“I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.” 

– Maya Angelou

In the hushed corners of memory, where the tapestries of lives are woven, there lies a figure both fierce and tender – Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo. Hers wasn’t just a name etched in the annals of African literature and orature, a name revered in halls of the ivory tower, or a name heralded by activists. Indeed, she was all those things, and more. But behind closed doors, in the shadows of acclaim and applause, she was a cultivated radiant soul on whose shoulders so much was placed, a soul weighed heavily by unfulfilled dreams, a soul whose essence blossomed in myriad facets, each illuminating the mosaic of her existence. Much has been said and written about her in tribute and commemoration since her demise, all noteworthy. But alongside what is known lies the person as seen through the inner corridors of her life. It is there we find not just the public icon, but the woman, and it is through that lens that I wish to explore the layers of Mwalimu’s life that coloured her world.

In 1976, a struggling Cameroonian-Nigerian musician, Prince Nico Mbarga, and his band Rocafil Jazz, released the song Sweet Mother, an upbeat single, sung in Pidgin English, and featuring a West African highlife-infused tempo, with a Congolese Soukous-style fingerpicking guitar lead. Despite having been previously rejected by no less than three major record companies, it went on to become one of the best-selling and most popular Pan-African singles ever released. The lyrics began thus:

Sweet mother I no go forget you

For the suffer wey you suffer for me yeah

It was the quintessential African ode to motherhood. In equal parts full of praise and mention of sacrifice, it symbolised the unbreakable bond between mother and child, and is often played at weddings and other ceremonies far beyond Nigeria and Cameroon. Perhaps more than any other piece of art, this song captures the intimate tri-generational and parallel relationships between Micere Githae Mugo and her mother, and Micere Githae Mugo and her children.

Nothing brought Mwalimu more comfort and joy than her children. For those familiar with her lectures and presentations, nary a single one began without an elaborate acknowledgment of Mumbi and Njeri, replete with all their respective accomplishments (much to their irritation). Even in person, when speaking or referring to either one of them, a sparkle would light up her eyes as immense pride beamed. Every decision she made since their birth was carried out with them in mind, and although she often expressed regret for the effects some of those decisions had on her children, feeling her life’s trajectory had yielded undue hardship on them, Mumbi and Njeri would always reassure their mother of the contrary. It was this precise journey that forged them into the women they became, the daughters she referred to as her “besties” and of whom Mwalimu took immense satisfaction in being the loudest cheerleader and praise singer. If there was a heaven on earth for Mwalimu, it existed when she was beside her children.

Mwalimu’s nurturing soul remained consistent throughout her life, reverberating across distance and geographies, always planting seeds of hope and reassurance in her children’s hearts. For Mũmbi wa Mũgo, and the late Njeri Kũi, their mother’s stories, woven from threads of struggle and strength, ignited in them fires of resilience, reminding them that roots, no matter how bruised and imperfect, are meant to be nourished and celebrated.

Believing, as the African American novelist Toni Morrison often said, that “the function of freedom is to free someone else”, Mwalimu’s essence as a mother, and her sense of family, transcended mere biology. She opened her heart and home to many, becoming a mother and sister to countless regardless of their origin and circumstances. Throughout her life, her homes did not discriminate. They were sites of knowledge, sanctuary, community, and entertainment for people from virtually every walk of life.

Mwalimu was the nurturer of dreams, fostering creativity and independent thinking in all those she embraced as her children, reflecting Bell Hooks’ notion of love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. I recall her taking a keen interest in my own professional endeavours. While mine were different in discipline from hers, she recognised the common thread with which we pursued our respective fields, and invested her time and resources, often while battling one or more ailments, in guiding me towards conclusions that would embolden my arguments and position my work through the lens of Africana scholarship. Mwalimu frequently and publicly cheered my accomplishments, delightfully advertising the products of my work to the audiences we shared. When I was commissioned to curate a collective Pan-African architectural exhibition as part of the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennial, her thunderous applause that ricocheted in the longest email I’ve ever received from her – and this is not to say her emails were ever short – contained a critical review of my curatorial statement with appendices to boot, all attached in a multiple-page document that she took the trouble to manually digitise, all the while battling an infection.

She opened her heart and home to many, becoming a mother and sister to countless regardless of their origin and circumstances.

Mwalimu’s spirit was that of a wanderer. She roamed not just through physical landscapes but through the corridors of the human experience, embodying Chinua Achebe’s notion that “proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten”. An avid traveller, she so enjoyed encounters with diverse cultures through which she embraced the human experience in its myriad shades, recognising that unity arises from understanding and fostering solidarity with all who are disempowered and disenfranchised. In every place she lived, Mwalimu never stood idle or quiet in the face of oppression, always agitating and mobilising for the issues of the day, be they fighting dictatorship in Kenya, defeating Apartheid in South Africa and Palestine, supporting LBGTQI and immigrant rights globally, resisting White Supremacy and protecting the right to vote in the United States. All these and more she championed, determined to lend her voice to the voiceless, and might to the weak.

