KenyaOnAShoeString

I have been dealing with a problem in my foot for almost two weeks. This might not sound particularly dramatic. It isn't cancer. It isn't an emergency. It isn't even the kind of pain that stops me from going about my day. Which is perhaps why I found myself hesitating. You see, I am a walker. Not the kind of person who takes a stroll every now and then. I walk for two to three hours most days. Walking is how I think, how I clear my head, and how I make sense of the world. If there is one part of my body I should be willing to invest in, it is probably my feet. Yet when I started calling podiatrists in Nairobi, I found myself doing mental gymnastics. The cheapest consultation fee I found was KES 5,000. Consultation. Not treatment. Not scans. Not medication. Just the privilege of finding out what might be wrong. By the time everything was done, the bill could easily reach KES 15,000 or KES 20,000. And suddenly I found myself wondering whether I really needed a podiatrist. May...

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 was reading The Last Letter by Rebecca Yarros when one of her twins, Maisie, started complaining about a pain in her hip. At first, it did not seem serious. The kind of thing you monitor. The kind of thing you take seriously, but not urgently. Her mother did what any careful parent would do—she took her to the hospital. Then again. And again. Tests were done. Results came back clean. Until they did not. At a bigger hospital, something finally showed up, but even then, it pointed in the wrong direction. The markers looked like leukemia. It fit the pattern doctors were used to seeing. Except it was not leukemia. It was neuroblastoma, a cancer that usually affects children much younger than Maisie. She did not fit the expected profile, so it was not the first thing anyone thought to look for. And when her mother tried to make sense of it all— but we have been here before, they checked everything —the answer she got was simple: They didn’t know what to look for. While reading that scen...

Today I asked someone what having enough money looked like to them. They said it would mean no longer being bound by work — the freedom to show up when they wished, to come and go without the burden of schedules, to become master of their own time. It was a practical answer, relatable and familiar. But it made me turn inward. I began to wonder what my version of “having money” is — not in the conventional sense, but in the intimate, unspoken meaning I carry around quietly. And what came to me was this: To have money, for me, would be to have the privilege of being still. Not rushing. Not planning. Not calculating, budgeting, or negotiating with the endless list of “shoulds.” Not living one step ahead of myself like a person forever chasing the next instruction. Just… still. Because the moment money enters our hands, something else enters with it — movement. Bills. Obligations. Savings. Investments. The constant mental gymnastics of “what now, what next, what if.” The in...

"Sometimes the markers of adulthood arrive, and all they bring is the quiet reminder that we are still ourselves." The new house. The promotion. The fancy dinner. The long-awaited trip. The little victories we imagined would change us. And yet, when they arrive, the feeling is often smaller, quieter, less transformative than we expected. Life keeps moving, and we remain — essentially — the same people we were before the milestone, carrying the same thoughts, habits, and internal rhythms. I have built, saved, and achieved things I thought would define me. Each time, I expected exhilaration, a sense of arrival, a reshaping of identity. And each time, the reality was softer: a subtle satisfaction, a fleeting pride, a quiet observation that I am still myself. There was no sudden transformation, no cinematic moment of revelation, no magic that altered who I am. Just me, in a new context. It is tempting to feel disappointment, to think that the milestone failed to deliver. But p...

The other evening, I went for an after-work coffee with two colleagues. Another day, I had dinner by myself — twice — in a nice restaurant. The kind of place that appears often in movies, books, and vlogs: soft lighting, carefully plated food, the suggestion of a life unfolding well. I remember sitting there and thinking: is this it? In stories, this is meant to feel like success. An evening out after work. A quiet dinner in a good restaurant. The kind of adult life that is supposed to arrive once you’ve done the right things. It’s framed as enviable, aspirational — a marker that you’ve made it into a certain version of adulthood. But nothing landed. The conversations were pleasant. The food was good. There was nothing wrong with the experience. And yet, all I could think about was how much I wanted to be in bed. There was no spark. No sense of arrival. Just a subdued awareness of time passing. I’ve been noticing this more often lately — not just with social rituals, but with mil...

This weekend, I watched a short lesson on learned helplessness , and it struck me how deeply it mirrors our daily lives as Kenyans — not just in politics or big systems, but in the small, ordinary spaces we occupy every day. The lecturer began with a simple exercise. Each student received a paper with scrambled letters and was told to form real words. She insisted everyone had the same set. What we didn’t know was that the first two “words” weren’t the same. One group got easy, solvable words like DOG and CAT , while the other got letter combinations that could never make sense — XQZ , PLT . As you’d expect, the first group solved theirs quickly. The second group struggled, then gave up. When the final round came, everyone had the same easy word. But by then, the second group didn’t even try. They’d already learned that effort was pointless. That is learned helplessness — when we’ve been stuck for so long that even when freedom appears, we don’t believe in it. What Is Learned He...

We like to imagine that truth is buried deep, hidden away like a secret treasure waiting for the chosen few to uncover it. We search in books, in mysteries, in whispers of what might be. Yet often, the truth is not hidden at all — it comes from visible sources. It is there, plain as daylight, though our eyes and hearts may not always want to recognize it. Think about the people around us. How many times has someone’s behavior told us exactly who they are, but we chose to ignore it? The friend who only calls when they need something. The leader who speaks of service but lives in luxury at the people’s expense. The partner whose actions never match their words. We see these truths in plain sight, but we excuse them, cover them, or tell ourselves a different story. Later, when disappointment comes, we act surprised — yet the truth was always visible. Why then do we miss it? Part of it is human nature. We crave mystery. We want the comfort of believing that the truth is hidden somewhere ...

Why does doing the right thing feel like a punishment nowadays? You refuse “ chai ” and lose a tender. You return extra change and get a strange look. You speak up at work and become “difficult.” In a world that seems to reward shortcuts, spin, and spectacle, integrity can feel like a tax you pay while others speed past. And yet integrity has its own currency —quiet, slow, and hard to counterfeit. The problem is that most of us don’t keep both ledgers open. We see the immediate costs of being honest and miss the compounding returns. Let’s unpack how we got here, why integrity feels penalized, what its currency actually buys, and how to live it without becoming naïve—or bitter. How We Slid Into “Everything Is a Transaction” This didn’t happen overnight. Three long arcs converged: From community to market: As life monetized—education, healthcare, even celebrations—more decisions became price-tag decisions. When money mediates everything, “what works” often beats “what’s right.” ...

Curiosity is alive in Kenya — but it is restless, shallow, and often wasted. We ask questions every day, but most of them don’t take us anywhere. Listen to the radio in a matatu and you’ll hear it: someone calling in to debate whether it’s acceptable to date your friend’s ex. Scroll through social media and you’ll find endless threads about celebrity drama or political insults. Even in offices, the loudest questions are often: “Who annoyed the boss today?” or “When is the next team-building?” We are curious, yes — but about things that rarely stretch us, rarely free us, rarely move us forward. But what if the problem isn’t curiosity itself? What if the real issue is how we phrase our curiosity ? How Curiosity Gets Killed Early From childhood, Kenyans are told: “ Usihoji sana .” Don’t question too much. A child who asks “Why?” too often is labeled stubborn. A worker who questions a system is branded difficult. A citizen who questions leadership is told to “respect authority.” We...