Author: Magunga Williams

On any given Saturday afternoon, Nairobians can be classified depending on what part of their body aches the most. And it is easy to know, depending on the location of the pain, where they were the night before. If your knees and neck are throbbing, then you must have been at Gondwana, sore throats are from Mercury, headaches are from looking for parking at Bar Next Door, heartbreaks are collected at Milan for a song, if your head feels like it is twice the size, then you were definitely at Mwendas, if your whole body aches then you must’ve been…

It has been 16 years of guilt, rage, and a hurt that could poison a serpent. I am exhausted.

“I don’t know, George; the best way to end a conversation is to let it rest, not write a 2000-word blogpost.”

Except, this time I have no mother to go home to. She’s not ati dead. But there is nothing she can do. Even Mother Karua has limits. And Jack Dorsey is not her cousin – trust me, I asked. So I am stuck out here in the cold.

Then that policeman cocked him gun at me. I do not know guns, so I do not know what model he was carrying. Must’ve been an AK47, but don’t take my word for it. That shit does not sound like it does in the movies.

Here is the other thing. Lake Turkana is not that deep. That place we were was right in the middle of the main land and the El Molo island. Yet the divers could stand. You know what else likes shallow waters? Crocodiles!

Other over-30s say “Nobody has their life figured out by 30.” As if it is any consolation. You not having hit your targets by this time does not make my failure feel any less disappointing.

As told to Magunga by Mammy, a 22-year-old girl living in Bungoma.

As if being an early teenager is not complicated enough, you just had to be different. You deal with the normal confusions of what it means to grow into yourself – hairs where none used to be and attention to parts of your body that didn’t exist before – but also wade in the anxiety of not being like other people. For the longest time, you had noticed that you did not like boys the way other girls do, and soap operas did not quite feel like they were made for the kind of romance that you longed for. On…

Towards the end of the turbulent forties, men came back from the great war slinging more than just gun. They came with guitars too. They came with music. They were African soldiers who had been drafted from their homes to go fight in a war they barely understood. But then you see, wartime is not always about death and destruction round the clock. And these men were not necessarily on the frontlines of the fight. On some nights, there was entertainment. They accompanied the British troops on their campaigns across the world, and somewhere in between establishing a new world…

When you start approaching 30, it feels like everything is closing in on you. Life develops a certain urgency to it. Wherever you look, people start talking about what you should or should not do. What you need to have achieved by now. On social media, they tease endlessly. Every day you are reminded to take your supplements and multivitamins before your bedtime…at 8pm! Then there is your family looking at you funny because you owe them an offspring. With just four months to turning 30, my mother is now on my neck about doing things my fellow adults have…

Often, history is told by the people leading the conversation. The problem with the history of Mombasa, however, is that there have been so many people who have had something to say about how this island became a city. Perhaps it does not also help that Mombasa is a city as old as memory. But if you are looking for something to thank for the remembrance of Mombasa’s ancient moments, then you should direct your gratitude to art. Art in its simplest, truest form; poetry.  When a famous Swahili poet, Bwana Munyaka bin Mwinyi, sat down in the early 19th…