sunset saga

 “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?” Elizabeth asks her bedroom mirror immediately when she wakes up. “In your circle of friends, among your relatives, and in the office none is as fair as you.” “That’s what I thought,” she says and begins getting ready for work. After she’s done, she takes her handbag and rushes out the door. She rolls down her car window in traffic and yells, “Will you get a move on? Clear the way for the fairest of them all.” A makanga in an adjacent matatu groans with boredom and a woman in a Volkswagen looks at her peculiarly. She shrugs, they don’t know the burden of carrying the weight of the fairest of them all. She gets to the office and immediately goes to the bathroom. She touches her makeup before sitting at her desk. She’s a junior advertising executive at a printing company at Industrial Area but the senior position is what she’s really after. “Just tell me who I need to sleep with?” she had asked Beth who was recently promot...

 The thing I wanted to do so much once I got my ID, was to go to Coco Savanah and dance inside there like an adult. Many of my older friends told me that that there was where they got their first girlfriends. That sentence is not important because I already had a girlfriend. And another girlfriend had me but I did not have her. Again, that detail is not of any importance to you especially. 18 came and I got an ID. I went to Coco Savanah. It was the F2 of Nakuru. That place was dark. Noisy. Smoky. Seedy. Smelled like an open cask. And people shouted at each other's ears to communicate. I lost track of time because I was dancing to Ali Kiba's songs. That one of Usinisemee. Where Ali eats and eats and eats. I loved the choreography of that song. It was saa tisa asubuhi, majira ya Afrika Masahariki kulingana na kopo la saa la Swaleh Mdoe. Taxi people were charging 500 to get me home. Which was 5 times my expected rate. Moneyed people were just whistling down taxis and entering back...

Ariel studies Chemistry, but is also a footballer who retired prematurely because of a bad knee. A knee that chose chemistry over football. He is a farmer during long holidays. He keeps chicken and milk his father’s cow on a good day. On a bad day he goes to a nearby dusty arena to play football, to see if his knee could have possibly changed its idea about chemistry. Ten minutes into the  game he becomes a living testimony that his knees were actually meant to stand long hours in the chemistry lab doing tests and mixing chemicals to see colour changes, precipitates and what have you that don’t excite me. He is a vocabulary expert and a story teller. He is a fitness aficionado. He is a brother and a son. I can’t prove that he is a boyfriend but I can prove beyond any limits that in the past 7 days he has eaten chapatti at least thrice.  He's authored   THE FAMILY MAN ,   WHAT I WANT , GRIP REAPER ,  J'S COCUNUTS just to mention a handful. He is a huge...

By Brian Mbanacho , Praise God, Church !  It’s now 20 years since Joseph was sold to slavery by his jealous brothers. Life hasn’t been easy, especially since he had to go to prison after Potiphar’s wife falsely accused him of rape, spending a few years afraid of bending over to pick up soap. But because he serves a living God, he has overcome all the obstacles and is now a big boy in Egypt, rolling around on the finest donkeys with panoramic sunroofs. He now has servants of his own and he occasionally stops by Pharoh’s palace to interpret dreams for him. Meanwhile, Egypt and the neighbouring countries are experiencing the worst famine, so Israel gathers his boys around and asks them to go over to Egypt and buy some grains. “Buy beans and maize and dengu and everything else, but not kamande,” he says, spitting on the ground. “I would rather we all die than eat that atrocious meal.” “Yes, father,” the sons chorus before setting out for Egypt.  When in Egypt, they are taken to th...

There is always a guy that can't mute his mic on a zoom call. And that guy is always in the middle of a very noisy place. A market or a war zone or a kindergarten with 29 angry kids. They should be 30 but one didn't come to school today because, well because Nairobi is experiencing a lot of rain and the mother is practicing positive parenting and going to school on rainy days is not it.  The unmuted mic guy will be doing all other businesses except the business that has created that meeting. The chairman will beg him to mute his mic. Chair: Sir, kindly mute your mic.  Chair: Mr..Osoro, please mute your mic. Chair: Osoro, we need to continue with this meeting please. So kindly mute your mic. Whenever the sentences become longer a great deal of patience has been lost. If this was not an official meeting with people that can write termination letters the chairman would have hurled insults at Osoro. People will offer to call Osoro separately to ask him to mute his mic. Osoro wil...

You got the promotion in January 2020. ‘Regional Sales Manager.’ With it came a car and you moved your family to the suburbs and your kids to group of schools. People cry about Njaanuary but not you. You were laughing all the way to the bank. Your wife was happy, your kids were happy. The receptionist was even flirting with you. ‘Regional Sales manager.’ It had a nice ring to it. If you could you would flirt with yourself too. January went quickly and February was here. Time flies when you have money. You developed a palate for golf and got a membership in that country club. It was already end-of-February before you could pronounce ‘caddie’ and there was talk of a flu from Wuhan. You shrugged. Flu? You even laughed. Not with your top-of-the-range health insurance. March knocked on the door. The upper echelon of the organization called an emergency meeting and told you, you had to take a pay cut and lay off half of your team. A pay cut was all right. You would just dial down on the coun...

All Saints Cathedral, Nairobi I was at All Saints Cathedral on Friday. I go there to pray during the day. There was a requiem mass. Before you get serious, this is not a very serious post. Shall we continue please, minus the seriousness? Okay. Sasa, I stood outside to wait for the service to end. Now two guys approached me. One with the Eulogy and another one with a small white thing he stuck on my chest and half a litter bottle of water. They both insisted on shaking my hands and saying pole sana. I played along and said, “yote tunawachia Mungu.”  Minutes later the service ended. Now I looked like part of those mourning. I was dressed in all black. And my specs must have looked like sunglasses under the sun.  A guy, a famous guy, I think I have seen him on TV giving opinions about the economy or the Sakaja or the Jubilee Government or this other current government. One of those guys. He approaches me and hugs me and offers his condolences. “Pole sana my son.” Then he proceeds...