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This Is Laikipia, Nanyuki (2026)

19/09/2026

Ann Njeri boarded the matatu at Kangemi.

She was heading to town. She paid her fare. Then she settled into her seat and leaned back, the way people do when they are tired and the morning is slow and the road is long.

The conductor did not look at her twice.

Passengers came and went. The matatu stopped at stages. More people boarded. Others got off. The city moved past the windows, the way it always does.

She did not move.

Nobody noticed. Why would they? People sleep on matatus every day. That is what she looked like. A woman taking a nap. A woman resting her eyes. A woman saving her energy for whatever the day was about to demand of her.

The journey continued.

The conductor collected fares. The driver navigated traffic. The passengers stared at their phones or out the windows or at nothing at all.

She remained in her seat.

The matatu reached town. The passengers began to stand, to gather their bags, to shuffle toward the door. One by one, they got off. The matatu emptied.

She did not get up.

The conductor finally walked to the back. He touched her shoulder. He called to her. He waited for her to wake up.

She did not wake up.

She had paid her fare.

She had taken her seat.

And somewhere between Kangemi and town, quietly, without a sound, without a struggle, without anyone even noticing, she had died.

The conductor stood there for a long time.

He had spent the whole trip a few feet away from her. He had probably walked past her a dozen times. He had assumed she was sleeping. Everyone had.

And now he was standing over a woman who had been dead for most of the journey. He had shared the road with her. He had shared the morning. He had shared the quiet rhythm of a matatu moving through Nairobi.

He had shared her final minutes on earth.

And he had not known.

There is something deeply unsettling about this story.

Not just the death. Death happens. People die in matatus, in buses, in trains, in cars, in their sleep, at their desks, in their kitchens. Death is not new. Death is not shocking.

What is shocking is how quiet it was.

She did not cry out. She did not fall. She did not draw attention. She did not make a scene. She did not do anything that would make anyone turn around and ask if she was okay.

She just leaned back.

And then she was gone.

We like to think that death is loud. We imagine hospitals and beeping machines and doctors running and family members crying. We imagine a moment. A commotion. A warning.

But sometimes death is a woman on a matatu, leaning back in her seat, looking like she is sleeping.

Sometimes death is a passenger who never gets off.

Sometimes death sits beside you for an entire journey, and you never know.

The conductor will carry this for a long time.

He will wonder if he should have checked on her sooner. He will wonder if he walked past her too many times. He will wonder if there was a moment, just one moment, when he could have noticed something. A breath that was too shallow. A hand that was too still. A face that was too pale.

He will wonder if he could have saved her.

He probably could not have. She was likely gone before the matatu even reached town. She was likely gone before anyone could have done anything. She was likely gone the moment she leaned back.

But he will still wonder.

That is what people do. They wonder. They replay. They imagine.

Even when there was nothing they could have done.

Nobody knew her name. Nobody on that matatu knew who she was. She died among strangers. She travelled to the end of her life in a vehicle full of people who did not know they were sharing her final moments.

And when they got off, they went about their day. They went to work. They went to school. They went home. They did not know that the woman who had been sleeping in the back of the matatu was dead.

They will probably never know.

There is no lesson here.

No moral. No warning. No advice.

Just a woman who boarded a matatu at Kangemi and never got off.

She paid her fare.

She took her seat.

And she quietly, without a sound, travelled to the end of her chapter.

18/09/2026

A man posted on the internet this week.

He said an owl came to his farm and ate one kienyeji ( local breed) chicken. He said he felt bad about it. He said he and his people traced where the bird lived and discovered it stays nearby. And within twenty four hours, they had taken the owl to heaven to sit with its father.

It was not easy, he said. But it has been done.

He killed a bird. He buried it. And then he went online to announce it, expecting applause from the Kenya Wildlife Service

Let me tell you about the owl he killed.

Owls hunt at night. They fly silently because their feathers are built to muffle sound. Their hearing is sharp enough to locate a mouse moving under grass. They are among the most effective rodent hunters in existence.

A single owl can eat more than a thousand rodents in a year.

