Muthoni Thangwa

Author: muthonithangwa

  • Saba saba!

    Kamukunji Grounds at peace!

    Today is Saba Saba.

    Funny how it only stirs something when you say it in Swahili. Say “the seventh of July,” and most people will blink and move on. But say Saba Saba—and something activates. The air stiffens. Memory stirs. Passions rise. It’s not just a date. It’s a scar. A story. A mirror.

    But this year feels… different.

    No placards. No sirens. No leaders bellowing into aging microphones.

    Just Kamukunji Grounds, wide and waiting under the Nairobi sun. And four strangers—young, unarmed, unbothered—walking in from the far corners of the country, like an accidental compass pointing to something new.

    Amina, a tech innovator from Garissa, is here to install an open-source WiFi node for schoolchildren—just one part of a dream she calls ShujaaHub.

    Kimani, grandson of a Mau Mau general, comes every year to this ground to remember. This time, he’s brought a drum.

    Chebet, a spoken word artist from Kericho, carries only her voice. She’s debuting a piece called We Are Not the Lines Drawn On a Map.

    And Odhiambo? A culinary artist from Kisumu. He’s lugged a pot of mbuta stew and enough ugali to feed whoever comes hungry—physically or otherwise.

    None of them were invited. None needed to be.

    The Convergence

    They meet at the old fig tree. The one elders say heard the first whispers of resistance. There’s no programme. No emcee. Just offerings.

    Amina sets up the WiFi and waves a small device at a group of kids chasing a flat ball across the dust. “Free Internet!” she calls out. They abandon the match without a second thought. Soon they’re gathered around her, learning how to upload stories to ShujaaHub.

    Kimani sits cross-legged, eyes closed, and begins to beat the drum. Not in protest—but in memory. In rhythm. His feet trace slow movements from long ago—the kind the resistance once danced in caves and forests. A few children try to mimic him, limbs flailing in joy. The sound carries.

    When he stops, Chebet rises. Tall. Graceful. Her voice slices through the air like truth:

    “We came from the Rift and the Coast and the Mountain and the Lake
    But what bound us was not land—it was longing.”

    Silence falls. Not out of reverence—out of recognition.

    Then Odhiambo ladles out stew, chatting up a boda boda rider from Kathonzweni who chuckles, “Aki, if I’d known this was happening, I’d have brought mangoes. Historic occasion, bana!”

    People begin to gather. Not for a march. Not for a spectacle. But because it feels right. A girl types out her grandmother’s story—about how she survived the Emergency—then uploads it to ShujaaHub.

    A teenage boy records Kimani’s drumbeat and makes it his ringtone. Then he airdrops it to anyone within Bluetooth range.

    A city council cleaner joins Chebet’s chorus with an old hymn. Two uniformed police officers stop—not to disperse—but to listen. No slogans. No t-shirts. No hierarchy.

    Just people. Just Kenyans.

    Memory. Possibility. Stew.

    On this day at Kamukunji, the ground remembered.

    And maybe—just maybe—so does the country.

    That the future of Kenya will not be shouted into existence.

    It won’t be forced through manifestos or fists.

    It will be made—quietly, defiantly, and together.

    But that is vision 2030 – what happened to that blueprint by the way? On this saba saba day, we are on the edge of hope. Hoping that the memories from today will part of the poems in 2030 and beyond.

    For now, I’m gobsmacked by Kenyans—and how much we mirror our politicians. We defy order like it’s a national sport. Last Friday, I was at the bank, ticket number in hand like a passport to the pearly gates, waiting my turn like a decent human being. Then in waddles a certain Kenyan—of notable presence—straight to the cheque counter. No ticket. No line. No shame.

    I wasn’t going to let that fly.

    I marched up to the counter and said, “Excuse me, I have a number. I’m in line.” Then I waved my hand across the banking hall like a prophet with a shepherd’s staff and declared, “All of us are waiting. One of us does not get to skip the wilderness.”

    The woman looked at me calmly and said, “I’m only here to check my balance.”

    “And I’m only here to shepherd my flock,” I replied. “But I’m ahead of you.”

    She opened her mouth for a retort, but the people nearest the counter burst out laughing. I hadn’t meant to be funny—only to make a point. About ethics. About respect. About manners. About the kind of order that doesn’t need a uniform to enforce it.

    Because weeh! This madness isn’t just at the top. It starts in the queues.

  • Your free resources/Readers gifts/Little actions to say thank you

    Thank you for visiting Muthonithangwa.com — your one-stop resource for grounded stories on the human experience.
    Here, you’ll find books for children, reflections on caregiving — whether for the young or the old, the well or the ailing — and articles that celebrate our culture and heritage. This page will continue to grow, offering practical tools and thoughtful writing you can return to again and again.

