Kenyaimagine Updates – Nairobi Notebook and The Savages in America

In a previous life, I worked in the kitchen of a seafood restaurant, and I’ve always had a soft heart for waiters. But this solidarity cost me a ‘friend’ in Nairobi. We were in a city-centre pub, and our female companion – degreed and with an office job in one of the city’s steel-and-glass towers – felt that I was paying inordinate attention to our female waiter. Sheepishly, I tried to defend myself. I mumbled something about the value of egalitarianism, and said my inquiries were nonromantic in intent. “But she’s vulnerable!” our companion protested, which I took to mean that she didn’t believe me and that my attentions were somehow exploitative. Find out what happened next in Henry Gekonde’s Nairobi Notebook

The American savage can be a right-wing conservative like the ones the media often focus on, or a bleeding-heart liberal. They are both afraid of the new. They both refuse to learn about others because they think the American way of solving problems is the best. That’s why, for example, when NGO’s run by Americans who identify themselves as liberal set out to end the plight of the African savage, insist that they make all the decisions. Find out more about the American Savage as told by Edwin O. Okongo.

Also on Kenyaimagine

• Gaddafi: Right Message, Wrong Messenger by Kawuma Busuulwa
• Why I don’t want to go to heaven by Ombuya E. Okongo
• The insults of the earth by Patrick Gathara
• Fried Brains by Faith Oneya
• When Activism is About the Cause by Okiyah Omtatah Okoiti
• Commuting Justice? Why We Need The Death Penalty by Patrick Gathara
• Kenya: Surveillance Country? By Ciku Kimani
• A Report on NextLevel: Interviews

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