That owl was not at his farm to attack him. It was not there to cast anything. It was not there to announce anything. It was there because it was hungry, and a chick is easy prey.

He lost one chick. He felt bad about it. Fair enough. A chick is money. A hen is income. A coop is a project.

But consider what happens when the owl is gone.

The rats multiply. They move into the maize store. They eat the harvest. And the bird that would have kept them in check is dead in a shallow grave, with a post written about it.

He protected one chick and lost the whole farm. He simply does not know it yet.

Now the part that actually matters.

Across many communities in Africa, the owl is considered a bad omen. It is said to announce death. It is said to be a witch. When one calls near your compound, someone will die.

Let me ask a simple question.

How does a bird know when a person is going to die?

Does it have a list? Does it sit in a tree with a roster of the entire village, waiting for the angel of death to pass so it can give a warning?

An owl calls at night because it is nocturnal. That is when it hunts. That is when it communicates. That is when it defends its territory. If you hear an owl near your home, it means there is an owl near your home. It means there are trees, or a roof, or a place to roost. It means there are rodents nearby to eat.

If someone dies a week later, it is not because the bird said so. People die. They die all the time. If you hear an owl often and people die eventually, you will connect the two. That is how human beings work. We look for patterns. We look for something to blame.

That is not a prophecy. That is a coincidence with a bad reputation.

Some people who have even gone to school still think that the owl is the only bird that knows when the angel of death enters your village and warns you in advance. They associate it with ritualism. The same way they do it for snakes. The owl is just a bird. The same way it sees you are just a human being.

That is the conversation I wish more Kenyans were having.

Not whether the owl is a witch. Whether the owl is a bird.

A bird with feathers and talons and a hunger and a lifespan. A bird that eats, reproduces, and survives, exactly like the chick it ate.

And if it is only a bird, then killing it is not justice. It is not protection. It is a grown man taking a weapon to something the size of his hand because it made him feel a loss he did not want to feel.

I want to be fair to him.

He did not have to kill it. There is a fence that can be reinforced. There is a coop that can be closed at dusk. There is a dog. There is a light. There are a dozen ways to keep a chick alive without hunting a bird to its roost and ending it where it sleeps.

He chose none of them. He chose to trace it, corner it, kill it, and post about it.

That is not bravery. That is not tradition. That is a man who wanted to feel powerful over something smaller than him.

And then there is the line he wrote himself.

He said they took the owl to heaven to sit with its father.

Think about what he actually said. He said the bird has a father. He said the bird is going to sit with him. In one sentence, he spoke about the animal as though it had a family and a soul, moments after using superstition to justify ending its life.

You cannot have it both ways.

Either the owl is a cursed creature that announces death, in which case do not talk about its father in heaven.

Or the owl is an animal, and you did not send it to heaven. You killed it for eating a chick.

There is a bigger pattern here.

People kill the snake and the rats come. They kill the owl and the mice come. They kill the mongoose and the chickens die. They clear the trees and the soil goes. Every time, they blame the government, the rain, the neighbours, and bad luck.

Nature does not have to be loved. But it has to be understood. And understanding starts with one honest question.

Is this animal actually my enemy, or am I just afraid of it?

The man killed the owl. He buried it. He bragged about it.

The post is still up.

The rats are still alive. The maize is still in the store. The bird that was eating them is gone.

He thinks he won.

He lost.

And when the harvest fails, he will blame something else. The rain. The government. The neighbours. Bad luck.

Anything except the night he went hunting for a bird to send to its father.

The owl did not announce death.

The owl is dead.

That is the only thing the owl ever said.

18/09/2026

Kenyans loot a truck that overturned while carrying milk along Thika Road between Kimbo and Ruiru, Nairobi-bound.

17/09/2026

Sukuma wiki does not buy demios. Gen Z mama mboga Scholah Mamii Mboga has bought a Mazda Demio worth KSh 1.5 million to celebrate her birthday.

She also reveals that she lives in an apartment where she pays KSh 30,000 in monthly rent. Enyewe, kazi ni kazi! Congratulations 🎉 to Mamii.

