Not for the dress alone, though it was red, and carried the room like fire carries light. Not for the beauty of the face alone, though it was gentle, and proud, and true.
But for the smile, the first I saw, that held no vanity, no asking, no disguise. It came like rain to thirsty ground, quiet, unbidden, and remembered.
Since then I have wished one thing: not to stand afar as a passerby, not to be lost in the drift of strangers, but to be near, to be counted on, to be the voice that answers when your night turns heavy.
Take this as my beginning, a word instead of a rose. If you will have it, let it open slowly, like trust, like morning.
I saw her again, the girl I once loved. Time had touched her kindly. She wore a white dress, soft as a prayer, and it clung to her form like the wind belongs to the sea.
She was lovelier than I remembered, not just in face, but in the quiet grace she carried. Clean. Still. Like a page I might’ve turned too soon.
The dress, white as chapel vows, did justice to every curve, each one a line in the poem I once left unfinished. She smiled, not bitter, not bold, just enough to stir something old in me.
She said I looked different too, more like the man she always pictured beside her. Stronger, quieter, maybe even kinder.
And for a moment, in the gentle silence between us, I think we both wondered, not with regret, but with a wistful sort of hope, if the pages we wrote apart could still make sense together.
Hold me, not just my hand, but all of me. Wrap your arms around my body like you know what it’s been through. Like you’ve heard the storms it carries and still want to dance in the rain with me.
Take my hand, don’t ask where we’re going. Let’s run, not to escape, but to feel free for the first time in a long time.
Hold my heart, gently, like it’s the last soft thing in a hard world. Place it close to yours, let them beat together in a rhythm only we understand.
Touch my waist like it’s sacred. Pull me into your chest like you’re pulling me into forever. And when you kiss me, don’t make it rushed. Kiss me like you’re trying to teach time how to slow down.
If one tear falls—just one, don’t panic. Wipe it. Don’t ask if I’m okay, just look at me like you see everything and say, “It’s going to be alright.” And mean it.
When I say I’m cold, don’t go looking for a sweater. Be the warmth. Be the safe place I curl into when the night gets too loud.
And when I say “I love you,” don’t whisper it back. Say it like a vow. Say it like your soul recognizes mine. Say it like you’re not going anywhere.
Because real love isn’t made of grand gestures. It’s in how you stay, how you see me, how you reach for me in silence.
So if you love me, hold me, not just in your arms, but in your everyday.
I was born just outside my father’s home. I mean outside the fence. Not in a hospital. Not in some sterile maternity ward with nurses who smell like Dettol and sigh through masks. No. I came into this world the traditional way, on ancestral soil, barefoot and bold, like a true son of Asembo. My grandmother delivered me. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it until my tongue is weary, it’s something to be proud of. It’s raw. It’s traditional. And I guess, so am I.
Asembo is about 15 minutes away from Raila’s Opoda Farm. But this is not about him. This is about home. Or the idea of it. Because although I was born there, I didn’t grow up there. In fact, it took me seventeen years to return. And when I finally did, with the awkward gait of a visitor in his own past, I found our home was no longer a home. It had become a farm.
The only proof we were ever there are the graves—traces of my father, my uncle, my grandmother, and my grandfather. The cement doesn’t crack. It holds secrets. They told me the land is mine now. Or at least part of it. My father was the last born, and in our traditions, that means the home was his. By extension, now mine. But what do you do with a piece of land full of ghosts?
There’s another parcel—12 acres or so. I didn’t earn it. Didn’t break my back for it. Didn’t argue with chiefs or attend land tribunal hearings in stuffy rooms with men who say “utu ni utu” before betraying you for a bribe. It was passed to me like a baton in a relay. A gift from the dead. So no, I’m not bragging. And even if I was, who really wants to sweat for something they can get for free? This is Kenya, after all. We queue for handouts and call it luck.
I grew up in bits and pieces—Homa Bay, Kisumu, Rongo. Like a nomad in search of permanence. In 2007, my mother built a modest house in Rongo. That’s home now. We live there with strangers who’ve since become family, the kind you don’t choose but grow into like an oversized sweater that slowly starts to fit. In Rongo and almost everywhere else in Luo Nyanza, people intermarry—Luos, Luhyas, Kisiis. But not Kikuyus. No, Kikuyus are where the line is drawn.
