Rub A Dub Therapy with Kaya Kenya

This gallery contains 37 photos.

Originally posted on Bad Mambo:
Rub A Dub Therapy on Saturday, 20th February was a smashing success. From the vendors to the musical line-up hundreds of Nairobi residents turned up to party and shop at Nairobi’s newest spot, The Alchemist. Photos courtesy of Dhruv Shah and Jude Clark

Gap Year Diaries #2- Kenyan Mardi Gras

Can’t wait for this years edition!

LSD and kenyan Artists.

This first appeared in UP Magazine’s February issue. It captures an odd experience I had with a painter in Karen. I know it’s not as ‘down and dirty’ as promised but the heroin piece really couldn’t get published, (something about self implication or whatever) so we’re left with me, a trippy hippie and some of the best LSD you can find in this city. Follow this link to buy some acid for yourself LSD Point.

The acid was kicking in; everything seemed brighter, more beautiful and seemed to make sense. I looked over at my host, a wisp of smoke escaped from between his lips as he put out the joint in his hand. I think he was trying too hard to be honest. With his long blonde dreadlocked hair,  he looked like a flower child leftover from the 60’s. Or perhaps more like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. Either way though *Flower” had some great insights into drug use and the creative process.

From time immemorial our race has been using drugs to enhance the human experience, the Vikings berserkers would whip themselves into frenzy on mushrooms and Uni students have been popping Ritalin 10mgs like tiny white Smarties for decades to up their grades. I didn’t seek out Flower because I was looking for drugs to up my writing (so before you ask no I was not tripping when I typed this) I tried to get a meet up with him because he’s a well-known artist who’s constantly ‘on’ something.

“Look man” he said in a long drawn out voice. “So here, man, basically my day is always heavy when I’m making my stuff. Wake and bake as always!” We’re seated on giant Ankara covered cushions in his studio/apartment/parent’s pool house while he rolled what looked like the guka joints, a real fat long one that looked like split into pieces it could make four more. The walls are covered with his own art plus some from artists I recognize, there’s a Jackie Karuti III, Michael Soi and what looked like a Peterson Kamwathi. “I don’t know about these guys,” he says pointing to the paintings on the wall “but I can tell you this bro, if I’m not on something you’ll get some boring shi*t out of me”

Image courtesy of Ursuladecayart

“All the greatest creative minds have hit something, that’s why half of Hollywood is hopped up on cocaine. Look at the Rolling Stones! I mean I’m sure some Kenyan artists are on it but they just never get caught.” He reached into his fanny pack (yes he was wearing a fanny pack) and pulled out several plastic baggies. He reached into one and gave me a tiny sliver of paper. He handed it to me then took out another and put it under his tongue “See bro, the Beatles were on LSD, the greatest band of all f*cking time! On LSD! Stick that under your tongue and we’ll keep going”

I did and waited.

“I don’t care what the government man says, or all these people trying to hold us down or whatever. I’m not saying every artist should go Tony Montana and stick their nose in a mountain of coke and OD, that’s drug abuse. What I’m talking about is drug use! Taking some weed in the morning to mellow you out, and settle you down, add a psychedelic like special K, mushrooms or acid to open up that creative section of your mind and finally do a line of cocaine so you can pick up that paintbrush, pen or guitar and make some goddamn magic!”

I looked at him, a time displaced hippie living in his parents house in Karen who, despite having grown up in Kenya, still had a lazy Southern drawl, and I tried to figure out how he was still functioning after what I suppose was 3 or 4 years of constant self-dosing. He kept smoking his joint looking at me intensely with his surprisingly white eyes before he turned on his radio.

“We’ll just listen to some music till the LSD hits, and then we’ll head on outside, k man?”

“So what’s the point of it all? If you’re just going to be high all the time?”
“When it hits and you see the world, you’ll understand.”
An hour later we were lying in the grass outside and I kept staring at everything, transfixed. I could hear nature vibrating, feel sound on my skin and if there are gods out there they were speaking right into my soul, telling me all was well with the universe. I look at his paintings now and I finally understand where his vivid portrayal of landscapes and the reckless abandon with which he uses colours come from. I’d never advocate for the use of drugs in the creative process, but I now sure as hell understand it.