    We begin with something simple but vital: a Medical Emergency List — because being prepared is a quiet form of love.

  • The Truth About Caregiving: Love, Loss, and the Strength to Stay

    The strange kind of love – Reflections on caregiving

    Last week I posted something on social media about caregiving.

    They don’t tell you that caregiving is a strange kind of love. You watch your loved one fade like the setting sun — while you are supposed to shine like sunrise. It is also love in the purest form.  

    I didn’t expect the wave that followed. Now I feel that the moment is ripe to deepen the conversation with clarity and hopefully some grace, for I clearly touched a nerve in many different ways.

    Many replied with quiet tears: “Me too.”
    Others, with concern: “But what about your own life, are you ok?’’
    And a few, with sharp practicality: “It’s a waste of time, energy, money.”

    Those who are living it

    For those who are living it. You don’t need me to explain this kind of love. You’re living it. You’ve learned that time bends — that a single hour can feel like a year when the person you care for no longer knows your name, or repeats the same question twelve times before breakfast.

    You’ve felt that pang — the one where love is still strong, but recognition is gone. And yet, you carry on. You show up. You hold the line between memory and forgetting.

    I see you. And more importantly — you are not invisible to your loved one and others who give care.

    My mum no longer remembers my name — she calls me Mummy, the same way I’ve always called her. It’s her strange, beautiful gift to me.
    If she ever calls me by name, especially at night, we know something’s wrong. My name has become a signal — not of recognition, but of pain. A quiet plea for help.

    For those who fear it

    Some asked: “What about your dreams?”
    “Isn’t this a kind of death sentence?”

    I understand where that comes from. It can be hard to watch someone devote their life to a role that demands so much and gives back so little in tangible terms.

    And yes — it’s hard. It can feel like a slow erasure of the self. But that doesn’t mean it’s a dead end.

    Caregiving didn’t kill my dreams.
    If anything, it lit a fire under them. Gave them purpose. Clarity.
    It stripped away the noise — all the distractions, the vanity goals, the borrowed ambitions I once mistook for my own.

    In caring for someone else so completely, I finally saw what I was meant to fight for. This wasn’t an excuse to give up — it was my liberty card. Not the kind we wave when we want out, but the kind we earn when we finally understand what matters.

    For some of us, caregiving isn’t the death of our lives — it’s the rediscovery of what matters. It’s a different kind of becoming. A quieter kind. A harder kind. But not lesser.

    For those who call it a waste of time, I guess money and emotions too!

    I won’t argue. I simply offer this: Not all value is transactional. Not all time has to earn. And not all love must be proven with profit.

    Some things are sacred — not because they are easy, but because they strip us down to our essence and ask us: Who are you, when no one claps?

    That’s what caregiving does.
    It’s not just about caring for someone else — it strips you bare and shows you who you really are. It reveals the self.

    And to put it in terms that might land better: adulthood is a scam.
    Maybe love won’t scam you — not the real kind — but life will.
    You will be scammed. By duty, by capitalism, by expectations dressed up as dreams.

    I’ve simply chosen my scam.
    Caregiving is the one I picked with my eyes open.
    You get to choose yours too.

    For those of us who will stay.

    I don’t romanticise caregiving. I know the toll. The isolation. The fury. The bone-deep fatigue. But I also know the quiet, searing beauty of being someone’s anchor when they are lost to themselves.

    Caregiving isn’t for everyone. It shouldn’t have to be. But for those of us who walk this path — by choice or by circumstance — let it be known:

    This is not a waste.
    This is not weakness.
    This is love — strange, costly, inconvenient, and transformative.

    Last word.

    If you’re caregiving, or considering it, or afraid of what it might make of you — welcome. There’s room here for your story. Your fear. Your grit. Your grief. Your uneven strength.
    We don’t have to agree on everything.
    But we can choose to hold space — for each other, and for the versions of ourselves we’re still becoming.

    Because in the end, that’s what caregiving teaches us:
    How to hold.
    Even when it hurts.
    Even when it fades.
    Even when it’s never returned.

    And maybe, in this fractured world, that’s the most radical thing left to do.

    If you’re walking this caregiving path too — or just want to connect — I’d love to hear from you.
    You can leave a comment below or reach me via the contact page.

  • One misstep that led to a medical Emergency during the protests – chronic illness and emergency preparedness

    Real story, real danger – Why medical supplies should be your #1 Emergency priority!

