Articles Tagged Life & Society

Here we go again. The headlines say it all: the coalition government is crumbling, the principals have fallen out, the shilling is sliding, investors are nervous, we are facing another meltdown. But I ask you: what exactly has changed since last week? What cyclone has hit Kenya that our prospects look so suddenly bleak? Have […]

Amidst the carnage of Haiti, a quiet little drama is playing itself out. Baptist missionaries from the USA were arrested trying to take 33 “orphans” out of the wrecked country, ostensibly to a better life in an orphanage in the neighbouring Dominican Republic. Except that many of the children were not orphans at all, and […]

The green city in the sun. That was what our beautiful Nairobi was famously known as. Well, we’re still in the sun (and increasingly so), but the ‘green’ part of the description may soon be hard to justify. Why is no one worried about the pace at which trees are being destroyed in our city? […]

What passes for ‘news’ in this country? I want to put to you that what you are consuming is not news at all: it is pointless and irrelevant trivia. Let me start with an admission: I am spending less and less time consuming Kenyan news, and it is months since I watched a full television […]

For the past two weeks this column has been trying to instil some hope in you, to suggest that maybe, just maybe, things will getter better for Kenya. To end the series, let me move you smoothly to a third reason for hope in 2010: our international position. If you want to understand Kenya’s role […]

Last week I asked Kenyans to harbour some hope in their hearts for what this next decade might bring. I suggested that 2010 might turn out to be recorded in history as the year in which we turned the corner by finally attacking, and fatally wounding, the beast we call impunity. Maybe, just maybe, we […]

“FOR over a decade from the mid-1990s until 2007, Ireland’s economy grew more rapidly than any other in western Europe. Foreign investment poured in. Success at selling abroad made Ireland one of the world’s largest exporters per head. Opportunity attracted the enterprising. In less than a dozen years, a country long known for exporting its […]

2008 and 2009 were years of great gloom in Kenya. We kicked off 2008 with a bloodbath orchestrated by leaders and delivered by angry young men. Since then we have been on a tumultuous ride, facing a faltering economy, a hydra-headed leadership and a plethora of scams and scandals. The words “failed state” and “Kenya” […]

It is time for “A Sunny Day” to announce its annual Sunshine Awards, to honour those individuals and organisations that excelled, and to slate those who brought dismay to the world and disgrace to themselves. Recall two things about these awards: one, that we use the word “sunshine” to evoke both good cheer and the […]

Your holy war, your northern star / Your sermon on the mount from the boot of your car. …September, streets capsizing / Spilling over down the drains Shard of glass, splinters like rain / But you could only feel your own pain. Please / Get up off your knees. Please / Leave me out of […]

Legendary French football striker Thierry Henry handled the ball illegally last week, and set up his compatriot to score against the Republic of Ireland in a crunch qualifying game for next year’s World Cup. The referee did not notice. France went through as a result of this gross injustice, and the Irish were bundled out. […]

It behoves every society to look ahead, to peer through the mists of time and see what might happen to it tomorrow. We often wait for bad events to occur before addressing them, yet a little anticipatory thinking might allow us to foresee them and avoid them. There is a very serious problem brewing in […]

I want to tell you about “my” music this Sunday. My distant forebears emerged from the Punjab region in India and Pakistan, the land of the five rivers. The farmers living in this fertile land had plenty of time in which to develop their folk music, and they did a fine job. The music of […]

Justice Aaron Ringera, erstwhile head of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, quoted Shakespeare extensively during his tenure and elaborately during his prolonged departure. He is a lifelong devotee of the Great Bard, and with good reason: any lover of English must of necessity be a lover of the works of William Shakespeare. Such is his influence […]

Welcome to Sunwords.com. Feel at home, look around, browse, sit down and read, leave a comment. Best wishes, Sunny

I read a news report from India recently that left me thinking I had been flung back in time. Apparently farmers in Bihar, one of India’s most backward states, are forcing their unmarried daughters to plough their fields naked after sunset. This is in an attempt to “embarrass” the gods into sending rain to the […]

On Nairobi’s Nyerere Avenue, you will find a most intriguing sign. It says “Children’s Traffic Park”. Inside, on this most prime of prime real estate, you will see a large, elaborate operation. It looks like a most commendable initiative: a simulated road model, complete with battery-operated cars and other road vehicles, to teach children good […]

So we completed our national census exercise, and now we sit back to await the results. Kenyans will, of course, be very eager to know the numbers. But part of me wonders: do we really need to wait for the final tallies? Just the manner in which we ran this momentous exercise tells us a […]

My recent interview on NTV (August 29, 2009, with Misiko Andere) is now up on the NTV website, courtesy of YouTube. Watch it here

Last week my respected fellow columnist Professor Makau Mutua laid into Kenyans for following English rather than Kenyan football. The good professor was concerned about this new “colonisation” of the minds of Kenyans by its former ruler. Now, I have raged against inauthenticity and mindless mimicry myself many a time on this page, so why […]

Last week this column looked at the issue of nationality and patriotism as seen in world sports championships. I suggested we would lose many more of our athletes to richer countries, simply because we are not making this an attractive country for young people to be in. Do we ever stop to ask ourselves: why […]

When the athletes came round the final bend, our girl looked a distant third, her energy seemingly spent. The expected winner, from Ethiopia, began sprinting away and building a supposedly insurmountable lead. But somehow the Kenyan runner, against all the odds, found a final reserve tank and moved into higher gear. She began a frantic […]

I will be on Misiko Andere’s NTV breakfast show at 7.30 am on Thursday 27 August.

Hillary Clinton paid her much-anticipated visit to Kenya. US President Barack Obama had already signalled his unwillingness to visit his fatherland, so we knew that his redoubtable Secretary of State was the next best thing. Now, I often wonder about these visits and whether they serve any purpose other than spelling out America’s agenda in […]

Wangari Maathai is back, grabbing our attention about the damage we are doing to our collective mother, the planet. But where has she been? The good lady became inordinately quiet these past few years, ever since she dabbled in politics. She should have been banging our eardrums about the Mau Forest debacle a long time […]

We don’t have a welfare state in Kenya. Or do we? Look at it this way. Of our 35-plus million people, only around 2 million are in any form of ‘formal’ or ‘modern’ employment. Kenya as a country offers proper employment to fewer people than Wal-Mart does. It is these few people who form most […]

I will be discussing my book, Crown Your Customer, at the Storymoja Hay Festival at the Impala Club, Nairobi on Friday 31 July, 10.00-11.30 am. Come and join the discussion – I’d be delighted to have your company. The Storymoja Hay Festival is the first time that this prestigious literary event is being held on […]

I wanted to write an article about Michael Jackson this week. But as I sat down to do it, I found myself at a complete loss. There are at least four different articles I could write about the man, some of them contradictory. But perhaps contradiction is what defined the ‘King of Pop’ who died […]