The tapestry of Mwalimu’s life extended beyond her family, weaving through communities with the deftness of the Afro-Cuban laureate, Nicolás Cristóbal Guillén Batista’s poetic strokes. She was a bridge builder, a community organiser, an embodiment of Assata Shakur’s vision of revolution as an ongoing process. She recognised that a single thread couldn’t hold the fabric of change; it required collective hands and shared dreams to stitch together a world of equity and compassion.

“Sometimes you take detours to get where you need to go.”  So wrote the Haitian-American author Edwidge Dandicat. And accordingly, exile couldn’t extinguish the fire within Mwalimu’s heart. No stranger to betrayal, she lived life looking forward, not forgetting the pains and losses of the past, but not clutching onto them nor clinging to bygone eras, acutely aware that a closed door is also a new beginning. It is an opportunity to resist containment, to evolve, to sow and nurture seeds elsewhere, with the new environment no different from a new blank page in one’s story. That is not to say she forgot about where she was from. Mwalimu was always engaged and connected to Kenya. But exile pushed her towards new horizons, all of which left identifiers on her that were as indelible as her origins.

She was a bridge builder, a community organiser, an embodiment of Assata Shakur’s vision of revolution as an ongoing process.

“How do I survive?” Mwalimu once rhetorically remarked during a 2015 conversation with her biographer Ndirangũ Wachanga. “[I survive through] linking up with struggles wherever I happen to find myself. That lesson really came very powerfully from my mother and is summarised in My Mother’s Poems, this notion of learning as human beings to create spaces, to create new homes, which we have to learn as progressive pan Africanists of what oppressed people, especially what enslaved people did.”

To buttress herself against the torment of being separated from all that was loved and familiar, Mwalimu immersed herself in the everyday lives of the people in the places she lived. Following the principles of Utu and Ubuntu, she embraced their concerns as her own, their fights as new battlegrounds. Like the Guyanese academic and activist Walter Rodney’s unwavering commitment to truth, she stood firm against injustice, transforming her longing for home into an unyielding struggle for justice. Mwalimu bore the weight of people’s hopes as she fought for a world where words, like South African singer-songwriter Miriam Makeba’s melodies, knew no boundaries.

In 1982, while addressing a Malcom X weekend lecture at Harvard University, the African American feminist philosopher Audre Lorde observed, “Revolution is not a one-time event.”  This Mwalimu understood well; she once chuckled with absolute glee at my calling out her lifelong affinity for mischief. Defiant to a fault, no nemesis was too big, too powerful, for her to oppose. Resistance, she felt, was as important as joy. And her defiance spread across facets. She abhorred, for example, the brandishing of titles and displays of social stratification – hallmarks, she believed, of the insecure. There she was, sitting quietly in a waiting room for one of her medical appointments, her body weakened from the effects of aggressive chemotherapy, proudly flaunting a tote bag brightly emblazoned with the words “Fight the Power!”

To buttress herself against the torment of being separated from all that was loved and familiar, Mwalimu immersed herself in the everyday lives of the people in the places she lived.

In the front and rear gardens of her home in Syracuse, there Mwalimu found solace. An avid gardener, the cold of winter was kept at bay by her anticipation of spring, when the loosening soils and warmer temperatures would draw her outside, along with both willing and unwilling accomplices, gardening paraphernalia in tow, to till the loosening soil. This, even when it was against Mumbi’s ever-vigilant advice, was her happy place. Basking under the sun, caring for the kaleidoscopic hues of the blooming canvas that was her vegetable and floral ensemble, Mwalimu found a mirror to her own life – where tending to growth required patience, determination, and the willingness to embrace, metaphorically and physically, both sunlight and storms. And it was under her sun hat, and in her gardening gloves and gumboots that some of her most devoted time was spent.

The months from April to October were focused on, among other things, planting, weeding, and harvesting. The discipline put in the effort that went into producing organic vegetables was second only to that which drove her writing, and always released a dose of energy that no medication could substitute. Every year, without fail, Mwalimu fastidiously planted a range of vegetables including heirloom tomatoes and kale, a headless leafy green cabbage similar to sukuma wiki that was also favourite of the neighbourhood gopher – a stubborn rodent of a creature that often, and quite successfully, claimed exclusive domain over this plant; Kunde, also known as cowpea leaves; and a plethora of herbs. Harvests were multiple throughout the summer, bringing her immense satisfaction and the luxury of consuming home-grown produce year round.