    Mercy was always careful with her diabetes medication. Always. She lived alone in a two-bed flat in Langata. Though her cupboards were modest, her pill box was always perfectly arranged: morning tablets, afternoon injections, and evening doses.

    Mercy was a primary school teacher, gentle with children but quietly hard on herself. She first discovered she had diabetes during a routine medical check at a teacher’s wellness camp. The nurse frowned, pricked her again, and then again, as if repeating the test might change the numbers. It didn’t. Mercy sat there, numb, clutching the brochure they handed her. The words blurred: “Chronic condition. Lifelong management. Lifestyle changes.”

    It hit her harder because this was not unfamiliar ground. She had watched her mother fight the same battle — insulin pens, blurred vision, hospital nights, and finally, the exhaustion that settled into her bones – rendering her unable to participate in everyday activities for fear of getting an injury, that would turn into a diabetic ulcer. Now the weight had shifted to Mercy. A quiet grief settled inside her: not dramatic, but heavy, like a wet wool blanket over her shoulders. She felt betrayed by her own blood. And yet, she tucked it in, folded the grief tight, and told herself what teachers always do — keep going, the children are watching.

    What the children could not see was the heartbreak that came quietly, but it cut deep. She had met Peter — a biology and math teacher from a secondary school — at the National Teachers’ Conference in Mombasa. For a while, it felt promising. They shared long conversations about students, lesson plans, and dreams that could fit together. But when Mercy finally told him about her diagnosis, his warm attentiveness turned cold.

    A man trained in science, who should have understood the nature of chronic conditions better than most, instead saw it as a disqualifier. “You’ll struggle to raise a family. This will be too much,” he said bluntly. The words stayed with Mercy long after he walked away. Since then, Mercy had not let anyone else close. Not because there weren’t others — there were — but because Peter had shown her something bitter: even educated people, even those who should know better, could be small when it mattered most. His rejection planted a quiet doubt inside her, and that doubt built careful, invisible walls around her heart.

    She anchored her life on strict routines — balancing her sugar levels with the same precision she brought to her classroom work plans. Work, rest, medication, diet — all carefully measured. But life, in its familiar cruelty, has a way of testing even the most disciplined hearts.

    The national budget barely crossed Mercy’s mind that month. Budgets, politics — they belonged to other people’s worlds. Her world was simpler, smaller: maintain sugar levels, manage exhaustion, survive the day. But even in that small world, the weight of rising prices pressed hard. Groceries cost more. Insulin cost more. The city itself felt heavier somehow.

    When the protests began, she heard them first before she saw them. A dull chant rolling through Langata’s dusty streets — angry voices mixing with the hum of boda bodas. At first, it was easy to dismiss: young men shouting, boys with loud opinions – all marching towards the city center. But by the third day, something shifted. The crowds grew larger, the chants sharper. They called themselves Gen-Z now — and their rage was on wheels.

    By Wednesday, her flat trembled at night with the shriek of police sirens slicing through the dark. News clips showed burning tyres, broken glass, masked faces in the smoke. The youths swore to storm Parliament by week’s end.

    Mercy stood at her window that evening, watching the flicker of distant fires. She ran her fingers absently over her insulin pen on the kitchen table. She had enough for today. Tomorrow, she wasn’t sure. And with the roads blocked, with shops shut, with no way into town — one missed dose could tilt everything. Diabetes doesn’t wait for protests to end.

    On day three, Mercy’s blood sugar began to slide dangerously. She had been careful, always careful — but this time, life had outpaced her discipline. The last salary delay had forced her to stretch her insulin supply thinner than usual, postponing her pharmacy trip. She told herself it was only for a few days. She didn’t factor in a city under siege.

    By the afternoon, her hands were trembling. She tried to focus on her marking but the words blurred, swimming like fish on the page. She felt an odd, hollow dizziness behind her eyes, as though her head was no longer entirely attached to her body.

    By day four, the city felt like a war zone. Smoke rose in the distance as burning tires marked blocked roads. The police had sealed off most of the major arteries, and the smaller streets were swarmed by angry protesters. Even the neighborhood shops were shuttered. Mercy sat by her window, clutching her phone. She tried calling the pharmacy, even her neighbor. Nothing. The mobile networks were overwhelmed. The silent blinking of ‘call failed’ became a cruel rhythm.

    By mid-morning on day five, the weakness was no longer subtle. She could barely keep her eyes open. Her skin felt clammy. She reached for her water glass but missed it, knocking it to the floor. The crash startled her. She tried to stand, but her legs betrayed her. The fall was silent. No scream, just a soft thud as her body folded awkwardly onto the cold tiled floor.