Luos hate Kikuyus and Kikuyus hate Luos. That’s the story we were handed by the colonialists—wrapped in propaganda and sprinkled with enough suspicion to last generations. Divide and rule. And rule they did. Now we inherit the hate like old family furniture we’re too proud to throw out. We say things like: “A Luo is a witch with asack of rituals on his back” or “A Kikuyu is greedy andselfish” or that “Kikuyu women kill their husbands.” What is that? That’s not wisdom. That’s premium-grade poetic cow dung.
Ask anyone for proof, and they’ll stutter like a bad radio signal.
I don’t believe in what I haven’t seen. I won’t condemn a whole tribe because Otieno once borrowed your charger and never returned it. Or because Wanjiku blocked you on WhatsApp after you bought her chips kuku.
If that makes me fallacious, then call me a walking fallacy.
And listen, Kikuyu women are beautiful. Not the stereotypical light-skinned, big-chested, flat-behind and thin legs that don’t match the body types, those that your uncles warned you about. No. These days, they come in thick—size sevens with curves that look like they were negotiated in parliament. Faces sculpted like the gods used cheekbones as currency. And thighs, God help us, thighs the colour of roasted cashews—thighs that can save entire nations.
I’m dating one. A Kikuyu. Six years now, give or take a few breaks that almost broke us. Her name is Koi, but if you know her like I do, you call her Spiky. And Spiky? Spiky is divine.
Spiky is what you’d get if elegance had a baby with audacity. She walks like confidence and still laughs like she was raised by love. Her skin is caramel dipped in honey, the kind that makes you wonder if sunlight took lessons from her. Her smile is a gospel that can turn a hard man soft. She’s smart, too. Smart with the kind of intelligence that knows when to speak, when to keep quiet, and when to look at you in a way that makes you question all your life choices.
Her body is poetry. The kind of body that makes you want to write odes in traffic. Her mind is a map. Her heart is a home I keep returning to. Even when I say I’m done.
I am not here to convert you. I am just here to say—love is not tribal. Neither is beauty. Neither is home.
Some of us were just born outside, by grandmothers with hands strong enough to deliver a future.
And maybe that’s enough.
It was 2AM or thereabouts. You know that hour that’s neither here nor there—when the silence feels staged, like the night is watching you back. I wasn’t asleep, of course. My insomnia is back. It always returns like an old lover who doesn’t knock, just walks in and makes itself comfortable.
Spiky was up too, prepping for one of her strange shifts. She works those ungodly hours, where your body wants to rest, but capitalism wants a report submitted by 5:45AM. I decided to keep her company, texting back and forth. In the middle of our banter—whose contents I won’t get into, partly because I’m lazy and partly because it might send you off on a tangent—we veered into a detour.
“There’s a Mugithi na Ndumo at Red Room from 2PM,” she texted. “Come with me?”
Mugithi is a Kikuyu genre—think of it as country music that drank a full bottle of Muratina and decided to wear a hat. Ndumo is the dance—the erratic, shoulder-driven, hip-twisting rhythmic warfare. It’s like watching a fight that no one wants to break up. I don’t speak Kikuyu. I know only “mbesha shigana?” which loosely translates to “how much money are we wasting here?” But I said yes. Because love is also showing up where you don’t belong and hoping the rhythm saves you.
Google Maps says Red Room is in Kilimani. Technically true. It’s on Adlife Plaza. But if you follow those blue dots on Google blindly, you’ll find yourself in West Pokot or emotionally lost. Take my advice: get to Yaya Centre, take that left turn. Adlife Plaza is a few blocks in, across from Shujah Mall. Red Room lives on the first floor.
The place is cool. Genuinely cool. It’s shaped like an L, as if someone folded the club and forgot to unfold it. The counter sits at the center like a bartender god. There’s a stage—clean, slightly elevated, and a DJ booth carved with intention, not just dumped there. The seats in the regular area are metallic, but not the koroga kind. These ones have cushions that hold your secrets. They are comfortable. The VIP area, of course, has better seats—those white kinyozi-waiting-area chairs, only here they’ve been baptized and saved.
The roof is translucent, high enough not to threaten your dignity, and there’s space to dance without knocking a stranger’s elbow. The floor is plastic turf. That fake grass that doesn’t pretend to be real anymore. The kind you’d find in a cool rooftop bar, or a child’s playground where no one gets hurt when they fall—except emotionally.
