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

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

Is Mashada still alive? That online community where folk gathered, ones upon a time, to discuss issues? Hell, do those online forum still exist when there is twitter and Facebook to mouth off on? Turns out they do.

A friend of mine recently pooped up on Google-chat and said that she had read something about me on some social forum where I was being discussed. Look, I’ve heard and read a few things about me floating around out there, most of them resoundingly uncreative, the sum total of idleness destructiveness.

So I told her that there isn’t anything that anyone will write about me now that will entirely unsettle me. “This one might,” she wrote back and I got curious. So she sent me the link of this social forum that I won’t mention because it might dignify the racket they run there.

In short, they were saying I’m gay!

Me. Gay. A homosexual.

I read the thread and it struck me that I must have a doppelganger out there because everything about the details was queer (not intended). They said my girlfriend (boyfriend in this case, I assume) was in JKUAT (seriously, JKUAT? Drive all the damn way there for a moustache? It’s like dating a chick from Sagana). His name, it was revealed was John and I wondered if I often buy him flowers. Or if I help him with his homework. The discussion also revealed that I have two tois (the other, I assumed, with John) and that I often show up there on Fridays in a very loud Subaru (louder than my ...... Read the entire article

I turned 35. Please, remain seated. The morning of my birthday I woke up at 5am, laced up my trainers, threw my hoodie over my head and silently slipped out into the bleak dawn chill. You know it’s very cold when you hear your nipples sigh reluctantly. Normally I run to clear my head, to keep the realities of 30’s off my waistline (unsuccessfully) and to keep the cholesterol in its rightful place. Also, my gramps chipped from HBP, my mom with a heart condition so I also run with the remote hope of outrunning death. It’s foolish, yes, but it makes me happy, this massive momentum of immortality.

But that morning I ran for different reason; I ran because I was slightly anxious of the very idea of 35. Of being five years from 40 and another half dozen years to the life expectancy of a man in Kenya. Five minutes into the run, it started drizzling, that incessant drizzle that puts a decent puddle in your shoes. But I wasn’t going to turn back, so I dutifully put one foot before the other. Running in the rain has the same feeling like siting in a shrink’s chair; you are compelled to evaluate, to introspect.

It wasn’t long before John Mayer’s, “Stop This Train,” started looping in my head. That wicked guitar, that voice that gives you fears a face. Don’t know what else to say it, don’t want to see my parents go, Mayer sang in my head. The older you grow, the closer your parents inch towards their graves. Unlike Mayer, I’m more ...... Read the entire article

In the eulogized and buried light of the late evening, the only element left with the Harlequin task of illuminating the night is Carol Odero’s flaming red braids. You know Carol, right? Trained lawyer turned journalist. Editor, Drum magazine. Columnist, Sunday Nation. TV hostess, Fashion Show. Redhead. Carol, like most of us, believes in burning the candle from both ends.

She’s leaning into the table now. She listens raptly and talks softly like a falling feather, so soft I have to lean close, our noses almost touching. Carol is shrinking me. She’s prodding me, prodding and prying, like the late 80’s detective, Derrick. Most of you hecklers here in High School won’t know who Derrick is, you were still using potties. Regretful you didn’t witness the one-channel wonder of television.

Behind us, in the inky and ominous darkness somewhere, the sea moans and sighs like a lover seeking attention. We are at Hemmingways Watamu, one of those media trips. Gorgeous, this and full of personality…like Carol’s hair. I could tell you a lot about Hemmingways Watamu. I could tell you how they hauled us to deep sea to fish and we caught a long furious fish called Wahoo (not to be confused with Wahu) and how to kill it and stop it from cutting someone in half with its sharp fin and teeth, one of the guys in the boat had to bludgeon it’s head with a piece of wood, sending shudder down my toes.

I could tell you how Ferdinand Omondi of NTV posed with that ...... Read the entire article