At the front of the house, bees pollinated her assembly of annuals and perennials, flowers that were also a delicacy for the local deer. “Pirates!” She called them. Each flower petal, each vegetable harvest, was a testament to her resilience, a reflection of her understanding that life’s beauty lies in its imperfections and in the sum of its parts.

Between the pages of books, Mwalimu embarked on a ceaseless voyage of intellectual discovery as she consumed literature with voracious hunger. She knew that the most profound journeys were those of the mind, and through every word devoured, she collected fragments of wisdom to sew into the tapestry of her own life, and the lives of others.

In 2018, I gifted Mwalimu the book Barracoon: The Story of the “Last Black Cargo”, a small title by the African American anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston.  “What a read!” she exclaimed, and went on to discuss how the author’s insistence on claiming and establishing African American Orature as a site of knowledge was nothing short of a revolutionary act. We would later share thoughts on the legitimacy of marginalized languages like Caribbean Patois or Kenyan Sheng, loathed by the elites but nonetheless authentic as linguistic systems, capable of literary rigour, and worthy of celebration. Antiguan novelist Jamaica Kincaid asks in her book A Small Place, “For isn’t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?” Drawing from that, Mwalimu recognized that linguistic colonialism was as brutal and unjust as all other forms of dominance, and that language, in whatever form, is above all the heartbeat of a community.

But perhaps what she enjoyed reading the most was personal correspondence from those in her orbit. Every sentence in a personal email was carefully and diligently referred to or responded to. And those responses were ever so lyrical, so elaborate, so engaging that one would immediately feel the weight of the world in their attempts to write back in kind – an exercise quite often futile.  And God help you if you did not respond!

Each flower petal, each vegetable harvest, was a testament to her resilience, a reflection of her understanding that life’s beauty lies in its imperfections and in the sum of its parts.

A deeply spiritual being, Mwalimu prayed to God, often.  But she also meditated daily, believing that reflecting and thinking about the nature of, and occurrences on, those dear to her was aligned with and inseparable from her own circumstances.  She did not, however, subscribe to a singular organized system of belief and worship, and was always sceptical about seeing God through an externally programmed lens. Mwalimu’s spirituality was more personalized, and centred on providing her with peace and purpose. She was aware, as Professor Jacob Olupona states, that African “deities, spirits, gods, ancestors, and personal and impersonal forces are regarded as active agents in the created world…”, and ancestral tradition, the veneration of parents and forbears was central to an honest and unfiltered understanding of our world, rooted in indigenous African knowledge systems. She called out to the ancestors often, seeking their guidance and comfort, believing that the suppression of these systems remained a critical component in the unfinished process of African liberation.

At the core of her being, Mwalimu was human, embracing and being open about her vulnerabilities with the grace of James Baldwin’s reflections on authenticity.  Her honesty, like a mirror reflecting truth, resonated with the essence of what it meant to be complete.  In a world fraught with façades, she dared to bare her soul, displaying to us how authenticity is not only rare, but is a revolution in itself.  Hers is a tapestry woven with threads of love, struggle, growth, and ultimately truth.  This is what set her apart from many.  Ever conscious of social relationships that are of equal status, intellectual openness and possibilities for critique and creative engagement, Mwalimu’s encounters with the world followed her fervent belief in an old Gĩkũyũ adage, kwaaranĩria nĩ kwendana, meaning “to hold dialogue is to love.”

“For isn’t it odd that the only language I have in which to speak of this crime is the language of the criminal who committed the crime?”

From Kariria, Kirinyaga County in Central Kenya on the southern slopes of the great mountain, to the revered halls of Makerere University perched on the hilltops of Kampala, Uganda, to the maritime province of New Brunswick on the Atlantic coast of Canada, to the then politically active University of Nairobi in Kenya’s bustling capital, to the blooming Jacaranda tree-laden avenues of Harare, Zimbabwe, and finally to her home in Syracuse, nestled in the heart of Onondaga County in Central New York, Mwalimu’s legacy beckons us to embrace life’s journey with modesty and fervour. These two qualities, along with courage, guided and grounded her throughout her life. They were, however, not qualities gained as she navigated through the world, but rather qualities that were already in place, and instilled in her as a child by her mother, a woman who had walked her own path before her, experienced and overcome her own share of turmoil and in the process found her own voice. Mwalimu remained anchored to her mother, her metaphorical North Star, and grateful for the sacrifices that were made, and the pain that was endured, to allow for the becoming of Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo.