Our waiter is polite. Genuine. The kind that makes you want to tip even when you’re broke. We order goat meat and chips not fries. I refuse to gentrify potatoes. Spiky, glowing like the first sip of good wine, is in wide-legged purple pants stitched by a fundi who understands women. Her top—a crocheted piece of African fabric art—is from the same fundi. She looks like Nairobi confidence dressed in culture. I’m in wide-legged pants too (no judgment), a free shirt I got from Dura Poa and my trusted white Converse. I order a litre of Muratina because, well, when in Rome… get tipsy on their traditions.
Spiky orders two bottles of Kenya Originals.
The food comes and we eat because what else do you do when food comes? Their meat is soft. Tender like it was raised by a grandmother with a kind voice. The chips are golden and crunchy—honest chips, not those oily, sad ones that taste like heartbreak.
Then comes Gasheni. She wasn’t on the lineup, just a curtain raiser. But sometimes curtain raisers leave you wondering why the main act even bothered. She did well. She cleared the path like John the Baptist. And when DJ Dibull came on, he walked through like the Messiah of sound. He played magic. I danced. I didn’t understand a single lyric but my body understood the beat, and sometimes, that’s all that matters.
Tony Young came in next. One hour and thirty minutes of pure Kikuyu Vaibu. By the time Waithaka Wa Jane got on stage, I think the crowd was tired. Or maybe he was just too mellow for 11PM energy.
Ah, I almost forgot—DJ 44. That man spins like he’s in love with every beat. Like each song owes him rent.
At our table, a couple and a lady joined us. Later, a guy. All of them were vibes. They figured out pretty quickly that I wasn’t Kikuyu—maybe it was the way I danced, like someone dodging potholes. But they embraced me. One of them told me, “If you can’t beat us, join us.”
So I did.
And I’ve invited them to the Luo Festival on the 9th of August. There, I’ll beat them. And they’ll join me. And we’ll call it unity.
Mugithi was greatness. Pure, fermented, cultural greatness. The kind that reminds you that sometimes all it takes is a beat for you to remember how good it feels to just live.
You may write us off, dismiss us , ignore us in Parliament halls padded with stolen wealth, but still, we see
We are the country beneath your motorcades, the hands that build and break, the voices cracking in the dust because hope costs too much now.
And yet, we vote.
We vote for thieves in clean suits
We vote for wolves draped in our flags,
Enough.
We are tired. Tired of job descriptions reading “Must be connected.” Tired of degrees gathering dust while our dreams starve in silence.
We are tired of joblessness turned into weaponry, young men hired cheap to kill our own voices, paid to break bones they’ve never healed in their own lives.
Tired of watching peaceful protesters shot dead, while those who loot in daylight are guarded like royalty.
Tired of asking: “Who protects the people from the police?”
Tired of staged outrage, press conferences filled with air, and politicians who only remember their roots when it’s time to lie again.
You fight for positions, not for people. You dine with the devil, then kneel in churches too small for your sins.
You debate your egos on live TV as our people dig trenches not for roads, but for graves.
You die to be seen. But we die because we’re ignored.
Kenya is choking. On debt. On lies. On the stink of promises unkept.
We are not asking. We are telling.
This time, we vote with memory. With pain. With names. With tears that learned how to speak.
This time, you will not scare us with teargas. You will not buy us with t-shirts. You will not distract us with empty tribal drums.
We will remember who was silent when we bled. We will remember who smiled while we starved. We will remember who disappeared our brothers and called us TREASONOUS CRIMINALS.
We are not the children you once fooled. We have grown teeth. We have grown rage. And we are coming.
So let the ballot tremble. Let your seats shake. Let the ground beneath your stolen homes shift.
Because next time, we are not just voting.
We are reclaiming.
And if you still don’t listen, then hear this:
We are not afraid. We are not asleep. We are not yours. Not anymore.
You say you don’t read much. But somehow, you always read me. And maybe, without knowing, You taught me how to bleed through the pen, To shape silence into syllables, To hold space for feeling, Even when the world is loud.
So tonight, As night settles in a robe of velvet quiet, I write not to ask, nor to explain, But to bless you, softly.
When the night folds her arms around the sky, And the stars murmur lullabies in silver tongues, May your burdens loosen, May your spirit stretch.
