Murage Munene

[Cyprian, Is Nyakundi @C_NyaKundiH]

I have watched Dr Gikonyo under cross examination and what struck me is that some men reach an age where intimidation stops working on them.

There is a certain calmness that comes from having seen governments come and go, presidents rise and fall, ministers behave like small gods, and public storms disappear after a few weeks. You could see a man who was not auditioning for approval from the room, the lawyers, the cameras or the political crowd outside.

That is what made it interesting. Kenya is full of people who tremble the moment power enters the room. They start calculating what to say, who might be offended, which side is watching and how tomorrow’s headlines may read. Dr Gikonyo looked like someone who has outlived that fear.

At some point in life, the most dangerous person in any room is not the loudest one. It is the old man who no longer needs anything from anyone.

[Murage Munene @ragemurage]

@syghmo @NytoP2PMwangi Unataka mafuta ama choo?

[Modern Dad @ModernxDad]

Don't marry the person you can have fun with but..

[Murage Munene @ragemurage]

And this... @Safaricom_Care

[Murage Munene @ragemurage]

.@Safaricom_Care wacheni hizi bana!!! This is just dumb!!

[Peché Africa 🇿🇦 @pmcafrica]

😭😭😭 The real meaning of behind a successful man , there is a woman 🙆‍♂️

[Murage Munene @ragemurage]

@zakiraicoder AI Money

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

'A Brief Disagreement' by Steve Cutts is a brilliant animated short depicting a visual journey into mankind's favourite pastime throughout the ages.

Meaning — humanity's inclination to fight each other.

[Murage Munene @ragemurage]

@selinatasnim1 Gemini

[Saddique Shaban @SaddiqueShaban]

At some point, motorists and road users need to effect a class-action suit against the orangutans running @KeNHAKenya at Barabara Plaza. The contractors should be equally sued as accessories to murder and all instances of attempted murders. This is a premeditated death trap.

[Silas Nyanchwani @nyanchwani]

Meja Mwangi, who died yesterday, is/was the Greatest KENYAN Writer of all time.

I emphasize KENYAN, before I get into trouble with Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s disciples. Ngugi, who died in May this year, was a perennial nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature, a continental (African) and global figure, widely regarded as one of the most consequential postcolonial writers, thinkers, and philosophers, especially in the English-speaking world.

But back home, Ngugi’s universe was the Kikuyu community (nothing absolutely wrong with this, as some of his detractors kept harping about it every time he was perennially nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature). Ngugi’s first four novels were set against the backdrop of the Mau Mau and colonialism. None of these in any way negates Ngugi’s contribution to Kenyan letters, but he was of the world.

Enter Meja Mwangi.
Meja was ours. Kenyan to the core.
Meja Mwangi’s literature was more cosmopolitan, as most of his books were set in Nairobi, a synecdoche for Kenya and the Kenyan.

I first read Going Down River while in Class 8 or Form 1. I couldn’t put the book down. The prose was viscerally realistic. The writing was too detailed; it’s little wonder I learned later in life that Meja Mwangi went on to be a filmmaker. I wish I could watch any of his screen productions. Mwangi was only 28 when he penned what I consider the greatest Kenyan novel of all time and generations.

Nearly 35 years later, when the film Nairobi Half-Life was released, I observed that very little of Nairobi had changed between 1976 and 2012. Nairobi Half-Life was a descendant of Going Down River Road. That Nairobi underclass that will never change, no matter the speed of our internet, the Expressways, you people adopting BDSM, and such.

Around 2014, my uncle (bless his soul) took me back to Kibera to show me where I was born and spent part of my childhood. It was almost 20 years later. For sure, the roads were now paved, and there were huge streetlights, but that slum vibe was still there. My uncle took me to a woman who had been brewing chang’aa since the 1980s, still doing her thing, and introduced me to her, and told her this is the Son of Norah, and she was like, “How did you get so big?”

While there, I couldn’t help but think about how every part of Nairobi changes: people move on, out, and about, but our slums eternally retain that gritty persona. People may come and go, but newcomers always slip into the slum persona like gloves.

