Written by Betty Njoroge

It’s amazing how much outrage insulting a prominent woman generates. In the past few weeks the number of conspicuous women who have been attacked by first equally conspicuous men and then later a Senator and lastly a Governor cause such uproar that you would imagine the feminist movement was alive and thriving in Kenya.

If, in its most basic and simplest definition, feminism means that women are equally human as men; then some women apparently are more human than other women. A female politician barges into the Nairobi Governor’s office with protestors and during the confrontation, he slaps her. Instant OUTRAGE, #Kideromeltdown.

Two days prior to that incident, the same female politician leads calls for Kenya to withdraw from the Rome Treaty and rants about how “Witnesses were coached” in complete disregard for the hundreds of  women who were victims of extreme violence including rape. Not a SQUEAK. On Thursday, house majority MPs went so far as to accuse civil society and the victims represented at the ICC of FRAUD. No one remembered that those victims also included women, who were brutalized and whose lives were destroyed.

Maybe, it’s the fact she was slapped. Oh wait, this same week, a woman in labor was forced to give birth on the floor of Bungoma District Hospital and the FEMALE nurses slapped her for messing up the floor. Outrage? No. There was no #Bungomanursemeltdown. There was no avid banter on how the mother may have deserved being slapped coz she messed the floor. There were certainly no demands that the nurses or even the MOH of Bungoma District Hospital be fired.

Some women are certainly more equal than others. It’s not getting slapped that gets you attention round here it’s who you are when you are slapped.

For some perverse reason I am supposed to relate with this female politician because we both have female genitalia. She certainly doesn’t remember what’s underneath my skirt when she denounces the only court that has attempted to prosecute ANYONE for charges pertaining to rape. Hell, in the whole of Kenya not a single PEV rapist has even seen the inside of a jail. The Director of Public Prosecution, Mr. Keriako Tobiko admits that he has at least 5000 cases related to the post election violence yet to be prosecuted. Thus far, only 2 suspects locally have faced prosecution and conviction in murder trials related to the PEV.

More than 5 years later, how many rape victims are likely to see any sort of justice? Aren’t those victims, some of whom are right now raising the offspring from that crime also female?

What does feminism mean anyway, in Kenya? Is it the meaningless Gender AGENDA activism that demands 1/3 of elected and constitutional posts be filled with women for the sake of them being women regardless of how competent they are for that position? Now that we gave those many posts to women, how many of those women stood up in parliament on Thursday to remind the house majority that the women who were victims of violence are not fraudsters?

A female politician is slapped and I am supposed to care because I have female genitalia as well. Audrey Mbugua identifies as female too, why are we not outraged that her much needed gender re-assignment surgery has been denied and yet this is a procedure done in Kenya ever since the 80s? Will we be outraged if she is insulted only AFTER she gets the right genitals?

Looks like its only genitalia that I am supposed to have in common with these female politicians. So since the poor man also has male genitalia like the politicians when he is forced to pay tax amounting to about 46% of his income and the politicians are NOT paying any taxes, does he feel like the man’s brother? Apparently they feel like they are members of the same fraternity such that when a female politician slaps the Nairobi Governor that poor man burdened by tax immediately says, “women should not provoke men.”

This is the result of a society that simply thinks with its nether regions. We only value people for what they can do with their genitalia; GENDER is defined by what you were born with in between your legs. So no matter what the level of injustice is and no matter who is perpetrating the evil, we all must relate with that person based on what we assume they also have between their legs.

That’s why Audrey Mbugua has no fem-Nazis online championing her cause, because she was born with the wrong genitalia.  Women thus refuse to recognize her as female as well, men think that it’s up to them to heap insults on her for having gender identity dysphoria.

Irony is when a women’s representative decries the International Criminal Court because she supports the suspects and yet she represents the victims in the County Assembly!

Kenya, and its erstwhile legislature and failed judicial system, is as far away from an equal society as it can possibly get, and please let us not talk about feminism here.

We only take prominent women seriously. The ordinary woman should expect to remain sub-human. That’s why you can feel outraged that a prominent woman is insulted but heap insults and “slut shame” 11 girls accused of making porn with a dog, even THOUGH the media lied about the “crime.”

We keep saying that Kenya is lucky not to have gone the Rwandan genocide route. Well, in 19 years since the horrific war, the Rwandan government has co-operated with the international community, has actively participated in the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda and in addition has prosecuted thousands of cases in local trials conducted in “Gachacha” courts as well as in the Judiciary. Rwanda took feminism seriously, knowing full well how fractured the society was, especially because the women and children were the greatest victims of atrocity.

