What is the general rule on making fun of gay people? This is an earnest question I’m posing. No tongue in cheek here. Someone please loop me in. Am I likely to start a storm in this teacup if I poked fun at gays? I’m sorry, what’s that? They will take offense? Really? What, gays can wear heels but are incapable of laughing at themselves? Isn’t that double standards and being somewhat uptight? (No pun, of course). Camaan!

 Listen, last month I read this Op-ed piece in the Washington Post about this rousing “renaissance” of gayism. It was a satirical piece that theorized the intellectual supremacy of gay people. The writer went ahead and dropped names of some of the most successful gay people in business, arts, culture and sports and tried to link their sexuality to their success. It was a foolishly hysterical piece because I’m sure there are also unsuccessful gay people. I think your level of intelligence isn’t dictated by your sexuality. Anyway, the piece came an inch from implying that gayism was the new green movement global phenom and it generated over 800 heavy-breathing comments by gays, homophobes, bible thumpers, and the French. I learnt one vital thing from that piece; that gays don’t use smileys as much as I had imagined.

But seriously, if gays are as intelligent as they are lauded to be then they should be able to see a joke. If not laugh at it. I mean, this whole pussy footing (that pun belongs there) around gays is frustrating ...... Read the entire article

Does listening to Michael Buble make anyone gay?  I’m not asking for a friend – let my friends ask their own questions. I’m asking for myself.  

I start my day at five am this morning with a run.  It’s drizzling incessantly. It’s dark and wet and glum but I love it. I love running in the rain. It’s beautiful. I never run with music, not when I have my heartbeat. I want to feel it tattoo under my chest, that way I’m reminded that life is for the living. But today I had on music; Buble. And Buble can put you in a bubble. And I can report that listening to Michael Buble at 5am, when it’s raining, will make you gay. It will make you so damn happy. (See what I just did there?)

I’m listening to the live versions of “Haven’t met you yet.” It’s a lively performance; the audience is harping along, the saxophone trumpeting promises that keep men alive. Rain is on my face. The ground is wet under my feet. And I realise that I have many reasons to be unhappy, but I also have many reasons to be happy. So I chose happiness. And I run. A happy run.

Maybe I shouldn’t be happy today of all the days because exactly at this hour today last year, my late mother had only a few minutes worth of breath in her lungs. She would die at 11am and her death would shift my world in ways that I never thought any woman would. So you see I have no business feeling happy today. But I am happy. And I’m sure Jane, wherever she is with the angles, is happy ...... Read the entire article

He works in a bank. A Relationship Manager. He’s good with people, he reads them. He spends his days giving people what they think they want. He negotiates with them. He acts like he cares about these people; he has to because people with money demand attention. But to him they’re simply bottom lines. He doesn’t love working in a bank though but now he has his own office. And his own phone line. So he stays because soon he might have his name on his door.

He’s 33. Two boys; 4 and 2years old. A wife. No pets. He rents a three-bedroom apartment in some old apartment block in Parklands. He’s lucky, rent is cheap. His landlord lives in India, every month he wires money into his account. He plans to save for another year then develop some plot in Ngong. He’s Kisii.

The Banker wears suits to earn a living. But his taste in suits isn’t the best, which could be something to do with his tribe. The suits hang around his shoulders. Sometimes their colour reminds you of a fruit. His suits fit like most TV anchors’. Gunny bags. But The Banker’s personality overshadows his suits unlike those who wear suits to make up for their bland personality. He has a large laughter and when he laughs he’s those guys who will slap you the back. Of course it hurts.

He’s a fairly tall chap, the Banker. But he’s growing heavy around the midsection. He’s started going for swimming at Aga Khan Sports Club every Saturday afternoon. But he loves ...... Read the entire article

As a general rule, and as a need to preserve my sensibility, I don’t hang out in Westlands. But I went recently, to pay homage to a friend who was having a birthday thing, and I was reminded once again why it’s not a place that gongs my bell. At dusk, Woodvale Grove transform into a green ugly vein of profligacy that throbs like a septic wound. If Nairobi is a body, then Westlands is it’s varicose vein.

It’s the gridlocked traffic at 2am, twisted and whorled together like overnight spaghetti. It’s the horde of drunken underdressed girls in their high heels and blood red lips and vacant looks, jaywalking across the road as they cling onto the arms of their men whose eyes twinkle with ideas. It’s the hubbub of the music spilling onto the streets from all the clubs competing for patrons. It’s the long-nosed young expats standing in the cold outside Bacchus and Havana Bars totally disbelieving of their good fortune at being in Africa complete with a gardener and a slender girl with half her tits in his mojito. It’s the spoilt daddy’s boys from Gigiri who crawl by the street in their latest serpent black luxury sports cars, with interior lights switched on so that you don’t miss the face of privilege. And in the air, the smell of sexual anticipation hangs like Limuru fog in July and will remain so until the dawn sunlight blows it away to Kitengela.

I nipped into the new talk of town Aqua Lounge, and found half of Nairobi there, eager to be counted ...... Read the entire article

My missus is Kikuyu. She’s called Wambui  – named after her paternal grandmother. Her shags is in Maragwa. Have you been to Maragwa? I have. If you come from a place like Kendu-Bay, just below the navel of South Nyanza, Maragwa comes as a little jolt.

You get off the main road at the shopping centre called Irebu, then you plunge into greenery. Everything is green. The grass looks photo shopped. The leaves on trees look plastic. There are banana plantains, and maize and mango trees, and folk have tilled every conceivable piece of land, a show of both hard work and voracity. But God is a fair God. For what he gives the people of Maragwa in cultivable land – and a great weather – he gives them the most village drunks per square kilometre. It all levels out.

I was there in 2007, to meet her grandmother, my first time to venture so deep into Kikuyuland. I had no entourage, just me and my good Lord (today I’m sounding saved, no?). I sat in their humble stone house, feeling like a lab specimen, as cousins and nephews and villagers trooped in silently into the house to say hallo to the jaruo. The small talk that ensued was fleeting, itchy and marked by gaps that were filled with surreptitious smiles, most which had missing teeth. Mine. Even the passing hens stopped at the doorway to stare at me with cocked heads. The hens in Kikuyuland are all tribalists.

Finally, I was asked to go see the grandmother, who I found seated outside basking on a ...... Read the entire article