There is no need to break the piggy bank to celebrate a foreign idea dating back to the Victorian times, but which has been hijacked by capitalist forces and people living beyond their means.

Every waking day in Kenya, hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of youths place a bet on the likely outcome of a football match played far away

Chicago-based Tony Rosado is linked to such celebrities as US President Donald Trump and Barcelona football ace Lionel Messi

It breaks years of silence from the 70s, when the writer stunned the world with wildly popular novelettes that came with explicit scenes

Renowned South African novelist and apartheid critic Peter Abrahams is dead. Abrahams, whose novel, Mine Boy, was a set book in Kenya in the late 90s, was found lying in a pool of blood in his house in Jamaica Thursday.

The season of political madness is here, again. In case you have just landed from Mars, or from those rarefied climes where Nigeria is thought to be a continent and that we Africans live atop trees – let me bring you up to speed.

Several years ago, I worked under a boss who, whenever he was miffed that someone had missed their target, would call them over to his imposing office.

Children are home for a whole two months, thanks to new school rules set by the reassuringly efficient Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i.

Kenya is a confounding country. So confounding that you cannot call us poor or rich without being horribly wrong.

My take, however, is that there could be some element of truth such West-based literary prizes may be, albeit unintentionally, biased against African literary icons.

When President Uhuru Kenyatta berated top officials for failure to fight corruption, I asked myself, what exactly is wrong with Kenya, and Kenyans?

What followed was a one-hour horror story. A story of how inmates with no relatives to visit them are forced into same-sex “marriage” by other prisoners who work in the kitchen. The alternative is to starve, as you get only a film-thin slice of half-cooked ugali and one piece of cabbage floating in what looks like dirty salty water.

The carnival mood is here, again. As the clock ticks to the next General Election, the stage has been set for a very old ritual. Politicians, even those who have not been to the village since they were elected, are keeping tabs on funerals and scheduling appearances at churches, women group meetings and every other gathering. All of a sudden, the village love bug has bitten politicians.

Fifteen years ago, upcountry Kenya was a serene mass of land where you could disappear to, away from the madding city crowds.

This week, teachers’ unions slapped the Teachers’ Service Commission with a proposal demanding a 300 per cent pay rise.

Elections back then were a one-party affair; actually a formality to vote back the president (unopposed) and to largely endorse the ruling party’s choice of MP and councillor. To us small boys, the chanting, whistle-blowing and invectives hurled on humongous loudspeakers was an entertaining distraction.

When details of mistreatment of our Rio-bound Kenyan Olympic athletes exploded a few days ago, we were again firing from four cylinders on social media.

We have just under one year to the next General Election. Slightly over a month ago, then Chief Justice Willy Mutunga famously bowed out of office to pave way for the forthcoming momentous polls. It was a historic breakaway from time-honoured Kenyan tradition; you know, we’d rather die than leave office of our own volition. Before he paved way for a new Judiciary head, Dr Mutunga warned us that Kenya is in the vice-like grip of the underworld.

A while ago, I chanced upon a heated discussion on politicians and philanthropy.

One of the most confounding things about Kenya today is our sense of logic.

One of the most irritating things about foreign governments, at least to us Kenyans on Twitter (KoT) and in government, is the alacrity of the West to issue travel advisories against our country.

Growing up, I noticed a peculiar thing among old men in the village. Most had well-educated children who worked, lived and had families in cities and major towns.

The killing of a city lawyer, his client and a taxi driver this week called to mind the late Jamaican poet and policeman, Claude McKay.

The way to a nation’s heart, I think, is through its stomach. It therefore follows that the way to Kenyans’ hearts, is through maize, the country’s staple food that knows no tribe.

One of the most comical things about Kenya’s politics is that some people pretend to understand it.

This week, eight politicians were herded into police cells over hate speech. This raised eyebrows, mainly because the ignominy of spending a night in police cells is the preserve of garden-variety countryside thugs.

Treasury Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich on Wednesday presented in Parliament what experts have termed a very ambitious budget for 2016/2017.

A foreigner visiting Kenya for the first time would find our politics quite peculiar. A visitor would no doubt be taken aback by our kind of politics.

Kenyans are a hypocritical lot. Whenever results of an opinion poll that tells us nothing new are released, the feigned shock across the land is so palpable you can touch it.

It is not entirely unfamiliar, as we had a taste of it in 2008. We also see it in many parts of the world every waking day.

Kenyan villages - trust me, I have been up and about - are no longer the havens of verdant green tranquility.

Before the 2003 curriculum review in Kenya, you could count the number of serious publishers in Kenya on the fingers of one hand.

No African short story writer has captured the futility of shortcuts to wealth better than Egyptian military-literary ace Youssef El Sebai.

Meru was this week awash with opulence. No, it was not the business moguls of the world who had swooped in on business, perhaps to find out how to make millions of dollars from miraa juice,

The Government spends approximately more than Sh1.6 trillion on procurement annually. This means Jubilee will have spent close to Sh8 trillion on procurement by July next year, when its first term comes to an end.

If there is one thing you’ve got like about Kenyan politicians, it has to be the comical way they try to turn around an embarrassing moment into one of heroism.

The annual Easter weekend, just like Christmas and other Christian holidays, are immensely popular worldwide.

The agency’s credibility has been eroded first by the saga of the BVR kits for the 2013 elections, then the Chickengate scandal, among others.

On Tuesday, President Uhuru Kenyatta was in Murang’a for the burial of George Ndung’u Mwicigi, who served as Kandara MP for nearly 20 years and was assistant minister for Agriculture in the Kenyatta and Moi governments.

One of the most remarkable things about literary art is that, at its breathtaking finest, it transports you from the here-and-now to beautiful countrysides of ideas and transcendental sublimity.