It took the trial and conviction of a female suspect of crimes against humanity at the ICTR for the world to know that even WOMEN can be tried and found guilty of war crimes such as rape. Kenya will only be as progressed as Rwanda as a society and nation when crimes pertaining to conflict and violence are taken as seriously.

When our female political representatives are as vocal against the course of justice as the men, regardless of the fact that women were victims of crimes, and in total disregard for their constituents that is MISOGYNY, not feminism.  You surely cannot possibly expect me to relate with a female that hates me for my genitalia simply because she also has the same genitalia.  We may both be female, but we certainly are not the same kind of woman.

My failed businesses had a purpose after all! Recently, I learned the positive side to all of my failed business projects in the past.

My mother once looked at me as I cried, one failed business followed by another. I had done my research right. I had prepared a super business strategy; I had already contacted some business mentors. Yet still, my businesses did not pick up and failed in the end. I truly learned the art of trial and error with an extra baggage of frustration.

But today, my mother’s words, “My dear child, don’t worry, one day all these things will make sense.”

That ‘one day’ was today!

I met a young man on my way home who camped outside in the cold selling some warm snacks for passers-by. I was intrigued by his determination and the fact that he was the only vendor within vicinity who was actually standing up, waiting for customers. Other vendors had wrapped themselves in warm things as they curled themselves on their chairs waiting for clients.

I’ve got the blood of a marketer so I simply gave-in to the young man for his commendable appeal. What I had planned to be a one-stop trip to buy a roasted smokie with kachumbari led to a deep conversation about business.

He said that he never got the chance to finish school but he’s using what he’s got to earn a decent living. In the freezing cold weather he smiled with excitement over his small business and said that he would like to try out new products. Other vendors had taken up his idea and he needed to beat the competition.

As he spoke, I remembered all of my struggles; all the capital I had invested, burning the midnight oil doing research and coming up with a business strategy, prayers galore and making my family members guinea pigs for business experiments

I could not leave this young man without fueling his passion for his business.

And so I spoke, and asked him questions, provided him with examples and gave him ideas on how to expand his business. He was amazed that a stranger would take time to motivate him!

Well, at the time my business was failing flat on the floor… my friends had no idea about why I needed to make it work so bad, my mentors suddenly went A-WALL, my family honestly just needed a break.

Then I finally learned my lesson today: my business failed not because my attitude or plans were wrong. They simply failed because of that extra push to greatness that I lacked from someone who believed in me.

I know not if I’ll ever meet the young man again, but one thing is for sure – I made sure that by the time I left that young man, he didn’t have questions but ideas to put into action. After purchasing the snacks that he sold, I am glad that he was more determined than I had found him.

~Even if we suffer through challenges, the least we can do is carry the lessons we learn though it all and use them to inspire another person.

This is the true spirit of mentorship!

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Ayuma: I am a young Kenyan lady with a gift in writing and expression. I love to share my lessons in life and decorate the minds of many with the beauty that bursts from my African land. I love to paint with words – from my heart to yours! For more from me, please visit https://diaryofayuma.wordpress.com/

So from the very onset, corruption and greed have been the principles that my country was founded on; and to date, these principles have been counted on by those who assume any form of power. Whoever comes in next picks up the torch and follow in the same footsteps.

I live in a country in which basic amenities are auctioned to the highest bidder; and the sad part is that there is very little I (or anyone else for that matter) can do about it. We are oft told to accept and move on- like I am supposed to understand. Like I am supposed to shrug off the fact that we are awarded the dubious honour of the top seats in the corruption index statistics. Glaring at newspaper stands every morning, I am greeted with screaming headlines enticing me to the rude awakening of a government that burns so much money in refurbishing an unused state house, luxury jets and increased remuneration for Members of Parliament; when teachers occupy streets annually in protest for better pay.

I live in a country in which 10 million shillings goes missing, and the minister in charge blames a typing error. In another parallel universe, this would arouse a legal nightmare of epic proportions, but in my harsh reality, the said minister becomes president. Where politics is not a cartel, it’s a family business. And anyone who dares speak out or prosecute the perpetrators of such impunity is accused and found guilty of wishful thinking. Where money talks and ‘bullshit’ walks, the absence of evidence is the presence of proof.

What is more heartrending is that corruption does not start from the old men trickling down to my fellow young generation. It starts with us when we ask for money to vote in a person for small positions such as the Chairperson of a campus students association. It then grows, nurturing itself with the experience handed down by the hoary generation in their final stages of existence.

