​Over ten years ago, when I was a graduate student, I received a small beautiful card in the post, and in it was a handwritten note from one of the faculty in the department where I was. In the note, he said that he loved me, that he couldn’t stop dreaming about me and he wanted to make love with me. So could we go on a date? 

Honestly, I thought it was a bad joke, so I tore up the letter and pretended that nothing had happened.

After a fairly lackluster stint in the Ministry of Information, the new Education CS Fred Matiang’i is on a roll. One could say that he’s finally found his niche. The former lecturer of literature began his tenure in the education ministry by expressing concerns that university administrations are setting up campuses anywhere and everywhere, with focus on money rather than on education. He talked tough about the qualifications of teaching staff, insisting that the faculty must be “qualified.” He has now summoned heads of two universities after the universities resisted closure of satellite campuses on account of their substandard learning facilities.

It is not surprising, then, that many Kenyans see Matiang’i as the best Education minister we’ve had in recent years. However, his actions are too little and coming from the wrong place. 

I finally write my Waiguru post.

It definitely won’t be as witty as the one by Pharis Kimaru that trended at the height of Waiguru’s troubles around the loss of almost quarter a billion shillings from the government through the National Youth Service.

The thing is, I’ve always been ambivalent about Waiguru, and her sisters Shollei and Barasa who were unceremoniously hounded out of government after being sidelined by their male bosses. That’s because I have come to learn this principle: it’s very difficult to fight for justice in the name of people who have dirty hands, especially when it comes to public issues. Not that the criminals don’t deserve justice; it’s that their crimes provide a perfect distraction for the people who need to heed the message of justice. 

I love music for many reasons, and this is one of them: Music reveals the truth about us.

​Music is human creativity in its purest form. It has no language or ethnicity. Music speaks to our souls even when we don’t understand the words. It reaches far beyond itself. It unites us when we’re divided. It calms us when we troubled. For many of us who study the world and are awed by the good in it, but still have to confront the human capacity for evil, music is the place where we accept those contradictions.  Music also trains our minds to be disciplined, warms our bodies by inspiring us to dance, and trains us to be skilled. It is no mistake that Thomas Südhof, 2013 winner of the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, said that he owed his career in science to his basoon teacher.

​And music can also put food on the table.

A few days ago, the Standard Newspaper posted what was supposed to be a harmless article about Ruth Odinga, Deputy Governor of Kisumu County, bedridden with a leg fracture in a hospital in London. The article focused on her patriotism to her ODM party, because she requested an orange-colored cast, which was supposed to be a consolation for not being with her family at Christmas. And just to give the story some political flavor, the writer kicked in some lines about her concern that not many women were running for the seat of Governor. That she was a politician, responsible for her county’s healthcare services, getting treatment abroad, was not an issue. That was supposed to be normal.