Dear Mummy, I’m Out!

This article appeared first in UP Magazine’s December Issue (Link). I freaked out as I emailed it to the editor for my monthly column but then figured “fuck it” it’s not like anyone online didn’t know I was bi anyway.

“Well you are one of them believe it or not 🙂 Openly bi in Kenya? Takes courage man. You are paving the future Adam 🙂 keep on fighting!”

It started off with — as a lot of things do — a text sent to my mother erroneously. She forwarded it to me and asked what the content was referring to. Her reaction was anything but surprising, something akin to the five stages of grief. Defined as the framework we use to accept the loss of someone you love. Denial: No this can’t be, my only son can’t be bisexual. Anger: which woman will marry you now; how could you do this to me? Will we ever have grandchildren? The rest followed soon.
The sender of the message, identity still unknown, has no clue the chain of events he/she had set off. How could they? I’ve been openly bisexual on Twitter and Facebook for years and I’ve mentioned conversations with people ranking from brothel owners to barmen in this column where my sexuality was the subject. A bulk of the 4500+ people who follow me on Facebook probably think it’s all a jest or a way to support the embattled LGBTI community, which they’ve convinced themselves I’m not a part of. I could in my mind’s eye, see my mum analysing every single man I was close to and trying to figure out if I was sleeping with them. Were they best-friends or boyfriends?
I of course did what I usually do in such situations, got and stayed ridiculously drunk. I started off quite civilized, Bloody Maries in the morning, but by the time the second batch was mixed it had enough tabasco to reflect my anger, vodka to quell it and a hint of tomato juice representative of the calm I most certainly did not want to feel. I then moved on the the queen of cocktails, the Gin and Tonic, hold the tonic. This began to mellow me out so my late afternoon was consumed by whiskey and the evening by Legend Brandy, a drink of suchs ill repute that it’s apparently drunk when the changaa runs out.
It saddens me to think that getting absolutely shitfaced cleared my mind. It’s as if my brain, liver and kidneys had conspired against me and held an intervention.

“Bruh, Slow down. Legend? Really? Here’s why you shouldn’t judge mother dearest,” they said “Who do you think you are looking at mummy with contempt? You who not long ago in high school made fun of a gay boy who is now one of your closest friends. Ye of the homophobic status updates on Facebook and the transphobic tweets. Isn’t her shock justified? Think about it, she’s caught you at least four times sneaking a girl into your room after a night of debauchery at Crooked Q’s; sometimes it wasn’t just one. Doesn’t she have the right to know if she’ll be a grandmother soon or ever? There’s no other siblings for her to place her hopes on as you well know. Or if by some mistake on her part she had caused the duality of your sexuality.”

I really had overreacted, granted some of her questions were ludicrous: Asking if my sexuality was why I changed my career path to journalism, if it’s why i refuse to cut my hair or the explanation for my wanderings around the country. However, these were borne of ignorance and not malice. When I finally turned on my phone the next day, she’d sent a few messages reflecting the final three stages of grief: bargaining, depression and finally acceptance. She hadn’t lost her son, she’s gained a deeper understanding of his nature.

However, having finally reached this chapter in my relationship with mother I figure that next year I’ll stop identifying as bisexual. Cliche resolutions such as giving up alcohol or losing weight are well and good, but I can’t be arsed to bother with, either. Gin is too good and bacon is BAE. However, I will stop identifying as bisexual or pansexual. Not because my sexual preferences will have changed, after all it’s not just a phase, but to lose the inconvenience that labeling causes. Mummy hears bisexual and her mind is assaulted by the mountain of shit mainstream society has created around the world. Pansexual involves hours of just trying to explain what it is and saying you’re polyamorous will have you convincing friends and family that you’re not just a really horny bastard. I feel that just saying, I love people for who they are inside regardless of creed, genitalia, aesthetics, size, age (within reason) or the innumerable things we are conditioned to obsess over when deciding who to love. So come 00:01 a.m. January 1 2016, as I drink my way into the new year and avoid the overtures of the sketchy guy selling pills at the NYE party,I will stop labeling  and stick to loving.