Therefore, in my opinion, corruption is a weed and ought to be extended the courtesy it deserves. In order to get rid of it, you have to uproot it, not slash it. Wipe the slate clean from where it stems; from us the young people. Let us not act pious here, we all love cutting corners. I have traded money for a favour. So I understand that the system has institutionalized us. But that’s no excuse for encouraging corruption. Otherwise Kenya will continue to be a rich man’s vision and a poor man’s prison. Let the change begin with us now.

War against corruption is bound to be hard, complicated and bloody- but it is also necessary. If this war is not waged, then the poverty and moral decadence inherited from the founding fathers of our nation will be our share of the Kenyan pie.

Words by;

Magunga George Williams

(therealginc.wordpress.com)

It’s every girls’ socialization; grow up get married have a family, have status. One lady in Mombasa took this goal to the next level – she got married, was sadly widowed and then she got married again, to two men. Turns out, they were both determined to maintain their relationship with her even after discovering their rivalry and agreed on contract to share her as a wife. Unfortunately, one of them talked to the media about it and his part of the deal was promptly cancelled, as she chased him away.

Speaking of the Coast, I have a doctor friend who works there. She tells me how the women will come to the hospital having been in labor 3 days at home and desperately needing a caesarian section and will not consent to the procedure until “Mwenye” says it’s all right. Who is “Mwenye”? Why the guy who paid a couple of goats for you of course!

Johann Ludwig Krapf is forever credited with making the Swahili language more superfluous in the mid 19^th century, but I am quite sure he never anticipated this sort of linguistic evolution of terms. Whereas the Swahili proper term for “Husband” is interpreted as “Bwana” meaning “Master” the word “Mwenye” is correctly interpreted to mean “Owner”.

Here is where some definitions are in order. In the Swahili cultural context, “Bwana”, your master does not necessarily own you; this is a person who is to be seen as a superior, in administration, in status, in politics or employment. When used by a woman to refer to her husband, the term “Bwana” indicates a close personal, romantic and sheltered protection; she is thus neither owned nor a slave but at the same time belongs to and is protected by her man.

In contrast, the term “Mwenye” is mainly a prefix, used to indicate distinct ownership of property. “Mwenye Nyumba” for instance indicates who owns a particular house.

You can imagine thus, how the usage of the term “Mwenye” in a marriage relationship connotes the sort of ownership that the man wields over the person and body of the woman, which is why she won’t consent to a much needed caesarian section unless “Mwenye” gives his permission.

Here is the thing. It’s no surprise that the moment some women get married they cease to think for themselves. Come on ladies, all of a sudden you need permission to lunch with your friends. It’s a common phenomenon, where basically the new wife supplants her independence and replaces it with fully depending on the man for every single thing. Some call this submission; I call it being infantile.  This is not submissive behavior by the way, it’s a refusal to be an adult capable of handling her half of an adult relationship like the grown up she is. To be even more precise, this foolish behavior is the anti-thesis of being female, being feminine and being mature.

I say it for your own good. You don’t need to call “Mwenye” and ask him if you should consent to a life saving procedure. You don’t need his permission to eat lunch. You need to grow the hell up and behave like a grown woman because that’s who he wanted to marry.

Incidentally, my doctor pal assures me that 9 times out of 10, “Mwenye” has passed out under some coconut tree having imbibed copious amounts of Mnazi wine in celebration of his anticipated new born.

The whole “Mwenye” deal is not just about a refusal to grow up and be responsible; it’s about a power play in marriages that is quite dangerous. Let’s hope that all ladies who have a “Mwenye” and not a “Bwana” are living with a benevolent owner. It’s likely though that the willful giving of extreme power over one’s own life indicates that they most likely live with a genuine bastard.

See, when you value yourself monetarily and somebody coughs up that price, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he values you too. No. If a man is going to “buy” a wife he then can easily take liberty to treat his “property” any which way he pleases. Come on, gents, you know that is how many men behave. They treat women as less than human, creatures that are to serve them, to give them sexual pleasure and to bear their children without question. In exchange the women get to be provided for. It’s a trade off, a terrible one, but you both do it voluntarily so no judgment here.

I had this rather interesting exchange with an acquaintance – he postulated that polyandry in Kenya is “repugnant to justice”. Why? Because men should not share a wife. Also, in his view it was a mark of low self esteem for a man to share a wife.

