Articles Tagged Life & Society

“How did it get to be “OK” for people to be late for everything? Because as far as I am concerned, it’s not OK. In recent years it seems that a meeting set to start at 9 am, for some people means in the general vicinity of any time which starts with the numeral ‘9’. […]

Tomorrow, Kenya holds yet another general election. The previous one ended in controversy, acrimony and carnage. Last time, we really didn’t see it coming. We did not imagine an electoral process that farcical; and we did not fathom that leaders could fuel mass deaths quite so casually, for their own gains. We were all caught […]

There is a short history lesson l like to provide for our youngsters in Kenya, every time we approach a general election. In the 1980s, Daniel arap Moi and Mwai Kibaki led the same government. In the 1990s and in 2002, they were on opposite sides, and vociferously so. In 2007, they were together again, […]

He was born into poverty, one of seven children. He agitated against the iniquities and elitism of his society from an early age, often violently. He eventually formed a political movement that focused exclusively on the problems of the poor, and it quickly gathered a large following. He was supported to the hilt by the […]

She was a bright, determined, hard-working girl from a poor family. She persuaded her father to sell his only plot of land to pay for her dream to become a doctor. She promised him he would never have to work again as a labourer once her ambition was fulfilled. She worked nights in a call […]

This is my last column of 2012, and what better way to bring the year to a close than to make some wishes for the year to come. I gaze at 2013 with a mixture of hope and fear, as it is that most potentially catastrophic Kenyan annum, an election year. So first and foremost, […]

A few years ago, I used to cross one of our now defunct Nairobi roundabouts on my way to work. Every day I would watch most drivers ‘overlap’ by arriving in the wrong lane to turn right, then cut in by force on the roundabout itself. Mostly in full view of traffic police stationed on […]

Kenya, we all know to our cost, has some of the worst driving habits and most dangerous roads in the world. Every single day, we lose many lives and many livelihoods to road incidents. You notice I did not call them road “accidents.” Accidents happen unintentionally and unexpectedly. Our incidents are both intentional and expected. […]

I sat next to a leading Kenyan at a recent visit to the SOS Kenya Children’s Home in Buru Buru. We were told that the organization has a burning goal: to reduce the proportion of support it gets from foreigners versus locals. So far, it’s an uphill task. I discussed this with my neighbour in […]

As Greece’s economic implosion continues, a worrying trend is emerging: the growing popularity of neo-Nazi groups and attacks on immigrants. The increasingly popular Golden Dawn party has been repeatedly implicated in racial violence, though it denies involvement. Its hostility towards African, Asian or Arab immigrants, however, is overt, as it reportedly champions slogans such as […]

New roads. New railway stations. New ports. New connectivity. That’s the Kenya We Want, right? We know infrastructure is at the heart of development, right? We know that infrastructure investments will power the economy to Vision 2030 and Middle Income status, right? Wrong. Do you wonder why we build a new ‘super’ highway only to […]

Trees and development don’t go together? Of course they do. As I discussed here last week, sustained development does not take place at the expense of the environment. Ask Haiti, which in a frenzy of slashing forests for wood fuel, reduced forest cover from more than 60 per cent to under 2 per cent in […]

This is the time of year when Nairobi becomes Jacaranda City. Everywhere you look, the famed trees are in blossom, painting the skyscape a vivid lilac, and precipitating our well-known ‘purple rain’ as they shed their flowers and create beautiful natural carpets all over the city. But look around, and you will see that this […]

This is my 500th column on this page. To commemorate the occasion, let me take you on a little journey. Let us go back to the Kenya of a decade ago, when I first started writing in the Sunday Nation. In 2002, this country was broken. It had been plundered dry. It was in the […]

“Today, the economy is the biggest news in India and politicians are only listened to when they talk about the economy.” I wrote those words on this page in January 2010, to preface the proposition that India was on an irreversible forward economic march. I was horribly wrong, and I apologize. At the time, all […]

Kenyan leaders, what are you looking at if not at the carnage on our roads? We have always had a high rate of road accidents, but it has now reached crisis proportions. There seem to be awful crashes occurring across Kenya every single day. These result in deaths and dismemberments, grief and disruption, tragedy and […]

“Spain’s banking crisis did not come out of the blue. In the 1990s the Spanish suffered a bout of collective madness. Interest rates fell from 14% (with the peseta) to 4% (with the euro) in a matter of weeks. In 1998 the centre-right government passed a law that significantly increased the amount of land for […]

To be widely respected in Kenya today, you need to have just one thing. Just one. All of the things that normally generate respect – virtue, compassion, wisdom, knowledge – have been thrown in the gutter. In the society we have crafted, only one thing matters, and you know what that one thing is. Money. […]

Kenya has spent more on infrastructure projects in the past decade than at any other time in its history. And there is more to come. That is a great and necessary thing. Projects like undersea cables, superhighways and bypasses, link roads, rural power connections, bridges and port expansions will all have significant impact on our […]

Diplomacy Today Today yesterday tomorrow Diplomacy is was will be hollow Say it like it is What’s with the “excuse me please?” Do you, in the boxing match Hold back the power of your punch? Or do you fail To fully exhale? Coat words with honey? No! Claim back your money! Is the smell of […]

People everywhere love freebies. If it’s “free,” we want it. And we want lots of it. Here’s the thing, though: nothing is really free. Resources are limited. To provide or make anything on this planet consumes resources. So if something seems free, it’s up to you to work out who’s bearing the cost. Some simple […]

A drive on one of Kenya’s highways is, we can all agree, a hair-raising experience. We have one of the world’s highest road fatality rates, for one simple reason: the roads are full of what our president fondly calls “pumbavus” who have inexplicably been allowed to drive. So you will get pea-brained drivers coming at […]

In Kenya there are Big People, and there are Little People. There are very few Big People, and very, very many Little People. The Big People call all the shots and make all the decisions, and the Little People obey. The slightly bigger Little People spend all their time and effort trying to become Big […]

I have a Friday 13th date with Jeff Koinange on his famous bench, K24 TV Capital Talk. The show will be aired at 8.00 pm Friday, repeated 10.30 pm. Also repeated Saturday morning, 9.00 am, and Sunday evening, 10.30 pm. It will also run on www.YouTube.com/K24TV.

It’s time for the annual Sunshine Awards from this columnist: highlighting the significant events and people of 2011. Before you proceed, please remember the selection process is opaque, peculiar and idiosyncratic, and not subject to external auditing. The Damburst of the Year was the amazing outbreak of popular uprisings. Starting from the Arab world this […]

I have been beating the traffic-gridlock tune on my drum on this page since 2003.  Every year, the situation in our capital city gets worse.  Every year, leaders yawn and look away.  But for how much longer? As Nairobians of all walks of life can testify, the situation is now at breaking point.  In recent […]

Let us take some time this Sunday to be thankful for certain types of people. Let us thank those who are polite and courteous, even when everyone around them is rude and obnoxious. Those who maintain etiquette and decorum even though that doesn’t get you anywhere in this increasingly ugly world. Those who say “please” […]

Once upon a time, businesses could get away with being bad to customers. They could neglect them and abuse them and not face any real consequences. What could a customer do in that world, anyway? Throw a fit on the company premises? Only a few employees, and possibly a handful of other customers, would observe […]