Anyone who grew up in Nairobi’s slums, Eastlands, Kawangware, Kangemi, can identify with all the characters in Meja Mwangi’s books, such as Going Down River Road, Kill Me Quick, Cockroach Dance, and a host of his other latter-day works. Any Kenyan, for that matter, save for the upper middle-class and the rich folks who live in a completely different Nairobi. Kill Me Quick " is the story most of us can relate to, because education promised us so much, and we moved to Nairobi, but now we live with no jobs, and all we can do is drink cheap liquor (Kill Me Quick), eat miraa, and smoke joints, because we are disillusioned. Younger millennials and Gen Zs definitely know what I am talking about.

Along with other writers such as Mwangi Ruheni, Mwangi Gicheru, Charles Mangua, and the Kibera brothers, Meja was among those who captured the zeitgeist of Nairobi and Kenya, as writers like Ngugi became full ideologues and full-time revolutionaries. Mwangi opted to be a revolutionary with his pen, hiding behind satire (that escaped authorities), while entertaining and provoking us.

Sadly, Mwangi was extremely reclusive and rarely granted interviews to scholars or journalists.

Last year, he wanted to come out and meet his fans and lovers of his work, thanks to the spirited efforts of his adopted literary daughter, @Lexa_Lubanga. We cleared our schedules in readiness to meet the man, the myth, and the legend himself, but unfortunately, he was taken ill, and that particular meet-up didn’t happen, and none would ever happen, as he has been sickly, and now he is gone.

A few years back, I asked what the Kenyan novel should be, and my choice was Going Down River Road.

The irony of his dying on the Eve of our 62nd anniversary of Independence is not lost on me, more so when successive regimes are determined to keep the youth poor, unemployed, and disillusioned, like a character in Mwangi’s book.

You can draw a straight line from Going Down River Road, to Ukoo Fulani’s Tafsiri Hii (1997), to Nairobi Half Life (2012), to Wakadinali’s Geri Inengi (2021), to whatever song that will come out of Kayole in 2030, depicting the never-changing life in the ghetto.

He leaves behind a vast body of work.

May Meja Mwangi travel well to the land yonder. Say hi to Ngugi wa Thiong’o, David Mulwa, Mwangi Gicheru, Margaret Ogola, Grace Ogot, Micere Mugo, Binyavanga Wainaina, and all the great men and women of letters we lost.

Photo: Courtesy

[George Njoroge @georgenjoroge_]

THE END WE NEVER SAW COMING:

A GENERATION OF MEN WAKING UP TOO LATE

There is a truth almost all men only understand when they are older, a truth that arrives with a sting: 99.9% of us totally misjudged our fathers.

Many of us grew up closer to our mothers.
We heard her frustrations first.
We saw her sadness before we ever understood its source.
We believed her stories before we had the maturity to question them.
And slowly, quietly, we formed a picture of our fathers that was incomplete.

We thought he stayed out late because he didn’t care.
We thought he worked late because he didn’t love us.
We thought he kept to himself because he was a cold heartless man.

Nobody told us he worked late so we could have shoes he never owned.

Nobody told us the reason he looked tired most times wasn’t alcohol, it was responsibility.

Nobody told us he didn’t choose silence; he chose peace in a world that demanded strength from him every single day.

Nobody told us that the little he kept for himself came after everyone else had eaten.

Nobody told us that the roof over our heads was not “basic duty” it was sacrifice.

Nobody told us he carried storms we never saw.

We were too young to know truth.

Too naïve to see nuance.

Too quick to inherit someone else’s anger.

And now, look around.

A new generation of men is living the exact same story.

Men who promised themselves they would “be better fathers.”

Men who swore they would “never be like their dads.”

Men who gave their families more than their own fathers ever could; better schools, better homes, better food, better opportunities, better lives.

Men who carried the world and called it love.

But here they are now……sadly living the same loneliness their fathers died with.

The same silence.

The same emotional distance from their own children.

The same feeling of being unseen in their own homes.

The same exhaustion from providing while feeling unnecessary.

The same ache of realizing you gave everything and somehow still became the villain in the story.

It is only now, in this season of life, that many men whisper the words they once mocked:

“My father was not a weak man. He was a tired man.”

They finally understand that what they called “coldness” was actually worn-out patience.

What they called “distance” was actually pressure.

What they called “uncaring” was actually sacrifice no one bothered to explain.

A wise old man once said: “You will know your father was right the day life puts you in his shoes.”

And that day has arrived for many.

This is not about blaming anyone.

This is about acknowledging the wounds we inherited, the truths we ignored and the patterns we now see repeating in our own lives.

The lonely end of good men did not begin with us.

We are simply the first generation willing to speak it aloud.