I am leaving the legal question of polyandry’s possible “repugnancy to justice” in family law to the lawyers; I choose to deal with the psychology behind the idea of sharing a wife. If a man sees a woman as some sort of commodity he then surely will not see fit to share that which he deems his own. Same with the women who declare “I don’t share some things” when asked if they would consider polygamy.

The fact is, when you think about marriage the way most Kenyans view it, it’s about ownership. It’s about “YOU are never leaving me, you are mine.” The couple may not refer to each other as “Mwenye” and…  I suppose “Mbuzi” (Goat) would be the term of endearment the man has for his wife there. The two may even call each other darling, but let’s not mistake that to mean an equal partnership of any sort.

In a relationship where there is a “Mwenye” that is called voluntary slavery or self-sale. According to Wikipedia – “Voluntary slavery (self-sale) is the condition of slavery entered into at a point of voluntary consent. This was a common way for impoverished people to provide subsistence for themselves or their family and provision was made for this in law.”

In many ways, given the economic situation in Kenya, I don’t blame women. The idea that marriage is an indentured voluntary slavery is so ingrained that women won’t think twice about the terms of the marriages they are getting into. Its part of our culture, that to save yourself from grinding poverty you will auction your daughters, it’s no wonder they refer to the buying party as “Mwenye”. Yes, we know men won’t go into the labor wards, but that doesn’t mean that you wait for him to rise from a drunken slumber and save your life. You may choose to be a slave, but a dead slave is useless. Voluntary slaves should have the brains to consider their own survival first and foremost after all. Think, ladies.

Written by Betty Njoroge

W.S.I – (abbreviation) “Willfully Sexually Ignorant, a state of deliberately ignoring sex education and yet being sexually active; knowing off sex education but ignoring it.”

Every Friday night they are on twitter, on facebook, busy sex-chatting the explicit and the vulgar. On the bright side, they are on social media so the chances of them actually DOING what they are talking about are reduced; on the dark side, the blatant ignorance they display which they actually practice.

In 2002, then President Mwai Kibaki declared free primary education and 1 million kids went to school within the first few weeks. Then came the nationwide anti-HIV campaign, led by the president himself that resulted in “sex education” being introduced as part of the curriculum. So our little kids were told of the evils of sex outside marriage and about the reproductive cycles and the “education” stopped way short of how to take preventive measures. Well, the ABCs were mentioned: Abstinence, Be faithful and Use a condom, but no one was going to demonstrate HOW to use condoms. Never mind, we said, they were children in primary school and don’t need to know how to use contraceptives. The religious people would raise hell anyway. Apparently God has issues with contraceptives.

So here we are; dealing with a generation of legal adults aged 18-49 who are STILL willfully sexually ignorant because lo and behold, most don’t use condoms, and most don’t take contraceptive measures. Now it’s understandable if one was a teenager in high school and unable to access information or contraceptives, but these people are not in high school, these are people who are in university or are working, people who have access to news, information, smart phones and GOOGLE.  These are people who go out there, have unprotected sex, and with more than one partner.

The willfully sexually ignorant woman will not spend 50 shillings on a monthly hormonal contraceptive. No. She will spend 150 kshs on an emergency pill which she will take up to 4 times a month, despite the instructions clearly stating that it is an EMERGENCY pill, and one does not have those sorts of emergencies 4 times a month. Never mind the hormonal boosts she keeps giving her body, or the fact that an emergency pill is taken in case one’s REGULAR contraceptive method has failed or if she forgot to take the pill for 2 days or more. She relies on the morning after pill because she is compulsive the night before and apparently unable to follow simple instructions or swallow a pill each day like a normal person.

WSI women use emergency pills as regular contraception, pumping their bodies full of hormones and messing up their cycles so much that they don’t know when their periods are supposed to turn up. Should the WSI miss her period anyway, and suspect she is pregnant, she will spend 6-10 thousand kshs on an abortion; an UNSAFE abortion.

I don’t have to tell you that abortion is illegal in Kenya so chances of one procuring a SAFE Dilate and Curette (D&C) depend on how much the doctor values his ethics. Needless to say, it would be an expensive procedure. Basically, the average WSI encumbered with an unwanted pregnancy will seek a backstreet abortion. The damage done in such procedures fills the government clinics and the district hospitals with females whose insides are ripped to shreds and festering with sepsis, and if the WSI woman gets away unscathed, she remains defiantly, willfully sexually ignorant and repeats the process once again.

