"They have been looking for the leader of this revolution. But Ruto actually is the leader of this revolution. He's the one doing the things that are annoying people." ~
@OkiyaOmtatah
Wueh!
It took Citam less than 48 hours to respond to the Supreme Court ruling on LGBTQ+ associations in Feb last year. It's been 72 hours since the first major protests on Tuesday. So now?
#TotalShutdownKE
Are we keeping track?
- Uber, KFC and iPhones
- Riggy G/ Uhuru Kenyatta
- Russia
- Illuminati
- Azimio
- Cambridge Analytica
- WorldCoin
- Devil worshippers
- Ford Foundation
I'm sure there are more I'm missing
Almost 4 years ago, I started documenting the names and stories of
#NyayoHouse
torture victims, survivors and families in a series of threads. I intended to tweet 180 names. What many of you may not know is that I didn't get to 180. I stalled at around 160. Here's the reason why
You can be sleeping in your house away from riparian lands, only for water in a "dam" which will later be discovered not to be a dam but a disused railway tunnel, to break somewhere uphill from you...and still, the government spokesman will tell you 'it starts with you'
Someone today said that Kenya might become one of the first African countries since independence to completely implode and collapse in peacetime i.e. in the absence of war or civil conflict. I was shook.
Christine Mungai, Journalist: For me I don’t pray for our leaders anymore. My prayers have changed. I pray for the Kenyan people that we survive all this greed, mendacity, cruelty & callousness. The leaders have shown they don't care about us.
#DayBreak
@WaihigaMwaura
This is basically the ‘vyombo vya wageni’ mentality... as we beat up Jkuat students for not wanting to live in squalor & insecurity then build quality hostels for foreign students
This must be some kind of insurance fraud. I've never seen an insurance cover where the benefits are less than the premiums.
@ira_kenya
are you investigating
#SHIF
and the people behind it?
PSA: Just because there is someone "willing" to take a salary of 7k doesn't mean 7k is what you should pay them, or that 7k is what the job is worth. The market is not a substitute for ethics or human dignity
Kenya on Netflix lately has been featured as a drug trafficking hub, center for terrorist activity and a shelter for genocidaires
on brand, I guess, for this country
I want to see an animated Kenyan film about the monkey that shut down the Kenya Power grid some years ago... I need to know more about this monkey! What's her backstory? Who were her influences? Was it a deliberate act of sabotage to spark the Great Monkey War
In my line of work I've been to many conferences where a government/ industry person talks glowingly about how they are creating digital jobs in Kenya. "Digital jobs" sounds nice until you realise these are the kind of jobs that get outsourced here.
On Kelvin's job offers: I just want to know how those 1,000 positions materialized in the past 12 hours. I bet a big chunk of those companies already had his CV. What changed, between 9pm yesterday and this morning?
"Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial." ~ MLK
This Wikipedia article is one of the best things I’ve ever read in my life! Apparently there are 20 vowel sounds in English and Kenyans only recognize five (a,e,i,o,u). I love this chaos!
I really enjoy the pluralisation of English words that Kenyans have created and how it's creeping into formal meetings where someone says, "I want to work in an environment where there's respects and stuffs"
so good!🤭👌🏾
I hope we never go back to BBI coverage 24/7 ever again. Let that reggae stop forever.
Also, politicians are clearly useless and giving them airtime + media coverage makes what they do seem important.
But (plot twist) it's not!
Even those who killed Msando and shot children and have bankrupted our country and are now talking sweetly to the IMF are here Mama. I’m waiting for a signal on how to deal with them!
#JuliusMalemaChallenge
Although I had all the material -- press reports, book excerpts, and the invaluable 'We Lived To Tell' -- I didn't finish because of the impact doing the series had on my mental health and emotional stability. I started having anxiety attacks, nightmares and insomnia
One of the most meaningful things that Kenyan banks/ financial institutions can do for women is give no-questions-asked 'life recovery loans' because this is something that very many women have to do at least once in their lives. Many years ago I read a report by
@FSDKe
(THREAD)
Did you know there’s a planet whose shape is not spherical (round) but ellipsoid (oval/shaped like an egg)? Haumea is a dwarf planet beyond Neptune’s orbit that spins so fast that the gravity makes it elongated. A day on Haumea is 4 hours on earth
Struggling to articulate something coherent on this day
#TotalShutDownKE
. Hits different when you’ve actually escaped a situation narrowly, with your life. I can’t even say I had angels watching over me that night because what about Ivy, Sheila, Rita, and 500 others since 2016
Two - now almost 3 - years ago, I was part of the organising committee of a Whiteness Conference in Nairobi.
