ISSUE 001
A magazine of non-fiction and reportage from Eastern Africa (for now, and broadly, with the excpetion of accepting pieces from elsewhere) publishing rare, deeply reported stories about the past, the present and the future and how the three relate to each other and especially to now.
Editorial
In 2003, my dear friend and brother the late Kenyan writer and satirist Kenneth Binyavanga Wainaina, to whom I owe a lot, made an audacious statement which I have found myself returning to. Writing the editorial in the inaugural edition of Kwani?, the literary journal he and a bunch of formidable dreamers founded (in that same editorial, he lists the names of as many of these individuals as he seems to remember, specifically singling out Wanjiru Kinyanjui thus “whose idea this was”), Binyavanga posited, “To me this says we are finally becoming a country…”
Escaping Domestic Slavery in Saudi Arabia
The first time I watched Nairobi Half Life I promised myself to never suffer the same fate as Mwas,the film’s main protagonist.Driven by the urge to seek greener pastures in Nairobi
Now We Skate
The last time I tried to kill myself I was twenty-five years old. I stood on a ledge nine floors from the ground, staring into the abyss that was my life.
Inheriting Burning Libraries
I grew up with the Bible and the Quran, as I’m sure many people have, the former because I was raised Catholic and the later because my brother, busy at the time with madrassa.
The Violent Birth of Kampala
Even under a bright noon sky, the darkness at the confluence of Nsalo Road, Sir Apollo Kagwa Road and Boundary Road persists like an ineradicable, congenital condition.
The Dress My Father Bought Me
I was a scrawny eight-year-old with a coily afro when I first heard a Bob Marley song. It was 1996, and I was visiting my father and his new family.
Going Back Into The Pool
“Now, with my parents gone, I was drowning in the pain of loss, suffering sharp stings, and there was no one to jump into the water to save me.”
Thinking Back To Government Quarters
In 1995, my young parents moved our family from a village linked by a labyrinth of dusty footpaths, ineffectual Euphorbia fencing, a few grass-thatched roofs, loud neighbours, goat pens, paraffin
You Look Illegal
On a sunny Cape Town morning in early 2008, I am enjoying my daily ten-minute stroll to work. I cross the street outside my apartment building and enter the Company’s Gardens