The WSI man on the other hand is not only willfully ignorant sexually; he is also incapable of self control or taking responsibility. Thus, if he gets an infection it is the woman’s fault. If she gets pregnant it is her fault. If he is HIV positive someone else infected him. During the entire sexual act it is the woman who “gave” him. The result being that the WSI man is unlikely to EVER consider condom use, or even have the slightest hint on the different contraceptives available. He thus would not know if his woman took a pill or not. The most the WSI man would do is contribute cash to an abortion.

Though it may seem that WSI male is getting away with less physical damage due to sexual behavior, the WSI man leads HIV prevalence, being slightly ahead of the woman.

You see there is absolutely no point of doing anti-HIV campaigns and adverts if the people who are supposedly educated enough to understand these campaigns remain willfully sexually ignorant. That is, they IGNORE condoms, they IGNORE contraceptives and they IGNORE safe sex practices. There really is no point in lamenting the impending deaths of people who choose to expose themselves to HIV infections despite there being condoms and despite there being VCT clinics where they can be tested. It is a cold thing to say, but it has to be said. If you are a WSI female popping the morning after pill 4 times a month thinking that you are avoiding pregnancy all the time you are exposing yourself by not using condoms or the regular pill, you really cannot expect us to believe that you don’t know what you are doing. I am NOT sorry if you refuse to be sexually responsible and thus face the consequences of your irresponsible behavior. Yes. I am cold hearted. But then you are willfully ignorant. We are even.

We aren’t talking about teenagers who are caught up by their hormones and a lack of access. We are talking about fully grown adults who not only were educated in school, they grew up post 1980s so they know about the dangers of HIV and AIDs and they know about condom use. These are people who come from families where their own parents used contraceptive measures such that they have average 2-3 siblings. These are people who can read but choose not to. They are as sexually illiterate as the herds’ boy in the remotest plains of Kenya. These are people who live close enough to hospitals such that when their backstreet abortions go wrong they can at least seek treatment at a medical facility.

WSI people behave that way ON PURPOSE. A willfully sexually ignorant person is like this suicide patient a doctor once told me about. The man had tried to slice open his neck. His family took him to hospital in good time and the doctor spent hours in surgery working on reattaching the various sinews, nerves and veins in his neck. He survived in good condition. Barely 6 hours after surgery the man woke up and jumped from the 5th story of the hospital. Just like that he was rushed back into surgery for the same doctor to stitch him together again. The doctor was working on another patient and couldn’t stop, so he took his time. 30 minutes later, suicide guy had died.

Sometimes you actually get what you want. We can’t keep stitching fools together.

–

Betty Waitherero Njoroge is a writer, a human rights activist and a producer for television. She writes commentary and opinion pieces on socio-political matters in Kenya and runs her own blog on www.bettywaitherero.blogspot.com

Dear Abi, 

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those driven by hope and those driven by fear. With these there are failures and there are those who succeed. You either escape the fear or achieve your hope. To both these are measures of success. I for one walk the fine line between the two. Whether fence sitting will be considered a virtue in this circumstance, remains for the eyes of the beholder. For in my battle to find meaning there is beauty defined in the blurred lines. As they say, all is fair in love and war, but what is just to a heart that does not find love. 

I hope you read this. Though we are yet to meet. I hope in between the lines you read the undertone of lovemaking in a sea of emotions, surfing on the waves of passion, attraction and pure instinct. At the end of this letter let there not be a fullstop but a comma. Symbolism to the yet to be written when we do meet. 

I fear that you may have found someone else. He who looks at you like sunrise, your skin next to his like rays boiling the blood in his veins and fuelling an ignition to his secondary brain. I may be too late and you may well be in love with him. 

And so I tread the fine line knowing that achieving my hope and escaping my fear will both be measures of success. 

I hope you love poetry and words. Rise in the morning to coffee and sudoku. Alice in a Wonderland filled with books and stories of heroines and humanity in distress. The hope that you will be my type and the fear that i may not be yours. I fight to win this battles but the struggle still continues. 

But before we travel through time to the crossroad at which we meet. I can only imagine your beauty in the reflection of moonlight on a warm and humid night as we lay together staring at the stars and know that when that time arrives, I shall find peace. 

Yours truly

Tom

Written by Kenne Mwikya

Cruising for books, I find, is like cruising for sex, criminal sex, bad-for-society sex, dangerous sex in which anything goes. As I stated earlier, it involves the rupture of obliviousness. Walking along a street once, out of sync with your normal routine, you find something you never imagined existed.

