If a child grows up to be kind, healthy, responsible, self-sufficient, and decent—but not wealthy—has the sacrifice failed? Most people would instinctively say no. Yet many families behave as though the answer is yes. Not openly, of course. No parent sits their child down and says, "I didn't raise you to be happy. I raised you to be rich." But expectations have a way of revealing themselves. In comparisons with more successful relatives. In questions about promotions, land, and home ownership. In the disappointment that hangs in the air when a child is doing well enough to survive but not well enough to transform the family's fortunes. And perhaps nowhere is this tension more visible than in Kenya, where sacrifice is often treated as the highest form of love. Parents sacrifice for their children. Older siblings sacrifice for younger siblings. Entire generations sacrifice in the hope that the next one will live better. But what happens when sacrifice quietly becomes an...
I’m writing this because I’m angry — not the kind of anger that passes, but the kind that grows. The kind that keeps you up at night. I look at Nairobi today and I don’t recognize it. Not because of development. Not because of traffic. But because this city, this country — my home — is being bought up, piece by piece, by people who don’t love it the way we do . And the rest of us? We're being priced out, pushed aside, and told to be quiet. Studio apartments in Westlands are going for 9 million shillings. Who are they for? Certainly not for the ordinary Kenyan. And yet foreigners — many of them — are buying two, three, four houses like it’s a shopping spree, while the people who grew up in these neighborhoods are priced out, forced to the outskirts, or locked into eternal renting. And when we speak up, we’re told, “Hii nchi si yetu?” I see the face of this country changing — and it’s not just cultural. It’s ownership. It’s power. It’s the future slipping out of our hands. To Those...