Author: OP

Oyunga Pala is a Kenyan writer, curator and editor. This blog examines the texture of everyday Kenyan and African life and the challenges of modernity and disillusion. The writings commonly feature the struggle of the Kenyan male to maintain integrity in contemporary society.

The woman in a leso

Posted on by OP

I know you are a complete stranger but I know you. You are my aunty from the village, the defiant one. The one who rolls her own cigarettes, smokes laced tobacco, drinks the local gin and the men, dare not walk on her wrong side. You have probably refused to accept Christ as your personal saviour and do not have a single bone of affectation in your body. You are from the league of badly behaved women who were shunned by society because they were not demure and avoided because they only speak the truth. 

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The New Normal

Posted on by OP

I guess, the great takeaway for me is this…2021 was the year the pandemic was supposed to ease up and we anticipated a return to normal with the promise of vaccination. COVID-19 had other ideas. In essence, 2021 became the year our normal turned abnormal and the abnormal began to feel normal.

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This One is For Grandma

Posted on by OP

There is a special breed of women about to exit the scene with an endless capacity to care for others. They are the forgotten grandmothers whose weary hands are holding up our bright skies. They are the discarded ladders that took us over the walls erected to stop our progress and on whose bent backs, we built modern and prosperous lives.

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