THE STORIES UNTOLD

I was watching a television interview the other day where Narok senator Hon Ledama Ole Kina was a guest together with NTV investigative journalist Kennedy Mureithi. They were hosted by Mark Masai on the Press Pass. They were debating on the contibution of media in conserving peace especially in our country Kenya which has not been spared the rod of sporadic violence majorly on the account of divisive politics. The media, needless to say, is a major stakeholder in the bandwagon that seeks to maintain peace in any jurisdiction all over the world. I say this on account of the fact that the media has the capability to be used to advance either extremes; peace promotion or havoc-creation. In 1914, during the World War 1, the media was actively used by the European governments as a vessel for the propagation of propaganda as a way of manipulating the public to alter their opinion regarding the war. World War 2 proponents like wise used the press to persuade the public to help in the wa...

One day you’ll turn eighteen. Probably you will wake up in a haze because you didn’t sleep the whole night due to wild and completely unnecessary excitement of becoming an adult. You’ll want to think that everybody remembers its your birthday and they’ll give you a surprise party or something like it. They don’t. Your dad doesnt even know you have a birthday. Old man never gets yappy about birthdays. He only marvels at the hallmarks of excellence. Parties are not his type. You cant ask him to give you money for a bash. On your sixteenth birthday, you tried to; and the response was not an iota close to what you had anticipated. “Yaani wewe unanisumbua hapa na pesa ya birthday na wenzako wanasoma? Kwanza ulikuwa na grade gani last exam? Unajua ukona mwaka moja ufanye KCSE?” You don’t want the story to go on because it may erupt into something big. So you just accept to eat the humble pie. No sweet sixteen for the t-bird. You dont get the logic of African parents. You only asked for a...

Highschool can mess you up real bad. Four or so years prior today, the tales I heard about highschool had been romanticized to make it look like a second paradise. I have now lucidly made out that the stories were all but true in regards to the contemporary situation. I never wanted to come to highschool. I was not the typical yappy kid who found fun in everything in life or who wanted to know more and more and become great in future;if ever there was any. I never wanted to become an Einstein or a Ben Carson or Collymore or anything close to that. Ijust wanted to become a simple man, probably the calibre of Mwalimu Andrew of the Sunday Nation, then buy a farm and make a life out of it. I just wanted to stay locked in the land of bananas and die there if I had to. But you see, life as it is, never gives you anything you want. You ask for oranges, you end up getting damn lemons. But even then, we the wise ones never go down with that. We make lemonade and boom! We get even with life....