If i no sleep, my mother no go sleep

If i no chop, my mother no go chop

She no dey tire ooo

Sweet mother i no go forget dey suffer wey you suffer for me yeh yeh

Sweet mother yeeeeh

Sweet mother oh, oh oh

And so ends Prince Nico Mbarga’s Sweet Mother, so aptly describing the bonds between a woman in the central highlands of Kenya who despite losing it all, would persevere to nurture Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo, bequeathing to her the fortitude to stay the course, a foundation that would one day take Micere to previously unimaginable heights. The daughter would herself become a mother, passing onto the next generation what would take Mwalimu’s legacy even further. Grace.

It was the dawn of a new decade. The Kenya Colony was in the frenzy of transition. Behind it lay the trauma of the State of Emergency; ahead, the tantalising promise of Uhuru. In February 1961, the excitement rose to fever pitch: an African majority was elected for the first time in the colony’s Legislative Council, an important political development making manifest the reality of the “wind of change” sweeping not only across the rapidly diminishing British Empire but also right at home in the Kenya Colony itself. Everywhere, there was change in the air – euphoria for the majority, trepidation for others, as preparations were made in earnest for the birth of Kenya as a brand new independent nation.

On all fronts, the changes were happening; sometimes faster than the guardians and facilitators of the old colonial order were ready for. And so it is that change came to a little school, tucked in the heart of what was then called the White Highlands, where, according to school lore, a progressive headteacher, Veronica Owen, tabled a daring proposal. It was time, she said, for the school, which had begun as a small family initiative in 1922, to take the big step away from racial exclusion to integration. It was time for Limuru Girls School – as it celebrated 40 years as an educational institution that had served to this point an exclusively European student body – to transition into a multiracial institution.

To the school community, this was as momentous as the idea of independence was to many in the country. True, it wouldn’t be the very first time in the colony that students of different races would sit together in a classroom. In 1949, John and Joan Karmali, an interracial couple, had officially pioneered the first “non-racial” classes in the colony. With no other premises available, these had been held in the official residence of the Indian High Commissioner and in their own home. Later, as interest caught on amongst a tiny community of willing parents, the then Governor Phillip Mitchell facilitated the acquisition of the premises bequeathing it the name that it would become known by: Hospital Hill School. Thus began the first “brave, successful and doomed” experiment in instiling colour blindness in Kenya through racially integrated schooling – also noteworthy in that it was the first primary school in Nairobi to offer access to African pupils.

Up until that time, the assumption had been that African children were absent in the city. That the school had survived its first rocky decade despite the heightened political tensions of the fifties and the general disapproval of many in the settler elite, was possibly a source of inspiration to those at Limuru Girls School enthusiastic about the idea. Possibly, they were also aware of another initiative in the pipeline at the time: to set up a similar experiment in the form of an all-boys Sixth Form college – what ultimately became Strathmore. If this was the case, they must also have been very conscious that for their own school community, there were very important differences. Unlike Hospital Hill or the proposed Strathmore, the benefit of a committed and supportive school community united in the express vision of racial integration was not guaranteed. Then, there was also the fact that these other institutions were day schools, meaning that the children attending them would be living at home, making it possible for the parents to be constantly involved, on a day-to-day basis, in closely monitoring and offering daily support to guarantee their well-being. This would not be possible in a residential school. And finally, the student populations of both the Hospital Hill School and Strathmore College were racially integrated from the get-go, while in the case of Limuru Girls School, this would mean bringing in the bare minimum number of non-White students into one class on an experimental basis. It would not be exaggerating to consider those students as guinea pigs whose survival was a matter of optimistic conjecture, rather than as privileged winners of an educational jackpot.

It is safe to assume that support for the proposal was not unanimous and one can only imagine how vehement the reactions to the proposal must have been. Still, the advocates for the idea would not be deterred. The school was a Christian school, they pointed out. Would it not be the Christian thing to do? Finally, however, the decision was taken: two students only – one African, one Asian – would be given the opportunity for two years to prove the intellectual and social worth of their respective races to the school community.

Story, story?

Story come!

Facts as foundation…

And so it was that in early 1961, Limuru Girls School embarked on its great experiment. Two pioneer students were invited to join the incoming Higher Certificate level class. The African student selected, Madeleine Mĩcere Gĩthae, had just excelled in her School Certificate examinations after four happy years at the African (later Alliance) Girls High School, where she had also been a popular head girl and active participant in a range of “extra” curricula activities. That school was also looking forward to a historic new class, 1961 being the seminal year when it would offer its pioneer Higher Certificate class. Either way, Madeleine Gĩthae, should she return to her former school or move on to this new opportunity, was set to be an educational pioneer in Kenya. The choice to join Kirpal Singh as the other pioneer non-European student in an entire school meant she would take the harder, lonelier path to engraving her name in the annals of the country.

