Author: Richard Oduor

President Magufuli is a sad lesson of the illusion of invulnerability and indestructibility that newly-minted dictators revere.

This is what I have heard. We are in the 1980s. Jewel Howard is at the University of Liberia. Enter Charles Taylor. The two begin dating. As it happens, sometimes, a child appears from heaven and Charles and Jewel have one. Later Charles is accused of embezzling 1 million dollars from the government of Samuel Kanyon Doe, Master Sergeant Doe – the Chairman of the People’s Redemption Council and the de facto head of State (1980-1990). Taylor flees to America. America takes Taylor and puts him in the can. By the time Jewel Taylor arrives in America to look for…

I’m in the office, alone – past closing hours – Reading Myanmar earthquakes on TIME Anglo-Burmese wars, North Korea’s nuclear programme: Pyongyang used a three-stage rocket to put a satellite into space, Pyongyang has weapons-grade plutonium for at least six nuclear bombs. Pyongyang this. Pyongyang that. ISIS, Boko Haram, and Alshabaab grin on New York Times On Foreign Policy and RT, China and Tibet spar like Grandma’s dogs over the old dusty blanket on the veranda. If Putin is watching Bloomberg now, he must be mad: Moody’s downgraded Russia to Baa2 I sip coffee and feel its thickness balloon my…

Have you ever seen a twig dry and frail – tossed about by wind on the river bank? I was, the day you walked from me: an apple tree you had tended and plucked daily as the sun slept. I emptied your letters in a kiondo walked down the river and left them on the banks to be swept by high tide. But went back early morning – afraid to lose your images forever and found them soaked but not swept. A man had squatted where they lay and left a mound – like a guava stump. I watched beetles…