It was, in the words of my dear friend Curtis Reed, "the closest to the kingdom of God that we've ever experienced."
But it also nearly broke us.
I’m just struggling to wrap my mind around those boys, each unable to help the other in those final moments.
This is horrific and the Kenyan police must answer for this and all other deaths in police custody and extra judicial killings.
#JusticeForKianjokomaBrothers
A lot of things in Kenya have broken my heart. A lot. But that mother at the gates of Pumwani... my god. I have no words. I have nothing to express how angry and sick that made me.
"Zoom Zoom and away we go to school
And away we go to school
Ati Zoom
Atication
Ati kati for the people of the nation
Ati kati for the A, the B, the C, the D, the E...."
That. Song. Was. Prophetic.
School is on Zoom now 🤔
Reading story after story of torture, mutilation, imprisonment, beatings, family break-ups, lost livelihoods, broken dreams, and repression can fuck with your mind, as I learned. If that is what the *stories* did to me, how much more would actually living through it?
Kipchoge sermons coming through this morning:
1. You have a laser guide
2. Who are your pace-setters
3. It’s not Ineos, it’s Jesos
4. Breaking through the wind to your destiny
During my stay in the US, I found myself frequently answering the same seemingly benign question: "Are you planning to stay in the US?" But the conversation, particularly with white people, would almost always unfold in a way that would leave me baffled.
Sometimes the reveal is right there, no mystery, no bigger trick that the magician could use to distract. Korir said protests are like pollution (i.e. both need to be regulated). Your desire for a better life, for a country that works for you, is POLLUTION to the political class
- You will be declared a foreigner
- You will be declared a threat to national security
- Your sim card will be switched off
- You will be arrested
What else?
#HudumaNamba
A couple of months ago, 'A Very British Way of Torture' came out on Al Jazeera. It's taken me two months to find the strength to watch it. I can't get over the fact that this was literally one generation ago. My parents were alive, my grandmother was an adult during the Emergency
@Kalinaki
So today as we talk about Moi's legacy, consider this -- my unfinished
#NyayoHouse
threads, that lie on my Twitter timeline being shared today, and for me it's almost unbearable to look at them.
Here's my last tweet of the series, Day 150 actually.
One day we will talk about how white American evangelicals extend grace, friendship, fellowship and support to African Christians & churches in a way that they never, ever do to the Black church in the US. And how those two things are straight related.
At independence, [Kenya] had it all, a functional economy, vibrant workforce and strategic location, but somehow lost its bearings and collapsed into destitution. And if you ask why, Jomo Kenyatta emerges not as a hero, but as a major antagonist.
I’ve just remembered that the prize in inter-house music/ drama was a box of Britannia shortcake biscuits. Manze you get 5 biscuits and you’ve been practicing the ENTIRE term
Why are these guys now calling for conversations and discussions ?!? they were shoving BBI down our throats, saying it's unstoppable and it was on the front page every day... gerrrarahia
Folks in Nairobi, gather round!
As many of you know, I’m the Lead Curator of
@BarazaLab
. At Baraza, from the very beginning, we’ve been thinking about creating novel mash-ups of storytelling genres and forms, and get people who rarely work together to do so.
Enter: Story Sosa
Starting a campaign to reshoot & re-edit this with JUST Youssouf Katari speaking. *He's* the croissant master here and I want to know everything about this man and this new technique that *he* invented.
#FreeYoussouf
The worst thing about that nonsensical 'passports for fun' immigration speech was that it was given atop an SUV. Peering out. Hectoring. Lecturing. The contempt is just unimaginable.