There is something in this story that does not add up. And it is not Scholah's fault. It is our fault for repeating it without doing the math.

A mama mboga sells vegetables. She buys a crate of tomatoes. She sells them at a margin. She does that every day. If she is lucky, if the market is good, if the customers come, she might clear a few hundred shillings in profit after a long day in the sun.

That is the business. It is a real business. It feeds families. It pays rent. It pays school fees. It has put children through university. It is one of the most honest ways to make a living in this country.

But it does not buy a KSh 1.5 million car. Not at the roadside. Not selling sukuma wiki one bundle at a time.

Let us do the math honestly.

A bundle of sukuma wiki sells for twenty shillings. Maybe thirty in a good area. The profit on that bundle is ten shillings. Perhaps fifteen if she bought well from the farm.

To make one thousand shillings in profit, she needs to sell about a hundred bundles in a single day. That is possible. Hard, but possible.

To make a hundred thousand shillings in a month, she needs to do that almost every day, with no losses, no spoilage, no rain, no slow days, no theft, no expenses.

Now add rent of thirty thousand. Add food. Add transport. Add the cost of restocking. Add the days when the tomatoes spoil before they sell. Add the school fees. Add everything else.

Then ask yourself how long it takes to save a million and a half.

There are thousands of mama mbogas in this country. Tens of thousands. If the roadside vegetable business could produce a Demio and a thirty-thousand-shilling apartment, we would see it everywhere. We would see it in every market in every town.

We do not.

Most mama mbogas work for years and still cannot afford a plot. Many are one bad week away from losing their stock and starting over. That is not laziness. That is the business.

So when one of them buys a car, we should not pretend the car came from the vegetables. Something else is happening. And it is worth being honest about what it usually is.

Sometimes it is scale.

The woman we call a mama mboga is not standing behind a table. She is a wholesaler. She supplies hotels, restaurants, schools, and other vendors. She aggregates from farmers and moves volume. She has a store, not a stall. She has workers. She has a supply chain.

That business can make real money. But that woman is not a mama mboga in the way we picture it. She is a trader. A distributor. An agribusiness owner. And calling her a mama mboga makes a better story, so that is what we call her.

Sometimes it is a loan.

The headline says she bought the car. It does not say she paid cash. Most Kenyans who "buy" cars are financing them. A deposit here. Monthly instalments there. SACCO. Asset finance. Hire purchase. The car is hers, but the bank or the SACCO holds something. The headline does not tell you that part.

Sometimes it is the internet.

Scholah is a brand. The name alone tells you that. "Scholah Mamii Mboga" is not a woman selling vegetables. It is a character. A platform. A following. And a following can be worth more than a thousand bundles of sukuma wiki.

Brand deals pay. TikTok gifts pay. Endorsements pay. A video that gets a million views pays more than a month at the market. The vegetables become the backdrop. The table becomes the set. The hustle becomes the content.

That is not fraud. That is a business model. And it is a smarter business than selling tomatoes. But it is not the business we are being told to admire.

And then there is the possibility that nobody wants to mention out loud, so I will mention it carefully.

There are people who will look at this story and quietly assume the car came from a man. A sponsor. A boyfriend. A benefactor. That is what some Kenyans whisper whenever a young woman suddenly has money.

I do not know if that is true here. I have no evidence, and I will not repeat a rumour as though it were a fact. But I can tell you why the question gets asked.

It gets asked because the numbers do not work. It gets asked because we have been told a story that does not survive five minutes of arithmetic. And when a story does not add up, people fill in the gap themselves, usually with the ugliest explanation available.

That is the cost of a lie. Even a well-meaning lie. Especially a well-meaning lie.

Here is the real problem with this story.

It is not that Scholah bought a car. If she earned it, whatever the business was, good for her. She should enjoy it. She should be proud of it.

The problem is the lesson we are attaching to it.

Hustle hard as a mama mboga and you will buy a Demio. Sell sukuma wiki long enough and you will afford a thirty-thousand-shilling apartment. Just work hard. Just be consistent. Just believe in yourself.

