Moments & Musings

  When Soldiers Mutinied Over Missing Money At the dawn of World War II, when Europe was on fire and the British Empire was busy summoning its colonies like unpaid interns, something small but seismic happened in the Nyambene Hills of Kenya. The King’s African Rifles, those African men in khaki who carried rifles for a crown that wasn’t theirs, decided they’d had enough. Not of the war, not of marching under a sun that didn’t forgive, but of missing money. Their wages, the lifeline that kept families fed back home, had mysteriously evaporated. And the man in charge of remitting it, a European adjutant, had been caught spending it like a colonial rock star—some of it allegedly blown on fine liquor. You can almost picture the anger. Men who had left behind wives, children, whole homesteads, suddenly learning that the bread they bled for had been turned into someone else’s whiskey. It wasn’t just about money. It was betrayal. And betrayal, as every soldier knows, can cut deeper than a...

  The Strange Gods We Believed In If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, you knew the world had its own set of rules. Some were written in stone—“don’t be late for supper,” “never cross Mum when she’s holding a slipper.” But others were whispered, passed along like contraband—rules that lived in smoky kitchens, chang’aa dens, and the hushed voices of older cousins who swore they had seen it all with their own eyes. These weren’t rules at all. They were spells disguised as advice. Superstitions. The strange gods we believed in. We believed if a black cat crossed the road, you were doomed. The bravest boys in the estate would spit three times on the ground and whisper a counter-curse before crossing. We believed if you whistled at night, snakes would come, slithering under the door, tongues flickering, angry at your mockery of the spirits. And so nights in the 80s were quiet, eerie, broken only by the transistor radio’s static as it coughed out Franco’s guitar or Whitney Houston’s im...

  Kenya at a Crossroads: Defending Democracy in the Age of AI and Division On September 15, the world pauses to reflect on democracy—an ideal that empowers citizens and defines the future of nations. But in Kenya, 2025 feels like a pivotal moment. Democracy here is no longer just about voting; it’s about surviving the rising tides of artificial intelligence, political polarization, and a shifting digital landscape. As we mark the International Day of Democracy, Kenya must confront not only its past achievements but also the urgent challenges threatening its future. Will we protect the democratic gains of the past, or will the forces of division and technology change the course of our nation forever? At its heart, democracy is about empowering the people. It’s not just about casting ballots every five years; it’s about ensuring that citizens are free, informed, and active participants in shaping the future of their nation. In Kenya, democracy means having a voice in governance, ...

  The Tragic History That Changed the World and South Africa Imagine a world where your skin colour dictates every aspect of your life, including where you live, the jobs you can perform, and who you can marry. For millions of Black South Africans, this wasn't a nightmare; it was their life. Apartheid was a cruel system of institutionalized racial segregation and persecution that lasted from 1948 to 1994, for more than five decades. But its effects are still forceful now. To comprehend the remarkable fortitude of those who championed justice and equality, it is essential to first grasp the origins of apartheid, its impact on individuals' lives, and the subsequent surge of resistance it incited. This tale isn't simply a story about the past; it's also a story about how strong people can be and how they may look forward to the future. The history of apartheid did not begin abruptly. The Dutch settlers came in the 1600s, and the British took over in the 1800s. This is w...

The First Wallet Was a Sack of Grain If you think waiting for a delayed M-Pesa salary is stressful, spare a thought for Mesopotamia around 3000 BC. Payday didn’t come with bank alerts or payslips — it came with barley. Actual grain. Workers, soldiers, and officials were often compensated in shekels of barley, a unit of weight that doubled as the earliest measure of value. Imagine handing your landlord five sacks of barley at the end of the month and hoping he doesn’t complain about storage. This wasn’t random. Barley was the staple crop of Sumer, the first great city-state region of Mesopotamia, and food security meant wealth. It made sense to use something everyone needed and trusted as money. The shekel, which later became famous as a coin, was first a precise weight of barley — about 180 grains. In that world, money was edible, and wages could literally be cooked into bread or beer. As Mesopotamian trade expanded, barley alone wasn’t enough. Around 2500 BC, silver emerged as a...

  The Tragedy of Kenya’s Forgotten Sports Heroes I n 1984, under the blistering Los Angeles sun, a boy from Eastlands climbed into a ring and made the world stop. His name was Ibrahim “Ken” Bilali. Nineteen years old, narrow-shouldered but fierce, he carried not just his gloves but the weight of a place where boys dream with empty pockets and fight with full hearts. In a cramped gym above the dusty streets of Shauri Moyo, Bilali had learned to dance and dart like a man possessed—his jab clean as a surgeon’s scalpel, his feet moving with the rhythm of a Luo dancer’s shuffle. That summer, he punched his way through the Olympic tournament and into the final, where he lost narrowly to America’s Steve McCrory. Silver was his medal, but for Kenya it shone like gold—the first Olympic boxing medal since 1972. For one electrifying moment, Bilali was everywhere. Children in Eastlands shadowboxed in alleyways, knuckles raw, shouting his name. Newspapers screamed his story. Radios buzzed with ...

  The Final Service They say every empire falls. Some with a bang, some with a whimper. DT Dobie, it seems, chose the latter. One day it was there, the next it wasn't—at least not in the way we knew it. Just a name, absorbed. Like a big fish eating a smaller, slightly more elegant fish. For a long time, DT Dobie was more than a dealership. It was a rite of passage. The place your uncle pointed at on the way to town, muttering, "One day, when the maize is green..." It was the home of the Mercedes-Benz, the kind of car that announced you'd arrived. Not just in Nairobi, but in life. It wasn't about the destination; it was about pulling up and having someone wonder if you were a mheshimiwa or a new, very clean kind of hustler. And let's be honest, the story of the founder, Colonel David Theodore Dobie, is the kind of wild tale you'd find in a dusty book you buy at the CBD. A British army chap who fought in the big wars, jumped out of planes, and then, after al...