    It was her next-door neighbor, Mama Judy, who heard the thud. She called out to her, but got no response. Mama Judy was quick-thinking. She didn’t waste time, she put her seven year old son over Mercy’s balcony seeing that the back door was open and asked him to go inside and open the front door. She did not bother to call an ambulance, everyone knew ambulances wouldn’t get through that chaos anyway. Instead, she called her nephew, Dr. Lameck, who run a private clinic in Ngei Three, within Langata.

    Lameck was off-duty that morning and had his old pickup at home. The backstreets within the Estate were not that risky, he knew them well. Within 20 minutes, he had navigated the barricades and reached Mercy’s flat.

    He carried her to the pickup himself, his strong arms surprisingly gentle, his voice steady:
    “You’re safe now. We’ll sort you out.”

    At the clinic, after stabilizing her with IV fluids and carefully administered insulin, Lameck sat by her bedside, monitoring her vitals. When she opened her eyes, dazed but alive, he smiled.

    “You gave us quite a scare, Teacher Mercy.”

    She tried to speak but her throat was dry.

    “Rest,” he said softly, adjusting her blanket. “There’s plenty of time to talk.”

    And there was something in his voice — not the clinical tone of duty, but a kind warmth, like someone who had found more than just a patient that morning.

    Mercy closed her eyes again, grateful and strangely comforted. For the first time in a long while, as her breathing steadied, the heavy ache in her chest seemed to loosen — just a little.

    You can’t control emergencies. Be prepared. Get you a book to guide your family here: : https://homedoctorbook.com/book/#aff=MuthoniThangwa]

    .

  • How a boy almost lost a leg! The price of medical unpreparedness

    Family Abandonment: The Hidden Emergency No One Talks About

    Tirop was 12 years old when he first faced the brutal possibility of losing his right leg. Not because of war, not because of a rare disease, but because of something far more common: neglect.
    The kind of neglect children inherit from the poor decisions of the adults around them.

    He lived with his grandmother, Mama Cherono, in a home that had long stopped being a home and had become a warehouse of broken promises. Five children — his younger brother, two cousins, and himself — all dumped into Mama Cherono’s lap like forgotten baggage. Not out of her free will. No. She was handed this burden by tragedy, cowardice, and the ruthless carelessness of grown-ups.

    Tirop’s two cousins were fatherless — their father had died young. The mother, barely a woman herself, had abandoned her sons in a cloud of shame and whispered curses, muttering something about Arap — sons of the dead. As if grief was something her young boys could carry alone.

    Then came Mama Cherono’s own daughters — both drawn to men who made promises like they were throwing pebbles into a river: easy to make, impossible to retrieve. Each left behind a child, as though their children were loose ends they no longer knew how to tie.

    So Mama Cherono, already old, already tired, already poor, became the reluctant guardian of five children who had done nothing wrong but be born into other people’s failures.

    The daughters claimed they needed to move to Nakuru town — to find work, to make money, to “build a better life for the children.” That’s what they said.
    But promises are cheap. They asked Mama Cherono to care for the children for “just a short time,” while they found suitable accommodation. A few weeks. Maybe a month. Two at most. That was four years ago for one daughter, six years ago for the other.

    They came back from time to time — polished nails, new hairstyles, cheap synthetic perfumes clinging to their skin — and always with fresh stories. Elaborate, theatrical stories.

    “Mama, the landlord says no children until we finish paying the deposit.”

    “Mama, my job keeps me working night shifts — it wouldn’t be safe for a child right now.”

    “Mama, the schools here are terrible. Let them stay a little longer while I sort things out.”

    The stories mutated, grew legs, changed shapes each visit.
    The truth was simpler: They had slipped into new lives where the burdens of motherhood had no space.

    And Mama Cherono, too decent to throw her grandchildren to the wolves, too proud to beg, and too old to fight, bore it all in silence — her back bending a little more with each broken promise.
    She fed them, clothed them when she could, watched them grow with tight jaws and a bleeding heart.
    The kind of injustice no one writes about.
    The quiet kind.
    The slow kind.
    The invisible kind.

    Tirop lived in the same compound with his father and mother. Technically, he had parents — both alive, both fully capable of raising him. He was not like his cousins, abandoned by mothers who vanished into town life. No, his case was worse in its own quiet way.

    Because Tirop, even at twelve, carried a kind of burdened awareness most adults around him lacked.
    He was a sensitive child. Observant. Thoughtful.
    And what he saw carved wounds into his young heart:
    The way his grandmother, Mama Cherono, had grown smaller over the years — not in body, but in spirit. How the spark in her eyes dulled as one grandchild after another was left behind.
    How her laughter, once strong and full, now dissolved into polite chuckles — like someone trying to make peace with grief.