You like this thing and you stop to acknowledge its existence, indulging your desire and possibly making a point to include it in your routine or at least letting it pleasurably disrupt your plans. If you’re really invested in this new found thing (oh god, all those cruising buddies reduced to “its” and “things”!), you decide to ensure that your experience of it lasts as long as possible.

Walking from my campus in Parklands to the Central Bus Station all the way to Hakati Lane often found me along the busy Tom Mboya St in the evenings where I made contact with stalls that sold books of a greater variety for a price lower than what I had been “used to” from the Hakati Lane bookstall.

Tom Mboya St has about ten stalls interspersed along it from as far as outside the Arkland Palace Hotel building (home of “Club Wallet) to the shops that line the end of it near the Fire Station. I prefer the bookstalls on the left side of the street and my favourite was just next to where matatus heading to Eastleigh pick up passengers.

It is here that I first came across books that I never imagined to exist in Kenyan public space. All along I assumed people interested in anything other than trash romance or Christian religious/inspirational books had to contend with buying books online and then suffering the months-long wait of shipping and possible pilferage or buying them in “e-format” (PDF, Kindle, that sort of thing) and losing the extolled “feel” of the printed word.

Of course, there were shops such Prestige Bookshop on Mama Ngina St and Bookpoint along the Moi Avenue that had volumes of robustly leftwing commentary, history and philosophy. But I still wondered about someone interested in Adrienne Rich’s commentary on poetry and politics; Audre Lorde’s ruminations on race, class, gender and sexuality; Simone de Beauvoir’s momentous Le Deuxiémme Sexe or Michel Foucault’s three-volume History of Sexuality but was on a very tight budget. I’m thinking of someone who voraciously reads Ian McEwan, John Grisham, Isabelle Allende or Danielle Steele and whose reading habits cannot be possibly satiated by referring to “formal” bookshops every time the craving starts kicking.

Here were all these books and more! I was transfixed. What ensued has been two years of sometimes impulsive buying. It has been two years of squatting on the stalls, minding my bag and the pedestrians whose feet are so close that their shoes rub against mine, and going through hundreds, even thousands of books covers, scrutinizing a book title, the author’s name, the cover.

Like cruising, I have come to have many books simply on account of the furtive glance and spark of recognition. Here, books are judged by their cover, for better or for worse. One approaches the bookstall already aware of what one wants, attracted to the stall by the mess of it all (the books are almost never arranged in any systematic order) and the possibility that there is something for anyone. It is here that I poured any money I had, that the end of a dour lecture-filled day somehow worth it. I’d spend an hour on a street that would normally take me fifteen minutes to walk from one end to another.

I made friends with the book sellers bargaining over a copy of a reader, making seven for five deals, getting books on credits and promising to bring friends the next time I make it to the book stalls. Of course, I never had as keen a group of friends who would wait for over twenty minutes as I overturned books, picking up a few, setting them aside and then picking from this bunch what I really wanted to buy. The books were cheap, going for 50 shillings on a routine day and for half that on a slow day or when the seller wanted to get rid of the current books to make room for a new batch. It was a pleasantly exasperating experience which brought to fruition a modest collection of three hundred books about everything from Poetry to Politics to Philosophy and in between.

Signs that things were about to change started showing early this year. There weren’t any new books showing up in the stalls. The first stall to go was at Odeon Cinema just outside the Coop-Bank Branch. I had bought from the stall a nice collection of Yiddish sayings, Luis Borges’ The Book of Sand and Love in a Time of Cholera by Gabriel Màrquez. I can’t say I wasn’t expecting it, the number of books on display had become less and less and were finally replaced by leather bound Bibles and an assortment of compendiums of exam papers allegedly used by the best Kenyan high schools to test their students. And that was that.

My favourite book stall at the Eastleigh matatus stage underwent a series of changes during the month of June where it dropped all books which weren’t romance novels, received a permit from the City Council and hiked the price of its books from between 100-200 shillings.

The queerness of the cruise lies in its furtiveness, the glances exchanged, the look of recognition and desire and possibility, the brief, exciting and dangerous encounter… If one is lucky, as I have been with my bookstalls, there is an assurance of the possibility of another encounter, under the same fleeting circumstances.

When I go back to school in a few weeks, I will invariably pass by the stalls along Tom Mboya St, the ones on Moi Avenue just across where buses pick up passengers, the Hakati Lane one, and the few ones strewn across the city and will be disappointed by the limiting choice of books on display and point to the commercialisation of this alternative knowledge hub as the cause of this sorry state. I won’t say hi to the booksellers and they won’t say hi to me but I’ll still remember the good times for the good times they were.