Two students only – one African, one Asian – would be given the opportunity for two years to prove the intellectual and social worth of their respective races to the school community.

One could simply skip through the next couple of years by saying that the rest is history. The record does show that Madeleine Gĩthae did indeed go on to not only survive, but also to excel during her time at Limuru, passing every test set for her both in and out of the classroom. In her studies, she made nonsense of the notion of the alleged intellectual inferiority of the African, on the sports field she earned the grudging admiration of her peers by earning glory for the school. Throughout the six long terms that she was a student at the school, she gave those searching for reasons to bolster the case for continuing racial segregation in Kenyan schools nothing to point triumphantly to. By the time she left in 1962, she had flung wide open the doors of schools such as this one for the myriads of girls – and boys – of all races and classes who would come after her. She also graduated at the top of her class, earning a coveted scholarship to the University of Oxford. She turned this down – preferring instead to go to the University of East Africa at Makerere where … but that is a story for another time.

Story, story?

Story come!

Facts as foundation,

Spice creatively…

In some ways, this is the end of the story of those two years at Limuru Girls School… but in other ways, this is just the frame. To fill it out, I invite you to switch places with me as you become the storyteller and take the lead in a journey of imagination. Step back into that place, that time, step, for a moment, into the school shoes of a teenager facing the challenge of having such enormous responsibility placed on your shoulders. Ta imagini – to echo her older self – what it must have been like to leave home, a place where you were loved and cherished and affirmed, to go to boarding school for several weeks at a time. Ta imagini looking around you, once your parents had left, not at girls whose smiling faces promised the possibility of making new friends to set off with on an exciting adventure, but rather facing up to settling into this new environment, where the majority saw you as a lesser being, and deeply resented your presence. Ta imagini having to be in this lonely space for weeks on end with no respite; with even the handful of fellow students who might be a little sympathetic to your plight, careful not to cross the invisible boundaries of becoming too closely associated with you. Yes, ta imagini the direct personal experience of being on the frontline of the ugly racism that was at the core of the colonial education system.

And sure, one might argue, the success or failure of one schoolgirl would definitely not have been the end of the world. Kenya would have continued its inexorable march towards independence. Sooner rather than later, African and Asian students would have been welcomed at this school and many others as, indeed, racial exclusion died a timely death in Kenya – at least officially. But just for a moment, think about what it meant for this child facing the unknown to take a deep breath as the realisation set in of how utterly on her own she would be in the weeks to come, and most especially when immersed in the crowd of girls amongst whom she would never truly belong.

Yes, ta imagini the direct personal experience of being on the frontline of the  ugly racism that was at the core of the colonial education system.

Limuru Girls School has a simple motto: In Fide Vade – in Faith We Go. I think of it as a reminder that schools are spaces that do more than prepare students for exams; they are important agents of socialisation, facilitating the future into being by nurturing the children that will live as adults in it. As I reflect on these two critical years of Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo’s childhood, in relation to the person she became, I find myself wondering what influence they might have had on her. In the discourse that pervades Kenya at the present time, as we tussle with the logistics of engineering the school structure and debate and discuss the ins and outs of the new curricula, I ask myself what exactly it is that we envision these critical spaces to be for and how far we have travelled from the challenges that six decades ago those in charge of the system were grappling with. What kind of impact will these critical years of their lives have on the students who are passing through our school institutions today?

With the benefit of hindsight, I wonder if it was during these years at Limuru Girls School that Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo developed a lifelong passion for “creating liberated zones” in educational institutions. If it was here that, having experienced the lifeline of companionship through the books that she clung to during the loneliest of times written by artists such as James Baldwin (whom she would later meet and become close friends with), that she determined that art could not be relegated to the margins of society. Was it here that she first deepened her appreciation of Orature not simply as part of the everyday experience of life that she had experienced it to be since she was a child, but also as a necessary weapon in the struggle for liberation and the attainment of the vision of a holistic and healed society? Was it in this space, during these years threaded through with the implicit questioning of her own humanity and her right to be treated as equal to her peers, that she commenced her “tireless pursuit of utu” as lifelong praxis? Was it in this period that she consciously embraced the responsibility of being “the first” – and this could be counted as the seminal of the many other “firsts” in her life – not as exclusive privilege to flaunt, or guarantor of special benefits and recognition, but as the opportunity to burst open spaces of exclusion to create access for others? Perhaps. Whether consciousness of all – or any – of these crystallised during this period, or whether these experiences formed into coherent praxis during the decades to follow, with the benefit of hindsight, these years settle into a metaphor for the legacy she challenges us to reflect on.

What kind of impact will these critical years of their lives have on the students who are passing through our school institutions today?

