About Kenya
Kenya lies on the East Africa coast, bordered by the Indian Ocean and Somalia to the east, Ethiopia and South Sudan to the north, and Uganda and Tanzania, west and south respectively. While the eastern half of the country slopes to coral-fringed beaches, the western side rises sharply to the hills and plateaus of the Rift Valley. West of the Rift, a plateau drops down to Lake Victoria.
Region
Language
There are two official languages in Kenya: English and Swahili, although many languages are spoken across the country.
Population
53.77 million (2022)
Area
591,971 square kilometres
High Commissioner
H.E Mr. Manoah Esipisu
Capital
Nairobi
Joined Commonwealth
1963 following independence from Britain
Top Exports
Episode guests
Njeri Wangari
Poet, Author, Storyteller and Communications Consultant
Njeri Wangari is a Kenyan poet, author, storyteller and communications consultant based in Nairobi with over 20 years of experience.
Her poetry has appeared in Agbowo, Badilisha Poetry, The East African, Kwani! and Verve Poetry.
She has performed at the Intra Africa Trade Fair, BBC Contains Strong Language, Kwani & Story Moja Festivals, Global Voices Summit, Tedx Nairobi & Still Water Middle School in Minnesota.
Njeri is the author of Mines & Minefields; My Spoken Words (2010) and Across Borders – An anthology of new poems from the Commonwealth (Verve Poetry Press, 2022)
My People
My people are asking
What is land?
Is it a place which gives us a sense of firmness,
where our roots stretch deep burying themselves in the soil in search of an anchor?
Is it land that gives us a home?
And can we call home a place where we belong yet have no land to call our own?
My people are questioning
Is land a mother?
Our mother.
We call our country our motherland
Earth, Mother Earth
a place of origin
Our mothers land
The place that gives birth to us
Is land a woman?
My people are wondering
Is land, property?
To be owned, bought and sold. To be claimed
To be used as the scale through which we determine how rich or poor one is
How much land does a man need to feel whole,
To feel happy
To feel that they have had enough?
As a Mũgĩkũyũ, my people continue to have a complicated relationship with land.
My people are obsessed with Tĩĩri, Ithaka, kamũgũnda, buroti,
their relationship with land has changed
from a time when land was our path to the spiritual dimension
Kirinyaga, the mountain where our God resided and the Mukuyu tree from which we derive our name, rooted us in mwene nyaga, Ngai, our creator.
The soil, trees, mountains, rivers, and waterfalls, the paths through which our spirits continually went back to the past
went back to our ancestors, ngomi,
went back to those who came before, Ngoma ciitu,
went back to another version of ourselves that existed on the same land in another time
For my people knew they did not belong to themselves.
My people are searching,
From the time that the Union Jack came down, and they raised their hands with their flag, green as the stripes on that cloth fluttering in the wind, they have been trying to find their way back to their land whose meaning and borders they no longer recognise.
My people are crying,
The very soil whose touch on their hands and feet rooted their spiritual bonds to this land, to its heartbeat, back to their being
Became a desert through which their souls now trod
In search of bodies too busy trying to own a piece of this and a piece of that
To care that they walk around with nothing but mirages all around them
My people are teary,
land is now political
Over 60 years since independence, the curse of laying claim to soil still haunts them,
Now, not just my Gikuyu people anymore,
My people have become a nation of land grabbers, land appropriators, land squatters and land owners.
My people are weary,
land is now, just economical
Apartment blocks, flats, rentals and car washes have become the new cash crops
Every space is a wasted opportunity to generate wealth
Playing fields, parks, school playgrounds, forests, ripe spaces to be turned into the next Airbnb
My people have turned rivers and river banks into nomads seeking a place to belong.
My people are dying
Walking bodies with souls that are trying
to hear of land as a story
to hear the stories of the places that carry us,
To hear the stories of the carrier of our memories,
To hear the whisperer of our long-lost lullabies
To hear our mother’s lulling love
Stories of lands that we carry with us
Stories that connect us to the living and the dead
Stories of home
Stories of where we belong.
My people are sighing,
there is no more space to plant the stories of this land that is dying.
A Freedom Song
Atieno washes dishes,
Atieno plucks the chicken,
Atieno gets up early,
Beds her sucks down in the kitchen,
Atieno eight years old
Atieno yo.
Since she’s my sister’s child
Atieno needs no pay
While she works my wife can sit
Sewing each sunny day,
With her earning I support
Atieno yo.
Atieno’s sly and jealous
Bad example to the kids
Since she minds them, like a school girl
Wants their dresses, shoes and beads.
Atieno ten years old,
Atieno yo.
Now my wife has gone to study
Atieno’s less free,
Don’t I feed her, school my own ones,
Pay the party, union fee
All for progress? Aren’t you grateful,
Atieno yo?
Visitors need much attention,
Specially when I work nights.
That girl stays too long at market
Who will teach her what is right?
Atieno rising fourteen,
Atieno yo.
Atieno’s had a baby
So we know that she is bad
Fifty-fifty it may live
To repeat the life she had,
Ending in post partum bleeding
Atieno yo.
Atieno’s soon replaced
Meat and sugar more than all
She ate in such a narrow life
Were lavished in her funeral
Atieno’s gone to glory
Atieno yo.