    And Tirop saw something else too.
    He saw his parents — living yards away, yet turning their backs to the quiet suffering in the house , with which they shared a compound.

    His mother, always full of excuses —
    “Mama Cherono understands that I have so much on my plate.”
    His father, always busy with things that conveniently kept him at arm’s length —
    “The boys are better off there. After all, Mama raised us too. She can manage.”

    The hypocrisy stank.
    Every day, Tirop watched adults move like ghosts of responsibility — present in body, absent in duty. And so he began to help. Quietly.
    Carrying water, chopping firewood, fetching groceries from the market, soothing crying babies. He did the work of adults — not because anyone asked him to, but because he couldn’t watch the weight crush Mama Cherono while others stood by with clean hands.

    He shouldn’t have had to.
    But dignity is rarely distributed fairly amongst kin.

    Until the accident.

    It happened on a Wednesday afternoon. School had closed early, and Tirop, as always, hurried home to help.

    The rains had been cruel that season, pounding the tin roofs at night, turning the compound into a slippery mess of mud and loose stones. The family’s small pile of firewood had grown dangerously low, and Mama Cherono had murmured about it in the morning: “If this rain continues, we won’t even have dry sticks to boil porridge.”

    Tirop had heard her.
    He always heard her.

    So while the younger ones napped under the thin patched blanket, and Mama Cherono sat sewing an old dress by the fading light, Tirop grabbed the old panga and headed toward the edge of the compound. There, behind the granary, lay a fallen tree branch that had been too heavy for Mama Cherono to drag. Wet, but still usable. Firewood was firewood.

    The panga was dull. Its handle loose.
    He had told his father weeks ago that it needed fixing — but his father had dismissed him with a wave:
    “Don’t touch that panga again, Tirop. Let the adults handle it.”
    But there were no adults here when it mattered, and gogo would not be left to handle this matters alone.

    He swung the blade with awkward strength, trying to hack smaller pieces from the log.
    The branch twisted. His foot slipped on the wet ground.
    The panga veered off course.
    In a flash of pain and bright red, the blade sliced into his right shin — deep, ugly, raw.

    Tirop screamed.
    The world narrowed into pain and terror.

    Mama Cherono came running, barefoot, her eyes wide with a mix of panic and exhaustion that only the truly helpless know.

    The wound was deep, and blood pulsed through Tirops fingers as he tried to clutch it. The old woman pressed rags against it — an old shirt, anything she could grab. There was no clean gauze, no antiseptic, no sterile bandage. Only desperate, trembling hands.

    The nearest clinic was miles away. The main road had been blocked all week — trucks stuck in the mud, they said.
    The nearest matatus were more than two kilometers away.  Mama Cherono had no phone to call either his mother or father for help.

    And so they waited.
    They waited as the wound bled.
    They waited as the infection from the rusted panga crept in.
    They waited while the swelling rose like a poisonous balloon.

    By the time help arrived — a neighbor with an old bicycle who finally risked the ride into town — Tirop’s leg was hot to the touch, his fever climbing, his body shivering.

    At the hospital, the nurse shook her head.
    “You people… you always wait too long.”

    As they waited for the doctor, Tirop and Mama Cherono sat side by side on the hard wooden bench. His leg was propped up, wrapped hastily in soiled cloth. The pain throbbed, but for a moment, the room felt strangely quiet.

    Their eyes met.
    No words. Just a long, heavy glance.

    Both carried something unspoken in that moment — a shared knowledge of struggle. Each had tried, in their own way, to hold up the other.
    Mama Cherono, stretching thin the small coin she had. Tirop, too young to carry burdens, yet quietly shouldering the gaps adults left behind.

    They were allies in a silent war that others couldn’t see.
    A war not of violence, but of abandonment. A war of being made invisible by those who should have stood in front of them.

    They both knew: the others wouldn’t understand.
    Not the nurses. Not the relatives who appeared during holidays with gifts and loud voices. Not even Tirop’s own parents, who lived just yards away but had long outsourced their responsibility.

    In that glance, they held each other up.
    Because no one else would.

    This is how emergencies happen.
    Not suddenly.
    Not unexpectedly.
    But step by painful step — through carelessness, avoidance, and the indifference of adults who should have known better.

    You can’t control emergencies. Be prepared. Get your FREE Emergency Medical Checklist now Free PDF: https://muthonithangwa.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/my-10-point-emergency-medical-check-list-2.pdf

    Useful book: : https://homedoctorbook.com/book/#aff=MuthoniThangwa

    .

