Field Notes: The Dutch, Holy Bicycles, Unwritten Laws, and the Crime They All Agree to Ignore
Field Notes: The Dutch, Holy Bicycles, Unwritten Laws, and the Crime They All Agree to Ignore
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Culture
27 posts
Four Nuclear Physicists Walk Into A Swahili Resturant in Vienna
Four nuclear physicists walk into a Swahili restaurant in Vienna and order biriyani. It sounds like the start of a good joke.
I was in Austria following an invitation to launch my recent book Strength and Sorrow at the Kenyan embassy in Vienna. It wasn’t my first time in the city. I had been to Vienna before, in 2019, to write a story about the INEOS 1:59 challenge where Eliud Kipchoge, became the first human to run a marathon under two hours, leaving us with the inspirational phrase: No human is limited.
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From Segregation To Inclusion
Sport is often touted as a metaphor for the values and principles of democratic ideals in society. Indeed, in many respects this is true. In sport there is inclusivity and…
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Finding My Own Story – By The Sea.
Gurnah challenges the reader to glimpse at how adaptive African immigrants are and that their cultures are not static but constantly evolving as dictated by circumstance. He explores nuances of social life, the mores that govern behaviour and how transgressions are addressed and justice realized.
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Down the Amstel River
There are three ways to see Amsterdam, from the streets, at night and from the water.
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The Funeral
The Netherlands is a country about the size of Garissa county in Kenya with a population of 17 million people. Space is premium and in some places graves are rented and can be reused after a 10 to 20 year lease and the remains are cleared after the time expires.
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A Meditation For Winter
[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] I am wondering what to teach my children about winter. Beyond telling them that it is a cold weather season that black people…
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The Woman in a Leso
I know you are a complete stranger but I know you. You are my aunty from the village, the defiant one. The one who rolls her own cigarettes, smokes laced tobacco, drinks the local gin and the men, dare not walk on her wrong side. You have probably refused to accept Christ as your personal saviour and do not have a single bone of affectation in your body. You are from the league of badly behaved women who were shunned by society because they were not demure and avoided because they only speak the truth.
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The New Normal
I guess, the great takeaway for me is this…2021 was the year the pandemic was supposed to ease up and we anticipated a return to normal with the promise of vaccination. COVID-19 had other ideas. In essence, 2021 became the year our normal turned abnormal and the abnormal began to feel normal.
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This One is For Grandma
There is a special breed of women about to exit the scene with an endless capacity to care for others. They are the forgotten grandmothers whose weary hands are holding up our bright skies. They are the discarded ladders that took us over the walls erected to stop our progress and on whose bent backs, we built modern and prosperous lives.
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