Don't sell people an incomplete map and then blame them for getting lost. I've been sitting with that thought for weeks because the more I look around, the more I realize that many of the frustrations we carry as a society are not simply about unemployment, corruption, inequality or even money. They are about the stories we tell one another. From the time we are children, we are handed maps for how life is supposed to work. Study hard and life will work out. Get a degree and you'll find a good job. Work hard and success will follow. Save consistently and you'll become financially secure. Find your passion and the money will come. Marry the right person and everything else will fall into place. Believe in yourself. Think positively. Stay disciplined. None of these statements is entirely false. But none of them is entirely true either. The problem is rarely what they say. The problem is what they leave unsaid. Because what is omitted from a story is often just as powerful...
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...