  • “Soulmates, Sketches, and Other Expensive Distractions: “I Bought a Soulmate sketch and Found Idris Elba… and a Tyre Guy in Kiambu!

    The face of my soulmate sketch—or was it Idris?

    I tried a soulmate sketch – this is what happened! It floored me!

    I was supposed to be doing something important on the computer. You know—something grown-up. Like paying bills, writing a proposal, or finding original spare parts for my Kwid. Does anyone ever try to find fake spare parts? Anyway!

    That little red slay queen is giving me more problems than dating—imagine. She looks cute in the driveway, sure, but maintaining her is like trying to love someone who keeps ghosting you, then showing up when your phone battery is at 1%.

    So, there I was, meant to be searching for a reputable auto-parts dealer, and instead I found myself thinking about soulmates. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the silence. Maybe it was the 17 open tabs. Maybe it was the fact that even my car is more demanding than my love life.

    But something in me whispered: “What if your soulmate is out there… but can’t find you because he’s using Waze in Nairobi?”

    And just like that, I fell down a rabbit hole. Not the kind Alice stumbled into—mine was paved with affiliate ads, slightly questionable testimonials, and an offer to receive a psychic drawing of my soulmate for a mere $29. A man I’ve never met, drawn by someone who has never met me. All via the internet. What could go wrong? Lol!

    The Woman Who Knew Too Much

    This thing of falling into rabbit holes goes way back—way back to the days when I used to mark student scripts in two weeks flat.

    Now, don’t get me wrong—it’s not like they were PhDs. Naaah. These were first-years. Introduction to Anthropology. Fresh out of high school, armed with confidence and vibes. But don’t be fooled. Even undergraduate scripts can wear you down. By day three your eyes glaze over, your red pen starts leaking into your coffee, and every sentence reads like a philosophical riddle wrapped in grammatical chaos.

    At the time, I had a neighbour—Betty. She was one of those highly competent, quinoa-soaking, herbal tea-brewing women who was trained in something expensive and mysterious called the Waldorf Method. She teaches children through storytelling, seasonal baking, and probably the gentle use of moss.

    She was also the unfortunate recipient of my emotional soundtrack: a constant switch between soul music and loud Kikuyu classics—whatever it took to stay sane while marking papers in which students responded as if armchair anthropologist was a type of furniture.

    I liked Betty. A lot. But at some point in our friendship, she sat me down and said: “Muthoni, I think you might be…easily distracted.”

    She said it kindly. Like a teacher breaking the news that your child eats crayons.

    Naturally, I denied it. I even built an internal fortress to resist the idea. Brick by defensive brick. But sitting here today, browsing a psychic art website instead of doing my actual work, I felt a small crack form in the wall. Betty, it turns out, was just seeing the kindergartener in me.

    The Checkout Moment (A Crisis of Faith)

    I won’t lie. The site was convincing. It promised not just a drawing, but a description of your soulmate’s personality, their energy, their life purpose. At one point, it claimed the sketch could bring clarity to my love life.

    I had questions.

    What if the sketch looked like my ex? Would I be expected to forgive and forget just because this time, he was delivered as a digital PDF?

    What if it looked like that one toxic boss I used to work with? The one who sat upstairs with a big stomach, for six whole years, and did nothing but ruin the energy of the entire organization just by existing? Because weeh!  Some people!

    It wasn’t just a purchase. It was a surrender. A small, whimsical surrender to the part of me that still believes in signs, serendipity, and psychic sketch artists working overtime on the internet.

    I was amused and mildly afraid. This was either an act of self-love—or a red flag on steroids. At one point, I even paused and asked myself, “How much does therapy cost again?”

    It might’ve been cheaper.

    That’s when I remembered Betty. And the rabbit holes.

    “Muthoni, stay focused,” I whispered.

    The Reveal

    The email arrived the next day. No ceremony. No cosmic lightning. Just a subject line: “Your Soulmate Sketch Is Ready!”

    I clicked. And there he was.

    A man. With eyes that had seen things. Eyebrows that meant business. A mouth that looked like it only spoke in riddles. He looked like the kind of man who fixes tractors in silence, writes poetry in secret, and cries during Finding Nemo.

    I stared at the sketch for a long time.

    Was he handsome? In a rugged, silent-type way, yes.
    Was he familiar? That was the strange part—maybe.

    I felt something. Not certainty, but curiosity. A flicker. A spark. The tiny, ridiculous possibility that maybe, just maybe, this internet art experiment wasn’t completely unhinged.