I'm doing some writing over the next few months on the experiences of girls/ young womanhood in Christian social spaces (church, school C.U., teen/youth camps). If you have a story you'd like to share, on the record or anonymously, DM me! It's time to tell these stories.
I’ve just remembered, from five years ago, that wonderful hashtag
#WhatWouldMagufuliDo
. It all turned so quickly and so completely. But I never regret those moments of hope and promise and imagination, even if misplaced, even if premature, even if *this* is how it ends.
“Corona is like your wife, initially you try to control it then realized you can't, then you learn to live with it “ ~ Mohammad Mahfud MD , Indonesia Security Minister
@Kalinaki
It was my way of grappling with the most harrowing part of the
#NyayoHouse
story -- how Moi was supposedly a Christian, a devout, prayerful Christian.
Sometimes I wonder what we did to live in a country where we demanded an end to police impunity and in response the police changed their uniform
#SabaSabaMarchForOurlives
I remember one day calling
@Kalinaki
in the middle of a panic attack telling him that I feel like I'm carrying the weight of all this grief and horror in my body. He listened, as he always does, and told me to take a break from it.
As an editor sometimes you receive a piece that just knocks you out.
@kedolwa_waziri
's piece did that to me last week, and I'm tweeting about it now because I literally needed some time to catch my breath and recover. This shattered me.
@Kalinaki
I did, and then started having longer interludes between posts, until I just let it rest. I couldn't do it any more, as much as I wanted to. I began thinking about the supernatural, actually, about how religious narratives can capture or hijack a people's freedom dreams
My mum has never said "congratulations" to me. Ever. And I think I have a few things over the years that, you know, congrats were in order. She says "umejaribu" (you have tried)
Kenyans: No one is coming to save us. Obama is living his best life. Your fave benevolent dictator is auctioning his opponent’s assets. And your other fave benevolent dictator is charging bloggers a $1000 license fee and arresting pregnant schoolgirls. It’s just us, guys.
There's someone I have to mute on this timeline. Just a few years ago he was enabling and celebrating all the unethical, illegal, and violent ways the ICC cases were scuttled. Now he's all about the rule of law, justice and the constitution. I kent. Boy bye
At my son’s school for a CBC/new curriculum meeting for parents. Usually parents meetings are 🔥 and I’m hoping this will be no different. Will be tweeting
Chevda tastes like friendship
Ugali tastes like adulting
Mangoes taste like lust
Njahi tastes like sorrow
Chips taste like hugs, giggles, cuddling, love and joy
Yesterday, my 82 year old grandmother was on a bus coming from Mombasa to Nairobi. She's strong and still pretty independent, so this trip usually doesn't exhaust her. But at Voi, the bus was stopped by cops at 11am. They were told it was because of the Safari Rally.
Kenya's problem is that it is run the same way as those Whatsapp forwards from your mum and aunties. "Avoid x street: robbers have taken over!" "Beware poisonous sugar!" "Caution: New scam in town!" The ABC of being a Kenyan - Avoid, Beware, Caution
First our angels are not available for this program
Second yts folks don’t know what being an intercessor is. Come to Nairobi Arboretum and learn tongues, rhythm and cadence as appropriate
Instead of sitting at home and watching M0i's saintly status being burnished even more, join
@BarazaLab
+
@sisterhood_lam
for a day of alternative mourning. We will speak, recite, remember, and have a special live reading of excerpts from the TJRC report
The framing here...🙄
Would you, as a Kenyan, vote for a female president?
Would you, as a sane person, vote for a female president?
Would you, as a sentient being, vote for a female president?
On and on
It's boring and it needs to change
Would you, as a Kenyan, vote for a female President?🇰🇪
.
@scheafferoo
is in
#TheSituationRoom
as the hosts discuss the issues around this dream.
📺WATCH the livestream on our pinned post or
I don't know why Kaluhi doesn't reply to my tweets but just tell her I made her Creamy Chicken Linguine, Mango Cucumber & Chicken Salad, Chilli Yellow Bean Stew and Tilapia Masala all in the past week and that
@KaluhisKitchen
is a national treasure we don't deserve
#IfikieKaluhi