Has Nigeria Overtaken Kenya As The Silicon Savannah

nb: This is UP here because I wrote as the Nigerian lady, no Nigerian tech bloggers got back to me when i messaged them to participate

A few months ago UP Magazine was interviewing one of Nairobi’s tech superstars Mark Kaigwa, when he let spill an interesting fact: in his opinion since Kenya was given the label of “Silicon Savannah”, its tech entrepreneurs had sat on their laurels and nothing particularly innovative has come out of the country since. So when we decided to do a tech issue, this was the first question on our minds. It proved, however, more difficult to find someone to argue that Nigeria was now the leading tech country in Africa but eventually someone called Oluwademilade Adeniyi decided to step up. To be honest we don’t know if this is a real person or not, but because she was frank and persuasive in her views, we decided to let her run. The NO was of course easier and Sam Wakoba, the founder of the blog Tech Moran, was happy to go all out and argue that Kenya will stay king of the Silicon Jungle (if it’s ok to mix reductive metaphors) for the foreseeable future.

NO- Sam Wakoba
After a few deals went sour, a number of tech investors in Kenya said the tech ecosystem was full of fluff and entrepreneurs weren’t as ready for business or to tackle risks like their Nigerian counterparts. I disagree. After M-PESA broke records of quick money remittance and financial inclusion, the international media became dead-focused on that, while local bloggers were only writing about apps and app competitions. Apart from M-PESA, the international media had only tourism and terrorism and corruption as their story leads. M-PESA aside, the international media could have reported companies like Craft Silicon, a multibillion software firm, BuyRentKenya, an online real estate classifieds vertical and PropertyLeo.com, another real estate classifieds portal.
Another would have been One Africa Media’s Cheki, an online car classifieds vertical which is both operational in Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria and revenue positive. MoDe, a recent IBM smart cities winner, has been powering mobile micro credit for years before another Kenyan startup called Movas Group joined the flock doing the same. Both Movas and Mode work with telcos across Africa to help them offer credit airtime packaged differently from market to market and from telco to telco. Another Kenyan firm, PesaPal, has expanded in major markets across the continent to power both online and mobile payments. And don’t forget firms such as ShopSoko, an etsy of Kenya, Angani, a local cloud services firm, EatOut, a restaurant search and booking engine and SleepOut, an AirBnB for emerging markets.
Kenya is still huge in tech. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

 

YES(sort of)- Oluwademilade Adeniyi 
Nigeria has by no means overtaken Kenya as the continent’s Silicon Savannah. It would be presumptuous of me to say so, however it’s only a matter of time before we do. If Kenya has one problem with its tech scene it’s that it’s saturated. It’s becoming near impossible to check online zines and not see some new tech startup funded out of Nairobi’s seemingly bottomless coffers. Nigeria is poised to explode into a viable tech destination that can also translate into steady revenue streams for potential investors.
Nigeria has one major advantage over Kenya when it comes to tech and that is the sheer size of our nation’s population. Additionally the seemingly endless litany of problems is fertile ground for investors looking to fund a startup that won’t fizzle out because of a lack of market. One only needs to look at the portfolios of seed firms such as L5 labs and 440.ng to see the growth potential. Beneficiary startups such as JayOsbie and Ella.ng are looking to muscle out Jumia in the online fashion retail market, no small feat if you ask me.
These may seem like small potatoes however consider the story of Obiwezy, two chaps who did phone reviews and are now running a game-changing phone swap and re-commerce website. Buying used phones online with the benefit of a warranty is a godsend in country where not everyone can afford an out-of-the-box smartphone. With rumours that telco giant MTN is looking to partner with them, one can only assume that more investors with deep pockets will get into the tech game in Nigeria.
Kenyans can have the title Silicon Savannah for now but in less than 2 years we’ll be past you before you can say “Wetin dey happen?”