    So, naturally, I did what any self-respecting woman would do:
    I ran him through Google Lens.

    And lo and behold—the sketch matched fifteen different men.

    A tech CEO in Finland. A gospel singer from Uganda. A man who sells tyres in Kiambu. But the only one I was remotely interested in was—of course—Idris Elba.

    Weeh, sasa itakuwa aje? I asked myself, suddenly deeply invested in the metaphysical logistics of relating with a British actor who doesn’t know I exist. Although… a journey in search of the tyre seller in Kiambu is probably more viable.

    I considered printing it out and framing it. Just to confuse future visitors. “Oh, that? That’s my soulmate. We haven’t met yet, but I like to keep him close.”

    What Did I Learn?

    That we have the permission to be curious – like children with a crayon and no regard for lines. That not every decision I make will be strategic – I just have to find balance between strategy and the why not?

    And yes, Betty was right—I am easily distracted. But sometimes distractions are the only way the soul gets a break from the grind. Sometimes they lead to laughter, to strange portraits, to blog posts.

    If nothing else, I now have a picture of a man I can show my mother when she asks why I’m still single.

    “Here he is, Mum. He’s psychic-approved.”

    If you would like to try your own stretch, here is your chance: https://www.soulmatesketch.com/2-01721767000544#aff=MuthoniThangwa

  • Decolonizing, but in English – Sorry Ngugi wa Thiongo

    One of Kenya’s greatest literary minds, transitioned to the realm of an ancestors on 28th May 2025. His passing marks the end of an era but, his words remain, sharp, urgent and uncompromising.

    A fierce intellectual and cultural worrier, Ngugi’s life was a long rebellion against the violence of colonialism and the subtle tyranny of mental enslavement. He chronicled the fractures of Kenyan society with the precision of a surgeon, form Weep not child to Wizard of the crow.

    In the 70’s Ngugi made a radical and irreversible turn, he rejected English as the primary medium for his fiction and turned fully to Gĩkũyũ his mother tongue, as the vessel of his fiction. It was a bold and reckless move in a world still dazzled by the queens English. I was first introduced to Ngugi by my father who handed me, like one might hand down a sacred guard – Caitani Mũtharabainĩ. I was about fifteen and should have been lost in the romance of a Mills and boons. But wapi? Here was the devil, no subtitles, no glossary. It was a real cross carry. I had to read with my brow furrowed and my pride bruised. I did not understand much in that book – but I began to hear the music of my own people in literature. Not in translation. Not in apology. But in their full thunderous voice. That was my fathers failed attempt to decolonize my mind.

    The next Ngugi book I read was the River Between – my all-time favorite. I still see that river in my minds eye, winding, patient, ancient. It curved more than just valleys, it carved questions in me. As a teenager, read it like a political allegory, which it is. But it wasn’t until much later as an adult, that I realized, it was also a love story. A quiet aching one. Ngugi had hidden tenderness in the fold of rebellion and I hadn’t known how to see it yet. The book that truly shifted my perception, the one that completed the decolonizing work my father had unknowingly began was Decolonizing the Mind. This book speaks to me, it had confronted me. It laid bare the subtle ways colonialism had infiltrated, our speech, our education, even our silence.

    As a professional in the heritage sector, decolonizing is a current buzz word, sprinkled generously in conference titles, panel discussion and funding proposals. But often we are merely regurgitating ideas Ngugi gave us, clear and uncompromising in the 70’s. He had mapped the terrain, language is the carrier of culture. But how many of us are willing to carry through? To write, speak and even dream in the mother tongues we were taught to abandon – so that we can seek validation in foreign languages. Ngugi’s choices were not without cost. Imprisoned without trial in 1977 for his play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), exiled for decades, and blacklisted at home, he paid the price of telling the truth. And yet, he never wavered. His later works—written in Gĩkũyũ then self-translated into English—demonstrate the full flowering of an imagination liberated from colonial scaffolding.

    Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o is a giant—even in death. In the days following his passing, Kenya has been abuzz with his name. Social media timelines, radio talk shows, barbershops, and university corridors alike have all lit up with tributes, memories, and debates. As is typical of how we mourn our legends, opinion has split. Some question his wish to be cremated—calling it unafrican. Others lament that he spent most of his life in the West and has denied us the chance to celebrate him with the full-blown, trumpet-blaring African funeral party he surely deserved.

    But we forget—selectively, as humans often do—that Ngũgĩ did not choose exile the way one might choose a travel destination. He fled. He left Kenya not for luxury but for survival. His words had unsettled the powerful, and the price for speaking truth here was prison, censorship, and danger. The West gave him safety, not necessarily home.

