A(nother) Nice Laugh at Aid Inc.
The Aid industry takes a ridiculous turn more as a rule than as an exception. This ridiculousness finds a zenith point- one that is quickly multiplied- the moment the Aid industry makes contact with Africa. The reason is simple: Africa, still remains, the great unknown. At least in the eyes of your average Westerner. What becomes clear is that while philanthropy in Western soil is a direct response to clearly discernible dispossession; an attempt to ameliorate the self-evident vagaries and social-economic divides that Capitalism inevitably produces, with Africa that philanthropy responds to a different reality. That of the imaginary. The problem with Africa, in the eyes of the a

AS I SLIDE DEEPER INTO OBLIVION
Writing, I have learnt, is about a time and a place. I am not claiming to speak a universal truth, just what my experience has taught me. It could be a truth about others, and then again it might not be. But it is a truth about me; a self-revelation and maybe, especially in times of drug induced self-analysis, an epiphany. That truth, simply, I write better when here. Here being the ‘old neighbourhood’. The place where what later became known as A Kenyan Urban Narrative began. The space, next to and a little to the left of Mutua’s kiosk, where we sat on stones, sipped on Napshizzle and wrote. I have spent the last few months in and out of this place. In and out of this pla

THE STRAIGHT MAN'S BIBLE OF KINKY SEX?
I have long learnt the folly of using the Bible as an excuse/ explanation/ Justification for anything. When I was a young boy, growing up in a very Christian family, I was taught that the Bible was the word of God. “In the beginning was the Word,” the Gospel according to John begins, “and the Word was God.” Then I grew older, read a lot more than the Bible, and suddenly it was like Jesus Christ himself was standing before me yelling: Ephphatha. Open up. And the eye of my mind become open to the fact that if the Bible was indeed the Word of God, then God is man’s literary plumbing. The truth of the Bible became to me not the words but the words and meanings tha

CONSTITUTIONS DON’T MAKE HOMOPHILES
“That's what the niggers don't realize,” says Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed (2006), “If I got one thing against the black chappies, it's this - no one gives it to you. You have to take it.” It is the same problem with Kenya’s gay activists, or so thinks our guest blogger. Njoroge Matathia of The Black Campaign returns to these pages with a demand for a more forceful political and social engagement on gay issues in Kenya. Arguing that in the eyes of the Kenyan public there are no homosexuals here, he concludes that the gay community has itself to blame for the perpetuation of that misconception. Matathia then proceeds to call for a more public approach to activism an

NAIROBI NIGHTS: URBAN BEATS- The Party
It has been one of those times when the Nairobi cultural scene has more to offer than the time one has. And when I, who has so much idle time in his hands, says I am pressed for time, then you know it has been an intense schedule. The German cultural weeks, beginning October 18th and ending tomorrow have been particularly charming. But I only managed to attend two events: the screening of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others (2006) and Wanuri Kahiu's 12 minutes long sci-fi Pumzi (2009) at the Goethe Institute. Too bad I cannot be bothered to write reviews because they are both really important movies in their own rights. On the 27th of October, I was back at th