How tempting to bring this rumination to a close as a triumphant account of victory over all odds! In a way, this would be true to the facts and the spirit of this sharing, and yet … a lingering thought: If indeed the Limuru Girls School of 1961–1962 played a role in influencing Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo to become what so many today are testifying to as worthy of emulation, it wasn’t because the school set out to achieve that, but rather in spite of the many obstacles she encountered that might have resulted in a very different ending. With that in mind, how can this story end without sparing a thought for the many other children broken or deeply wounded from being on the frontline of different sites of the liberation struggle, in spaces and circumstances that have shaped the terrain we have inherited today? And for every one that has emerged scarred but victorious in their battle, how many more have been martyred? Would it be too much to ask that we honour the memory of each one of them, even as we remember the contributions of Mĩcere Gĩthae Mũgo, with unwavering commitment to creating liberated zones in our educational institutions, in whatever way “aluta continua” rings true in our lives?

And so the story ends, the story passes on,

This story weaves in, this story weaves out:

Story, story

Facts as foundation

Spice creatively 

Mix and marinate!

Jesus has always been box-office.

He’s a superstar. He’s a celebrity. He’s the celebrity. He’s “hot”. He’s famous and popular—trust me, those are two different things, ask St Peter. But even the blind can see how the Church has recently been at odds with its heavenly and earthly masters, the former offering eternal life, the latter building heaven on earth. For a cleric, the hottest ticket in town is an invite to State House, or for State House to come to you.

Not so for my immortal soul. After a whirlwind teenage storybook romance, the Almighty and I hit a snag in our relationship. We are staying together for the kids—the kids being a wedding or a funeral, where He recently caught my eye across the room during a requiem and I looked away in shame, embarrassed that I hadn’t called.

Which is why I am surprised that He blinked first, showing up unannounced at my new residence. Indeed, I have moved houses to reflect my career trajectory. I now live somewhere off Ngong Road, shackled in between trees, with an eager and rather loquacious caretaker who I discovered has a penchant for rosemary (the herb). The rent is manageable, which, by “larger Kilimani” standards, is practically a bargain. I needed somewhere that was close to all the party scenes in Westy, somewhere close to the CBD and, more importantly, somewhere that has water because jerricans and mitungi on the balcony are just not giving. Thus, it was surprising when the landlord forgot the small matter of a Legio Maria church mushrooming right under the said balcony. And you know what they say: Shout your joyful praises to the Lord. Make noise for the Almighty.

Now, I don’t know if the Lord knows this, but I have been a captive audience, getting the brunt of the hallelujahs and the hosannas and the hail Jesuses in much higher decibels than reach Him. And if there are people who are brazen, it’s church folks.

I asked my landlord, James, why he can’t petition to remove the church from the residential place and, clearly speaking from experience, he flatly told me it was impossible.

I am no longer a religious fanatic. I am no atheist either. Nor am I a misotheist—I don’t hate God. Quite the contrary. I like God—or the idea of God. But why do His people have to be so loud?

And why is it always the ‘hoods that have the loud churches? And, ironically, still grapple with the highest crime rates (up to 60 per cent as is the case in Bondeni, Nakuru)? In the “larger Kilimani” area, within a square mile of Kawangware, Congo or Amboseli you will find no less than twenty-odd churches, assaulting every ear in their vicinity. If the Protestants don’t get you, the Adventists will. Contrast that with the posh areas where the hum of pearly gates opening is what ushers you in, where the cacophony of the city is kept out by terrestrial walls and signs of “Controlled Development” silencing even the most fervent of evangelists. Gentrification makes noise silently.

Perhaps this is why I find the religious experience underwhelming, akin to attending the world’s most lavish church when you are ambivalent about God. Church services that should take, at best, two hours, are extended to accommodate politicians who promise “sitaleta siasa kanisani”. They go on and on, castigating their opponents, bellowing their achievements, “leta-ing siasa kanisani”. The congregation, meanwhile, is cast under their spell, ululating and dancing and stomping their feet as the 100K, 200K, 300K or whatever amount the politician has donated hits the offering basket. The Church has chosen Caesar over God and, put on a scale, has been found wanting.

I know how I lost my faith: When the church and the politicians started speaking through one mouth. Politics and preachers make for awkward bedfellows, but when Christianity is politicised, churches transfigure into repositories not of grace but of grievances. The combination of religion and politics is an alchemy of pure evil, all in the name of God, an exemplar of taking the Lord’s name in a vain self-serving fashion.