That is not encouragement. That is a lie dressed as motivation. And it is a cruel lie, because it tells the women who are genuinely doing this work that their struggle is a personal failure. That if they have not bought a car yet, they must be doing something wrong.

They are not doing anything wrong. The business simply does not pay that well. Most of them know it. They are the ones who count the coins every evening.

So what is the honest version?

The honest version is that the woman behind the name "Scholah Mamii Mboga" is not running a vegetable stall. She is running a brand. Or a distribution business. Or a content career. Or a financed asset. Or some combination of all of them, because that is how real money is built.

The honest version is that hard work alone does not get you out of a market stall. Hard work plus leverage does. Leverage could be scale, credit, education, a network, a platform, or an opportunity that most people never get.

The honest version is that she is an exception, not a template. And telling thousands of women that they are all one more morning of selling tomatoes away from a Demio is not inspiring them. It is misleading them.

A mama mboga who clears a few hundred shillings a day is not a failure. She is a Kenyan doing one of the hardest jobs in the country with the smallest margins available.

She is not one hustle away from a car. She is one economy away from a car. And until that economy changes, we should stop pretending the car came from the vegetables.

Scholah should keep her car. She should keep her apartment. Whatever she built, she built it, and nobody should take that from her.

But we should stop selling the story that the car came from a table of tomatoes.

Because the women who believe that story will work themselves to the bone for years and wonder why nothing is changing.

And nothing will be changing.

Because the math was never going to work.

17/09/2026

Her late father left the homestead decades ago. He went to the city. He found another woman. That woman was her mother. He built another life in the city. He had other children. She's one of them. He became a different man in a different place. The first wife stayed. The first children stayed. The homestead stayed until death changed everything.

He did not send money. He did not send letters. He did not send himself. He sent nothing. He was present in the city. He was absent in the village. That was the arrangement.

And the first wife raised the children alone. She tilled the shamba alone. She paid school fees alone. She buried her own parents alone. She built the homestead alone. She did everything alone.

That was the arrangement.

Decades passed.

The city wife grew tired. The man grew old. He grew sick. He grew weak. The rumours say he could not even go to the toilet by himself. The city wife had had enough. She could not do it anymore. She could not be the one to bathe him. She could not be the one to feed him. She could not be the one to watch him die.

So she remembered the first wife.

She remembered that there was a woman somewhere in the village who had once married this man. A woman who had borne his children. A woman who had stayed. A woman who had waited.

She brought him back.

Not because he asked. Not because he wanted to. Not because he had ever thought of returning. She brought him back because the city wife was tired, and the village wife was convenient.

The first wife took him in.

She did not refuse. She did not turn him away. She did not remind him of the decades of silence. She did not ask him where he had been. She did not ask him why he had abandoned her. She did not ask him why he had chosen another woman. She did not ask him why he had never sent money. She did not ask him why he had never come home.

She just took him in.

She bathed him. She fed him. She cleaned him. She changed him. She sat with him. She watched him. She waited with him until he died.

That is what first wives do. They take their husbands as their children. Even when those husbands do not deserve it. Even when those husbands have spent decades proving they do not deserve it. Even when those husbands have chosen another woman and another life and another family.

She took him in.

The second family did not call.

They did not call to ask how he was. They did not call to ask if he needed anything. They did not call to ask if he was still alive. They did not call to ask if he had died. They did not call at all.

They had handed him over. They had passed him on. They had washed their hands of him. And now they were waiting for the news. The news that would come eventually. The news that would free them from whatever guilt they were carrying.

The news came.

He died.

And the second family descended on the homestead.

The daughter came.

She was one of the daughters from the second marriage. The gifted one. The one who had inherited her father's confidence and her mother's sharp tongue. The one who had grown up in the city with privilege and education and the belief that she was always the smartest person in the room.

She came to the funeral.

She came with her swagger. She came with her courage. She came with her audacity.

And then she stood up and lectured the mourners.

