a dormitory captain  brought up a case of a form two girl that the students  believed to be a member of some satanic cult and reported it to the boarding mistress. The captain claimed that the woman had unusual conversations with unseen spirits in the middle of the night and occasionally ran across other students as they wandered the dormitory area while everyone was asleep.  The previous night, at around 2:00 AM, two students who had gone outside for a call of nature observed someone at the literacy garden, which was next to the hostel. They raised the alarm among the other students, and the security guards came to the rescue. The literacy garden...

In the Katwe slum of Kampala, Uganda, in 2014, a young guy by the name of Daouda Kavuma saw a group of three children who would perform for the people in exchange for fruits or a few cents. only three at the time. Daouda discovered that these children never had a place to call home and did not attend school. They subsisted on the fruits and cash that their audience gave them. Daouda was moved by their predicament and decided to take them in, provide for them, feed them, and train them. He gave the children the name Ghetto Triplets, then changed to Ghetto Kids, and enrolled them in a nearby school. Later, he discovered that other children in Katwe were experiencing a similar situation to them. At that point, he contemplated filing Ghetto Kids as an orphanage. The three founding members of their group—dance, theater, and music—were symbolized by their original moniker, Ghetto Triplets. Kavuma utilizes dance to help the kids have fun, but his main objective is to provide them an education...