Maybe the lesson is this: Men must learn to take care of themselves, not just everyone else.

Men must learn their value before the world teaches them otherwise.

Men must learn to speak before silence destroys them.

Men must learn that strength without support is just slow dying.

A generation of men is waking up today and finally whispering:

“Maybe my father wasn’t the problem.
Maybe he was the warning.”

[Murage Munene @ragemurage]

What's up with @SafaricomPLC wifi? @Safaricom_Care

[Murage Munene @ragemurage]

💯

[George Njoroge @georgenjoroge_]

Ladies, wives and the “newly independent” divorced women.

You keep asking why your husband stopped fighting for you?

Why he checked out?

Why he went silent?

It wasn’t because he stopped loving you.

No, It’s because you slowly drained the life out of him and you didn’t even notice.

In the beginning you backed him.

You believed in him.

You made him feel like he mattered.

When Men when they feel supported, they try harder, love deeper and rise higher.

Then somewhere along the way, the switch flipped.

Stress crept in.
Your expectations got louder.
Your appreciation got quieter.

You stopped encouraging and started nitpicking.
You stopped cheering and started correcting.
You turned every small issue into another reminder of what he wasn’t doing right.

And here’s what you never understood:

Many men never had strong fathers. No mentors. No anchors.

So the woman they love becomes the only place they draw strength from, their emotional home.

When you become his biggest critic instead of his support:
You break the one thing inside him that keeps him fighting.

Your praise builds him.
Your disappointment cuts deeper than you think.

And when the one woman he trusted most turns into the loudest source of criticism?

He doesn’t argue.
He doesn’t shout.
He just shuts down.

A man who feels rejected can’t lead with confidence.
A man who feels unappreciated won’t show up fully.
A man whose spirit you’ve crushed will not keep fighting for a marriage you keep tearing apart.

And here’s the part many women refuse to accept:

Men move toward the woman who makes them feel valued, not the one who constantly reminds them they’re failing.

Not because they’re weak, but because they’re human and encouragement matters where you feel most vulnerable.

Marriage taught this truth:

A woman’s words can build a warrior… or break him beyond repair.

So before you complain that “he changed,” ask yourself a simple question:

Were you still his support or did you slowly become his undoing?

[George Njoroge @georgenjoroge_]

Ladies, wives and the “newly independent” divorced women.

You keep asking why your husband stopped fighting for you?

Why he checked out?

Why he went silent?

It wasn’t because he stopped loving you.

No, It’s because you slowly drained the life out of him and you didn’t even notice.

In the beginning you backed him.

You believed in him.

You made him feel like he mattered.

When Men when they feel supported, they try harder, love deeper and rise higher.

Then somewhere along the way, the switch flipped.

Stress crept in.
Your expectations got louder.
Your appreciation got quieter.

You stopped encouraging and started nitpicking.
You stopped cheering and started correcting.
You turned every small issue into another reminder of what he wasn’t doing right.

And here’s what you never understood:

Many men never had strong fathers. No mentors. No anchors.

So the woman they love becomes the only place they draw strength from, their emotional home.

When you become his biggest critic instead of his support:
You break the one thing inside him that keeps him fighting.

Your praise builds him.
Your disappointment cuts deeper than you think.

And when the one woman he trusted most turns into the loudest source of criticism?

He doesn’t argue.
He doesn’t shout.
He just shuts down.

A man who feels rejected can’t lead with confidence.
A man who feels unappreciated won’t show up fully.
A man whose spirit you’ve crushed will not keep fighting for a marriage you keep tearing apart.

And here’s the part many women refuse to accept:

Men move toward the woman who makes them feel valued, not the one who constantly reminds them they’re failing.

Not because they’re weak, but because they’re human and encouragement matters where you feel most vulnerable.

Marriage taught this truth:

A woman’s words can build a warrior… or break him beyond repair.

So before you complain that “he changed,” ask yourself a simple question:

Were you still his support or did you slowly become his undoing?

[Murage Munene @ragemurage]

RIP Bilal Kasoro!!! Deepest condolences to the family.

[KENYA GOSSIP HUB @kenyasgossips]

BREAKING

Renowned actor Bilal Wanjau has died, after battling an illness

[Murage Munene @ragemurage]

@Beno10_MFC Collars!

[Murage Munene @ragemurage]

@yourtechgirl24 SEND

[Billgrahams @billgrahams1]

@amerix #ManDay