KenyaOnAShoeString: Real Advice for Real Kenyans

Everyone says they want the truth — until it disagrees with them. Then suddenly it’s fake news, bad energy, or “a hater.” We love truth the way we love kale smoothies: in theory. It looks noble from a distance, but up close, it tastes like discomfort. The truth is elusive because it knows where to hide. It’s been studying us for centuries. It knows we get defensive, that we protect our pride like property, that we prefer a comforting lie to an inconvenient fact. So it hides in plain sight — right behind the thing we don’t want to hear. We live in an age where opinions travel faster than facts, where outrage is a national hobby, and where every WhatsApp group has at least one self-declared expert. The internet was supposed to make us wiser, but it just made our arguments louder. You can Google anything now — except humility. Truth has learned to adapt. It used to live in libraries and classrooms, but now it’s forced to rent space between conspiracy theories and motivational reels. It...

In Kenya , funerals are often not about truth. They are about performance. A drunkard becomes a “ community man .” An absent father becomes “a pillar of the family .” A corrupt politician is mourned as “a servant of the people .” And if someone dies violently, or after a long illness, the script shifts even more dramatically. Suddenly, all sins are erased. It doesn’t matter if they abandoned their children, exploited others, or lived recklessly . Their suffering — or the tragedy of their death — becomes a shield. We act as if pain in death cleanses pain they caused in life. But it doesn’t. How you died does not redeem how you lived. Cancer doesn’t rewrite your cruelty. A fatal accident doesn’t transform a selfish life into a noble one. Even being killed unjustly doesn’t wash away the harm you may have caused when you had power and choices. Suffering in death may make us feel pity, but it does not make you a saint. Why do we do this? Because it’s easier. It’s easier to package ...

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 ...

“The best time to buy land in Kenya is during the rainy season.” That saying holds weight—not just literally but metaphorically too. Because only when the heavens open and the water flows do we truly see things for what they are. What looked like a decent, promising plot can turn into a swamp. What was once a trusted path home can vanish without a trace. This afternoon it rained. And as I walked home, I realized: the path I take every day isn’t really a path. It’s a suggestion—a possibility that only holds shape when it’s dry. When the rain came, it ceased to exist. Isn’t that how much of life is? The paths we swear by, the routines we follow, the beliefs we lean on—sometimes they only work when conditions are good. When the metaphorical rain comes, when life gets hard, what we thought was stable disappears. And suddenly we’re ankle-deep in questions we’ve avoided for years. In Kenya, rain is a test. It is both blessing and burden. It reveals the truth of our planning, our priorities, ...