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 a sack of rituals on his back” or “A Kikuyu is greedy and selfish” 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.

Thank you for this Spiky. I loved it Baby!

@okelododdychitchats