When I was a little girl, I had these hand-me-down shoes that I loved. I wore them everywhere. Anywhere, really. I don't think I cared whether they were appropriate for where I was going. If those were the shoes I wanted to wear, then those were the shoes I was wearing. And when they became too small, I still didn't want to let them go. I would squeeze my feet into them and somehow convince myself that they still fit. I imagine an adult looking at me and thinking, Child, these shoes are clearly too small. Please take them off. But I loved them. And I think about those shoes sometimes when I hear us talk about things like seasons, letting go, releasing, creating room, moving on. Usually, when we talk about letting go, there is something wrong with the thing we're letting go of. It has become toxic. It doesn't serve us anymore. It is holding us back. We have outgrown it. We need to make room for something better. And yes, sometimes that is exactly what letting go looks li...
The Grand Coalition Government of 2008 was born out of national crisis — a desperate answer to a contested election and a country teetering on the edge of civil war. It was not a triumph, but a truce. And while it succeeded in restoring calm, the scars it left behind run deep and remain largely unhealed. For many, this was a turning point not just in politics, but in the national psyche. The choices made in that era continue to shape how Kenya governs, how it spends, how it reconciles — or fails to — and how we as individuals have come to fear conflict more than we demand accountability. A Deal That Changed Everything Brokered under international pressure after the disputed 2007 elections and the horrific post-election violence that followed, the Grand Coalition Government brought together political rivals Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga in an uneasy power-sharing agreement. On paper, it was a masterstroke of diplomacy. In practice, it was a bloated compromise that planted the idea that p...