    Ngũgĩ’s life was full of contradictions: a village boy from Limuru who became a global scholar; a man who fiercely denounced empire while teaching in its most elite institutions; a writer whose boldest act of nationalism was to write in a language many of his own countrymen could no longer read. And more recently, his son, Mukoma wa Ngũgĩ, unearthed painful truths from the vault of childhood—portraying him not just as a literary giant, but as a complicated, and at times violent, man. That too is part of the legacy. Greatness is rarely neat. In the end, Ngũgĩ remains what he always was: deeply human, deeply African, and utterly unignorable.

    And this commentary, ladies and gentlemen, has been written by a Muthoni—in English. My own decolonizing work, it seems, remains beautifully untidy. But perhaps that, too, is the point: it was never meant to be clean, or complete. Just courageous.

  • Who Owns the Past? The Case for Returning Africa’s Stolen Heritage

    One of the most significant and enduring debates in heritage and patrimony management today pits African, Asian, and Middle Eastern institutions against some of the most prestigious museums in Europe and North America. At the heart of this controversy lies the ownership and location of material heritage — including human remains, ritual objects, jewellery, sacred art, and items of practical utility — that were removed, often forcibly or under dubious circumstances, during periods of colonial conquest and control.

    Some of these objects carry immense cultural and spiritual meaning — like Egyptian mummies or ancestral remains — while others are of staggering monetary value, such as the gold regalia looted by the British from Kumasi in the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) in 1874. Yet all of them are maternally priceless. These objects were once imbued with meaning in their communities of origin — not merely as museum pieces, but as living elements in cultural, spiritual, and familial systems.

    Today, African countries are striving to reclaim their histories — to understand and own their past on their own terms. A critical part of this involves the return of cultural artefacts removed under the shadow of violence, exploitation, and erasure. Whether stolen, “borrowed,” or questionably acquired, these objects were taken at a time when colonial powers believed Africans to be primitive and incapable of sophisticated thought or expression.

    African institutions are now asserting that while Europe is free to hold its opinions about African peoples, it does not follow that it should hold onto our heritage. These cultural artefacts — created, used, and revered within African value systems — belong back home, where we can care for them with the dignity and intention they deserve.

    Yet pushback has been fierce. In 2002, eighteen major museums — including the British Museum (London), the Louvre (Paris), the State Museums of Berlin, the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam), and the Guggenheim (New York) — issued a statement titled The Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums. It argued that the objects in their collections had become part of the institutions’ identities, and by extension, part of the cultural heritage of the countries that now house them.

    But this logic is flawed. How can, for instance, a ritual object created for the veneration of African ancestors become part of English cultural heritage — unless, implausibly, the English also embrace ancestor worship? An object of religious significance cannot simply be decontextualised and then reinterpreted within a culture that does not share its foundational belief system. Cultural objects are not inherently meaningful in isolation; they draw power from the living systems of thought, belief, and practice that birthed them.

    The notion of “universality” touted by these museums is equally questionable. If universality excludes the vast majority of Africans, Asians, and Middle Easterners — many of whom will never afford the cost or receive the visas to visit these museums — then what universe is being referenced? One that conveniently omits those whose histories these objects represent?

    And even if some argue that culture is dynamic — that these objects may no longer serve their original function — their value remains immense. Their return would not only strengthen collections in African museums but also boost cultural tourism. Imagine a future where a visit to the Nairobi National Museum includes viewing artefacts long held abroad, amplifying Kenya’s appeal beyond its beaches and wildlife. It would be a game changer.

    Some institutions are setting an example. In 1999, the Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta returned a 3,300-year-old mummy — thought to be Pharaoh Ramses I — to Egypt. This act was not just symbolic. It affirmed that honouring the rightful custodians of cultural heritage is possible. But it also triggered panic among Western museums, which feared that widespread repatriation could dismantle their prized collections.

    Still, the winds of change are blowing. The path forward must involve more than legal wrangling or high-minded declarations about “shared heritage.” It must include sincere dialogue, inclusion of formerly silenced voices, and a recognition that some things — sacred things — cannot be owned out of context. They do not “belong” to museums that stripped them of their meaning. Nor are they “safer” in Europe, as some argue. Cultural objects don’t just survive in vaults — they thrive when they live within the systems that created them.

    As a final thought, one must ask:
    If all the objects currently held in the British Museum were returned to Kenya, how many Kenyans would make their way to our National Museums to see them?

    That question matters. Because restitution is not just about objects. It’s about memory, dignity, and reawakening the public to what is — and has always been — rightfully ours.

    This article was first published by the East African Standard in 2007