It feels like the church is unwittingly behaving like the adamant prophet Balaam, from the story in the Bible, while the donkey—the congregation—keeps resisting the prodding, because they can see the angel with a drawn sword on the road. In other words, one can’t tell where the politician ends and the pastor begins. President Ruto got his political (mis)education from President Moi, perfecting his master’s tricks. President Moi was “God’s anointed”; Ruto is “God’s Chosen One”. Moi himself was said to be hyper-religious, an AIC faithful, waking up at 5a.m. to pray and read the Bible. Ruto, falling at the base of the apple tree, is presumably a devout man of God, a teetotaller, waking up at 4a.m. to pray, a behaviour that became a habit from his days as the Christian Union leader at the University of Nairobi sometime between 1986 and 1990. In June 2018, Deputy President Ruto took umbrage at his critics, telling off those criticising his frequent church harambees and stating that he was “investing in heaven”.

Politics and preachers make for awkward bedfellows, but when Christianity is politicised, churches transfigure into repositories not of grace but of grievances.

Ruto the salesman, who sells himself by his manner of speaking, quickly became a refracted image of the pastors who had started their churches with a handful of congregants before they “hustled” their way into becoming the moneyed leaders of mega-churches. Moi may have used the Church, Ruto weaponized it. Moi may have been the tsar, but Ruto is its star. He is not its hero, but he just might be its culmination.

Going to church presently is akin to fulfilling a social obligation. It’s hard to trust the Church, and we certainly don’t believe our leaders, so we have a society where we are checking out – the middle children of history with no purpose or motivation. This is as acknowledged if ignored as oxygen is acknowledged and ignored. Which explains the exodus from mainstream churches and their long-held traditions to the new charismatic evangelical churches that are flexible and personal. This is our great social malaise, and it is terminal. We are the damned, who no longer give a damn.

In the high noon of my youth, I gave a damn. Wallaahi billaahi. I gave so much damn I had a Sunday Best outfit. My Sunday best was always a shirt, crisp white, brown, or beige khaki pants and dress shoes, good manners tucked in my pocket. Now I wear my Sunday best on a Monday. Or a Tuesday. Any day, really.

In those days, walking the streets of Nairobi on the way to Sunday service you would lose money to either a hawker or a pickpocket. Or both. It didn’t matter. We just wanted to be in the house of the Lord. We seemed to live at church. We weren’t living in Roysambu but we were living our best life. Now money is the true Jesus. Tuchangie this, tujenge that, and of course, the pastor needs a new car to move around in (with the Gospel?), and could we make it at least 2500cc, preferably black, so that the devil cannot see him coming? Amen?

Somewhere along that road I lost my way and joined the multitudes on the crowded highway to hell. Somewhere along the way I lost my fear. I lost my reverence.

I am not hiding the fact that I have a love-hate relationship with the Church. My mother has never missed a kesha (night vigil). When she talks about Jesus, even Jesus sits down to listen. Her voice would tremble, her eyes would water, and I’d run away, because what is this Jesus that makes people cry when they think of him? My mother fears Jesus. We feared her. I have always been jealous of Jesus. He got the best half—we got the discipline. Presently, my particular beliefs commit me to think that those who call pastors “dad” or “mom” are mistaken. Heresy aside, a pastor cannot replace one’s parents. It says so in Matthew 23:9. Besides, Jesus himself was called “Teacher” or “Rabbi”, never “daddy”. It does not, however, commit me to think any less of them for their belief. That is a crucial distinction, which often gets lost in translation when talking about religion. That is what has made me disdain Sunday service. It is no longer about God but about men of God.

Somewhere along that road I lost my way and joined the multitudes on the crowded highway to hell.

When I was growing up in Kahawa Wendani, a popular fridge magnet slogan was “WWJD?”—What would Jesus do? I can’t speak for Jesus, so now I ask, what should I do? The Church doesn’t call out leaders; not in the way Jesus did. It merely suggests, barely instructs.

The politician has since replaced the Almighrrryy Gaaawwdd (as my twenty-something choirmaster says it) as the most quotable figure on the pulpit. My Sunday School teacher could never have enough of saying, “The Bible is not a storybook. It is a book full of stories.”

Stories—like the Sermon on the Mount or the Parable of the Rich Fool or the Tale of the Lost Sheep—illustrate this; Jesus, a buddy-leader, shooting the breeze with the scum of the earth, the prostitutes and the tax collectors, those on the crowded path on the wrong side of the narrow way. The Bible, full of stories, the grotesque and the passionate. In 2022, I began my own story: I set fire to the rain with my mother’s mainstream church, when during the “Friends’ Sunday” service, in the lead-up to the general election, the presiding pastor told us which side to vote for. Not asked. Not recommended. Instructed. His exact words: “Tumefikiria na tunajua serikali gani itatuumiza.” ‘Tu-’ in this sense was not the ordinary mwananchi, but the ordinary kanisa. I was simply collateral in an us-versus-them, the children of light against the children of darkness. Jesus hates the sin but loves the sinner. The church is naked but it wants to advise you which clothes you should wear.