She cursed them. She told them they were wicked. She told them they had never loved her father. She told them they had never included her family in anything. She told them they were hypocrites. She told them they were jealous. She told them they were nothing.

She cursed everyone.

And then she left.

She left before the funeral ended. She left before the body was lowered into the ground. She left before her father was buried. She left before the last prayers were said.

She came, lectured, cursed and left.

The mourners were stunned.

They had gathered to bury a man. They had gathered to mourn. They had gathered to do what communities do when one of their own dies. They had brought their condolences. They had brought their food. They had brought their time. They had brought their presence.

And a woman from the city had arrived, insulted them, and walked away.

The Kisiis held their anger. That is what the rumour says. The gods held the anger of the Kisiis. Because if they had not held it, things would have happened. Things that would have been worse than a lecture. Things that would have been worse than a curse. Things that would have been worse than a woman walking away.

The Kisiis held their anger.

And the woman walked away.

Now let us talk about the truth.

The woman had a right to grieve. She had lost her father. She was in pain. She was angry. She was confused. She was hurt. She was grieving in the only way she knew how.

But she was also wrong.

Because the people she was cursing were the people who had taken her father in when no one else would. They were the people who had bathed him, fed him, and cleaned him. They were the people who had watched him die. They were the people who had given him a home in his final days.

And where was she?

Where was the gifted daughter when her father could not go to the toilet by himself? Where was she when her mother was tired? Where was she when the man needed someone to hold his hand? Where was she when the first wife was doing the work that she should have been doing?

She was in the city.

She was living her life.

She was being gifted.

The first wife did not lecture anyone.

The first wife did not curse anyone.

The first wife did not stand up at the funeral and tell the world how she had suffered. She did not tell the mourners how she had been abandoned for decades. She did not remind them that her husband had chosen another woman and another life and another family. She did not say a single word about the humiliation, the loneliness, the struggle, the silence.

She just buried her husband.

She just did what she had always done.

She just stayed.

There is a lesson here.

The people who shout the loudest are often the people who did the least.

The people who arrive at the funeral with a lecture are often the people who were absent from the deathbed.

The people who curse the mourners are often the people who never mourned.

The first wife mourned. She mourned for decades. She mourned while her husband was alive and living with another woman. She mourned while her children grew up without a father. She mourned while she did all the work and got none of the credit.

And when he came back, she mourned with him.

That is the difference.

The daughter came to the funeral and cursed everyone. She said the relatives had never included her family. She said they had never cared. She said they had never loved her father.

But who took him in?

Who bathed him?

Who fed him?

Who was there when he died?

It was not the city wife. It was not the gifted daughter. It was the first wife. The woman who had been abandoned. The woman who had been forgotten. The woman who had every right to refuse.

She took him in.

She did the work.

She buried him.

The daughter went back to the city.

She went back to her life.

She went back to whatever she had built without her father. She went back to whatever she had become in the decades he was gone.

And the first wife stayed.

She stayed on the homestead. She stayed with the memories. She stayed with the grave. She stayed with the land. She stayed with everything she had built alone.

She stayed.

Because that is what first wives do. May God bless all first wives. Nyinyi ni watu wa nguvu sana. Starting with a man from zero is not easy.

17/09/2026

36 girls from Bakisa Girls Secondary School in Webuye East are reportedly pregnant, with 10 having already given birth. Police say the girls have named 36 men allegedly responsible, including 20 married men, who are expected to be arrested and taken to court.

16/09/2026

The courtroom expected a mother's fury. Melida Auma, the mother of Sharon Otieno, stood before the High Court and asked the judge not to sentence former Migori Governor Okoth Obado to death or life imprisonment.

She did not scream. She did not cry for vengeance. She did not demand that the man who took her daughter's life spend the rest of his behind bars.

Instead, she said, "Don't crucify Obado in this case."

She said she has struggled to raise Sharon's three children. She said she would prefer a non-custodial sentence. A sentence that would allow Obado to help care for them. She said the family has forgiven him.

The courtroom went silent. The internet is now on fire. And somewhere in the middle of the outrage and the debate, there is a grandmother who is not thinking about justice. She is thinking about dinner.