For even the moon, full in her glow, Knows the ache of holding light too long.
Rest, love. Lay down the weight of unspoken things. Let dreams drift in like gentle winds Through the windows of your mind.
Don’t dwell, Not on what didn’t grow, Not on what wasn’t said.
Just sleep. And let this be the lull in the poem of your life, The stanza where you exhale.
I know you like your linen white. White as milk. With no stains, no creases, And no voices too loud or opinions too strong. You want clean reputations, Clean photos, clean silence.
You like me better When I just show up, smile, hit targets, Say “yes sir” to everything and go home. You like me better When I keep the fire in my belly out of your boardroom. When I don’t question, when I don’t care too much.
But here’s what you forget,
I was me before I became your employee. I had a voice before I had your email signature. I had convictions before I had a clock-in code. And I’m not about to trade all that in For job security and polite applause.
I love justice. The same way you love KPIs. I care about this country, The same way you care about brand image.
So when you see me at a protest, Don’t flinch. I’m not unstable. I’m not rebellious. I’m just awake.
When I call out corruption, I’m not ruining your name, I’m protecting it. Because if systems rot, Your success does too.
When I tweet in anger, It’s not because I’m angry all the time. It’s because I still believe that things can change. That voices matter. That silence is too heavy to carry anymore.
I’m not asking for much.
Just this, Don’t punish me for caring. Don’t blacklist me for believing. Don’t put me in a corner Because I refuse to play blind.
I want to work. I want to grow. But I also want to live in a country where truth doesn’t cost you your job.
Let me speak. Let me stand. Let me protest, cry out, and still walk into your office on Monday morning with purpose. Because fighting for what’s right And showing up for work Aren’t enemies. They’re both signs I give a DAMN.
So no, I’m not mad. I’m not disloyal. I’m just patriotic. And I won’t whisper that.
Sincerely, Still the right person for the job. Just louder.
Steve is the kind of person who makes the world feel both vast and familiar.
He’s met people from Togo, Benin, and Chad. He knows their faces, their stories, even the unique cadence of the Togolese accent. Honestly, who really knows how people from Togo look or sound? I can barely get to know my own neighbours. But Steve listens, connects, remembers names, and builds bridges. His work has taken him across borders, and with every journey, he collects memories and adds a new layer to who he is.
By the way, he collects fridge magnets from the most interesting places he’s visited. You may just want to see his fridge, it tells a story of its own.
Recently, he was in Los Angeles for rugby with the Kenya National Team. He loves rugby. Football too, but I think he quietly dropped European football. He’s an Arsenal fan, one of those who’ve never seen Arsenal lift a trophy. Still, loyalty runs deep. That’s Steve.
He travels and is fully committed. He doesn’t just report on sports, he understands them. He’s a sharp, thoughtful sports journalist, and his creativity shows in everything he touches.
He’s won three awards. They’re neatly arranged on his cotton-white TV stand, with hints of age or intentional colour, maybe yellow, maybe orange. I don’t know much about colours, but I know that setup speaks of someone who takes pride in his space. Some may say it’s décor.
Steve is the best at what he does, at least to me. Everyone who knows me probably knows about him. I talk about him a lot. I admire him. He’s mentored me in ways he may not even realize. We were in the same class once. Now, I just learn by watching how he works.
He lives along Thika Road, in a nice place. Fourth floor, door thirty-something. From his balcony, you can see Nyeri on a clear day. From another angle, well… you might catch a glimpse of what’s happening in the next apartment, life happening, unfiltered.
Yesterday, Steve called. I answered, of course. He told me about an event SportPesa hosted with Nairobi Street Kitchen, Little Africa, and other great partners. You already know I’m a Littler, once a Littler, always a Littler. Charley Andrews will back me up on that.
I attended the event with my brothers, Ian and Allan. They’re twins, identical in looks, but different in hairstyle and relationship status. It had been a while since the four of us hung out, and that day brought back something we’d been missing.
I also met the SportPesa team. Great energy. I didn’t get everyone’s names, but I remember Felo, we’ve met a few times. There was CJ, and a lady called Chep. They were all warm, welcoming, and clearly part of something special. They’ve been good to my brother, and that makes them feel like family.
So here’s to Steve. To old friends doing big things. To chasing dreams and making them real.
Bache, we keep dreaming the impossible, bro. Thanks for reminding us that it can be done.
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