The parable of my generation—those whose guide is no longer the Holy Word but Hollywood—is that we long gave up the ghost. The spirit that possesses us instead is bottled in 250ml, 350ml and mzinga bottles. But the church below my balcony has an unmistakable scent of hope. Visitors, I see, troop in for a taste. Some come out of curiosity, many come in desperation, prayer items in tow: healing, deliverance, blessings. Politicians come not to win Jesus hearts, but the electorate’s vote.

I stopped going to church after campus, in the year of our Lord 2018, but Covid was the final Pontius Pilate moment for me. I couldn’t relate to the message, and I certainly didn’t trust the messenger. The times I remember being in church were ecstatic. The preacher—part voodoo evangelism, part dramatic mastery, self-indulgence par excellence—calling himself the mighty man of God rather than the man of the mighty God à la the self-proclaimed “Prophet” David Edward Ujiji Owuor, whose record-breaking titles are enviable, who gets roads cleaned for him. My pastor was an emotional preacher. One who rouses the crowd, gets their blood boiling, their fists flying and their throats breaking. A teacher tells, a preacher yells? Indeed.

A preacher of fire and brimstone, with the audacity of a white suburban male on a humanitarian mission to change lives in Africa, his words swarming over you from every direction. The pastor would seem possessed, losing himself in a trance, the church members drinking the Kool-Aid in a continuous chant sung by tens of hundreds of small bands. It is adulation, hero-worship, and a welcome home all wrapped together and delivered in surround sound. The way it used to be and, some would argue, still should be. Maybe that’s what keeps the congregation in their seats and the coins in the offering basket. In a sense, it’s no different from the spirit in bottles—one numbs the body, the other numbs the soul.

The church means different things to different people. To some, refuge. To others, hope. To me? A noisy, insensitive place, nestled within an estate, forcing teachings down one’s throat. It’s very hard to separate the signal from the noise. But I can no longer fathom my place without that church below my balcony. They are my windvane for Sunday mornings. I even know one song: “Nikiwa shemasi mwema, nitapewa dhahabu, nitahimiza wenzangu kwa kuwatembelea, wasiporudi zizini nitawarudiaaaa…”

Religion is faith. Faith is strong belief based on conviction rather than proof. Faith asks you to believe and share without evidence.  Faith has never been reasonable. Nor will I try to paint it as such. Because faith is not rational, it rattles us, it prods us; are you a coward because you don’t believe … or because you believe? Maybe that irrationality nourishes the emotional brain because it calms fears, answers to yearnings, and strengthens feelings of loyalty. Its irrationality may even be the source of its power.

Church imetuwekea finyo

Like Prayerful Rachel and Honest Ruto, perhaps the Kenyan Church is a manifestation of our prayers getting answered, our very own Frankenstein’s monster. Perhaps, this government really is the chosen one. Isn’t it clear already in Romans 13:1? Isn’t this what you get when you put a hustler in State House? The girl I want to make my wife says, “We elected hustlers, only we are the hustle.”

We so much want to believe in the Church—that it will do good. But the scandals just won’t let us. Did you hear of the priest that was caught in a lodging with that girl? Have you heard of that pastor who asked his congregation to fast and die so they could go to heaven? And – whisper it quietly – the other one who is married but has knocked up a baby-momma?

I can no longer fathom my place without that church below my balcony.

I still periodically go to church. Wallahi. Mbele ya God. And I only go there because the service lasts as long as a Gengetone rapper’s musical career. Sometimes to pacify my mother—I still fear her. Sometimes because of a girl I like. Okay, most times. It doesn’t hurt that the congregation has a high net worth too. Have you seen the rich pray? They do not so much supplicate as they ask the Lord to do things. Chinua Achebe captures it perfectly in Anthills of the Savannah: “Charity, really, and not religion, is the opium of the privileged.”

Jesus used to be box-office. People obey Him, or they say they do. You know, Jesus is Lord.  But ever since politicians climbed the mountain, saw churches in the promised land, and prepared to harvest, I silently mourn. Lord, I pray: please protect me from your followers. Or maybe I should just join the Legio Maria church under my balcony. Juu, otherwise, kwani nita do?

“I closed the huge doors behind me and walked softly towards the altar. I was in the opium of the people. The huge cross dangled from chains fixed to the roof. I stood looking at the crucified Christ. He looked like He needed a stiff drink. He looked as if He had just had a woman from behind. He looked like He had not been to the toilet for two thousand years. He looked like I felt. That was the connection.”

~ Dambudzo Marechera, Black Sunlight. ~