Sharon Otieno is dead.

She was brutally murdered. She cannot come back. She cannot raise her children. She cannot hold her babies. She cannot provide for them.

Her mother knows this. She knows it better than anyone. She has looked at her grandchildren and seen the empty space where their mother used to be. She has watched them grow up without the one person who was supposed to love them unconditionally. She has carried the weight of raising three children alone.

And she knows something that the rest of us do not want to admit.

Prisons do not pay school fees.

We want retribution. We want it in our bones. We want the man who kills a mother to rot in a cell. We want him to feel the pain he inflicted. We want him to suffer. We want justice to be loud and visible and bloody.

But justice for the dead does not feed the living.

If Obado goes to prison for life, the state will house him. The state will feed him. The state will give him a bed, a uniform, and a routine. The state will take care of him until he dies.

And Sharon's three children will still be in that house in Migori, wondering where their next meal is coming from. They will still need school fees. They will still need uniforms. They will still need shoes. They will still need someone to pay for their medical care when they fall sick.

The state will not pay for any of that.

The state will only punish the man.

This is the uncomfortable mathematics that Melida Auma is doing.

She is not thinking about forgiveness as an abstract virtue. She is thinking about survival. She is thinking about what her grandchildren need. She is thinking about the fact that Obado is the only person in this equation who has the financial capacity to help these children.

She is not asking for him to be freed because she loves him. She is asking for him to be available because she needs him.

It is not mercy. It is a bargain. A trade-off. A deal.

Punish him, and the children suffer. Spare him, and the children might survive.

It is not justice. It is pragmatism. It is what a grandmother does when the system has already failed her.

The crowd will not understand this.

They will call her a coward. They will say she has been bought. They will say she is betraying her daughter's memory. They will say she is prioritizing money over dignity.

They will not understand that she is prioritizing the living over the dead.

They will not understand that she is looking at the children of a murdered woman and trying to figure out how to keep them alive.

They will not understand that she has already lost her daughter, and she cannot afford to lose her grandchildren too.

So what does justice look like in this case?

Does it look like a prison cell? Does it look like a broken man in a prison uniform? Does it look like the state taking one more parent away from three orphaned children?

Or does it look like a man who is forced to spend the rest of his life working to support the children he orphaned?

One is retribution. The other is restitution.

One feels like justice. The other actually helps.

Melida Auma has a point.

Having Obado jailed will not resurrect Sharon. It will not bring her back. It will not undo the pain. It will not heal the trauma. It will not fix the hole in those children's lives.

It will only punish.

And punishment, when the victim's family is left destitute, is not justice. It is just another form of suffering.
I am not saying Obado should walk free.

He was convicted. He killed a woman. He must pay. He must be held accountable. He must face the consequences of his actions.

But we have to ask ourselves what accountability looks like when the person who committed the crime is the same person who holds the wallet for the victims' family.

Because if the state takes Obado to prison, the state does not become the provider. The state does not become the father. The state does not pay the fees. The state does not buy the food. The state does not dry the tears.

That burden falls on Melida Auma. A grandmother. A woman who has already buried her daughter.

And she is telling the court: Do not put another burden on me.

Do not make me bury my daughter and then watch my grandchildren suffer.

Do not punish him so severely that you punish us too.

This is not a defence of Obado. This is a mirror held up to our legal system.

A system that punishes the rich by making them poor, and punishes the poor by making them suffer.

A system that believes in retribution, but not in restoration.

A system that will lock a man in a cell and call it justice, while the children he left behind are left to fend for themselves.

The Bible says, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord."

But the Lord does not pay school fees.

Melida Auma is not looking for vengeance. She is looking for a way to raise three children.

And if the only way to do that is to ask the court for leniency, then she will do it.

Not because she is weak. Not because she has been bought. Not because she does not love her daughter.

But because she is a grandmother.

And grandmothers do whatever it takes to keep their grandchildren alive.

The truth that no one wants to admit is that the Lord does not pay school fees.

This Is Laikipia

19/09/2026

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