Voice Of Taita Taveta

  Today… we go back to school. Relax. No uniform. No caning. Just truth. Because let’s be honest — we suffer not because we lack leaders… we suffer because we don’t understand them. We vote. We celebrate. We complain. But ask someone the difference between an MCA and an MP… silence. Awkward silence. Then someone coughs and says, “Si wote wanasaidia maendeleo? ” My friend… that’s where the problem starts. Let’s start at the bottom. MCA Member of County Assembly. Huyu ndio wako karibu na wewe. This is the person of the ward. The one who should know your roads, your water problems, your dispensary, your school. If your village road is bad — MCA. If your local clinic has no drugs — MCA should raise it. If development in your ward is zero — MCA must answer. Their main job? To make laws at the county level and oversee the county government. Yes… oversee. Same word. They approve budgets. They question how money is used. They represent your ward in the county assembly. Lakini reality? Tuna...

 I have been at home for more than a week now. No alcohol. Sober as a church mouse. Being sober has its peaks and lows. For one, I just realized that for all the years I have lived here, I have never bought window curtains. No tinted windows. Nothing. I have never actually been in this house during the day. So you can imagine my shock the first time this realization hit me. I was so shocked I nearly went to the chief’s camp to report theft. Sunlight ilikuwa imeingia kila mahali. I looked at the color of my sheets… and my mind just took a walk. How did I end up here? I have not seen Jamo and Tumaini, my daughter, for quite a while now. I hear stories they decided to take a break… rethink their relationship or something like that. But as they step back… old birds of prey have started circling again. Those dead relationships we thought were buried… Zimerudi. The damsel singer from Werugha — the one who used to ride with the Subaru boys… Now she is back in the pictu...

 Today Jamo and my Echo are not on my mind sana. It’s mid-morning. Niko tu hapa,  just staring at the iron sheet roof. Sina form kabisa!!!. And I don’t like that feeling. No cash, Sober, just thoughts making noise in my head. I keep thinking of a story I read recently. The story of the mouse, the cat, and the glass jar. A powerful story. A clever story. But like all stories… it depends on who is telling it, and why. In the version I read, the mouse hides inside the jar to escape the cat. The cat circles outside, patient, hungry, confident that sooner or later lunch will come. The lesson being pushed is simple — for the cat to get the mouse, it must fast get into the jar. Alaa!!. But as I kept looking at that iron sheet roof, I asked myself a different question. Why is the mouse hiding in a closed glass Jar? What if the jar is not protection… but a trap? Because in politics, especially in Taita Taveta, we must stop pretending that every move leaders make is str...

Being a father is not easy. You can be a Father and be just a father. Same as you can be a Voter and just a voter. It's the bother of raising kids that made me absent. Like an absent voter who doesn't make an effort to impact the future. Your vote counts. I look at her again. For a long moment I say nothing. Because the truth is… The future rarely arrives as a stranger. Sometimes it arrives carrying your own blood. And suddenly my mind drifts back. Back to a different time. A younger version of me — long before the tumbler, before these conversations with Jamo. Back to the day I met her mother. Because if we are to understand the future standing at that door… we must first understand the past that brought it here. The past was easy. I remember growing up playing Chobo uwa , times when the president would just decide to extend school holidays and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Times when the president visiting an area meant we would miss school and line up along the...

I once talked about the Butterfly Effect. That small flap of a butterfly wing in Africa — insignificant as it may seem — causing a tornado in Brazil. Small action. Massive consequence. One vote. Your vote. We keep pretending it is small. It is not. It is the tornado. I am appealing to the youth. We need your votes in large numbers. Not noise. Not hashtags. Votes. Can we, just this once, be the generation that forces change? Can we educate our people on the consequences of bad political choices? Because bad choices don’t disappear. They mature. They knock. As I sit here with my pal Jamo, still a bit hesitant about this “new leaf” he wants to turn, I can feel something brewing in him. An eruption of change maybe. Or indigestion. Hard to tell with Jamo. We make our order and sit. The music fills the air — quiet, cold ambience. Classy. Elegant. The kind of place where mistakes are made politely. We take small sips of this tasty whiskey. I feel it burn my tongue. That raw barrel feel. For a...