Articles

During the lockdown, I noticed five missed calls from a close friend. When I called back, she asked if I had cash – Sh3,000 to be precise – on my phone.

Until Covid-19 punctured my wallet, I have, for the last 22 years, been a constant traveller. Not to the sandy beaches of Mombasa, or the rustic hideouts of the Mara Game Reserve, where fisis haul illicit prey to maul stealthily behind thorny acacia.

When the Duke of Edinburg died recently, heads of state from across the world sent condolences. Among them was Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, CGH, President and Commander-in-Chief of Kenya’s armed forces.

Dr Kenneth Wameyo, the University of Nairobi trained veterinary surgeon who died last week and will be buried tomorrow, was a big, ebullient man with a big name and an even bigger heart. Born to the first African obstetrician/gynaecologist in Kenya, Dr Elon Willis Wameyo – later Mumias MP and long serving Health assistant minister – and Mwalimu Joyce Wameyo, Kenneth was a child of privilege.

I was tickled to no end to discover, by accident, that some scholars had quoted yours truly in an academic publication on culture and death in West Africa. I laughed because it seems I have written extensively on funerals.

On a good evening, when my grandfather Ibrahim, son of the king’s bodyguard, nephew of the legendary Wanga fighting army general Kongoti, scion of skinny warriors, had fortified his belly with fermented brew, he would take to singing the fiery war songs of his ancestors. With a battered bow and blunt spear for special effects, he would prance left and right, recalling distant battles and victories that probably…

Last month, I received summons to appear before a court of sorts in my village of birth. No, no — stop getting ideas.

Progress has its place, but memory occasionally preserves a solution that modern life has misplaced.