Ian's Blog

  Every time a violent crime shocks the country, attention immediately turns to the suspect. We ask who did it, why it happened, how it happened, and whether the person responsible will finally face justice. But sometimes the deeper question comes later, after public attention begins to settle: what happens when the justice system itself becomes part of the reason dangerous people remain free? This is the question many Kenyans keep asking whenever a suspect accused of serious violence is released, a case collapses, witnesses disappear, evidence becomes weak, or a file fails to hold long enough for conviction. It becomes even harder to ignore when that same person is later linked to another crime, another victim, another grieving family, another preventable tragedy. In many countries, responsibility is not always limited to the final act itself. A bartender can face consequences for knowingly over-serving alcohol to someone who later kills another person because the law recognizes t...

  There is something unsettling about how quickly Kenya absorbs tragedy, mourns loudly for a few days, and then seems to return to normal before the wounds have even begun to close. It happens so often that one begins to wonder whether forgetting has quietly become part of our national survival instinct. A disaster occurs, lives are lost, outrage rises, questions fill television screens and social media timelines, leaders issue statements, investigations are promised, and then slowly another topic takes over. Attention shifts. Anger cools. The nation moves on. But the tragedy itself does not disappear. The people who buried loved ones do not move on at the same speed as the public conversation. The parents who lost children, the families waiting for answers, the communities carrying fear, all remain with consequences long after headlines fade. The recent floods should have stayed longer in our national conscience. Across different parts of Kenya , people died in floodwaters, homes ...

  There are moments when I sit down, look at the state of this country, and ask myself a simple question: when did we start accepting this as normal? When did we become a nation that watches politicians enter office with modest means and leave with fortunes that cannot be explained? When did we become comfortable watching public projects stall, hospitals run out of medicine, roads collapse, floods destroy homes and kill, and still allow leaders to walk away untouched and in most cases wealthier than before? Somewhere along the way, we developed a strange tolerance for public theft. Not approval, of course. Kenyans complain loudly. We argue online. We shake our heads at the news. But in the end, the system rarely forces anyone to return what was lost. And that is the real problem. Because public money is not theoretical. It is not numbers on paper. It is money collected from the daily struggle of ordinary Kenyans. It is deducted from salaries before people even touch their earnings....

  A bar opens next to a church. The church, disturbed by the noise, the traffic, and perhaps the symbolism of alcohol flourishing beside a place of worship, begins praying daily against the business. Quiet, persistent prayer, offered with the confidence that heaven listens. Then one day lightning strikes. The bar catches fire and burns to ashes. Immediately, the bar owner reaches a startling conclusion: this was no ordinary accident. He believes the prayers worked. In fact, he believes so strongly in the power of those prayers that he drags the church to court, insisting the priests are responsible for the destruction of his business. The church, faced with the lawsuit, quickly distances itself from any spiritual credit. Suddenly, prayer becomes symbolic rather than effective. The priests deny responsibility entirely. Lightning, they argue, is weather. Fire is accident. Prayer, apparently, had nothing to do with it. The judge proceeds to say: This is a difficult case because here w...

  Part I: What the Gen Z Protests Were Really Saying When young Kenyans took to the streets during the Gen Z demonstrations, one of the most common misunderstandings—sometimes deliberate, sometimes careless—was the belief that they were simply being disruptive. To some sections of society, especially among the comfortable middle class, the protests were first experienced through traffic jams, delayed meetings, closed businesses, missed appointments, and interrupted routines. The complaint came quickly: Why are they disturbing normal life? Why destroy business? Why not protest quietly? But that question missed the point entirely. The demonstrations were not born out of boredom, rebellion for its own sake, or a desire to inconvenience others. They were born out of accumulated frustration from a generation that has grown up watching public theft become normal, police violence become familiar, and leadership increasingly detached from the weight citizens carry every day. Young people w...

  There are moments in public life when leadership reveals itself not through policy, not through vision, not through courage, but through conduct. And sometimes that conduct says more about the state of a nation than any speech ever could. What unfolded recently between William Ruto and Rigathi Gachagua was one of those moments—deeply revealing, deeply unsettling, and for many Kenyans, deeply embarrassing. Part I: When National Leaders Descend into Public Spectacle A president and his former deputy are not ordinary political actors. Whether they agree or disagree, whether they are allies or rivals, they carry offices that symbolize the seriousness of statehood. Their words shape political culture. Their tone influences public discourse. Their conduct teaches citizens what leadership looks like. That is why watching the two spend public time exchanging insults, body-shaming one another, and reducing national conversation to personal attacks felt so jarring. Instead of debating po...

  Sometimes I catch myself wishing I had been born earlier. Not because the past was perfect, every era had its wars, its injustices, its struggles—but because earlier generations seemed to possess something we are quietly losing: time. Not just time in the sense of hours in a day, but time in the way the world moved, in the way life unfolded at a human pace. Bad news used to travel slowly, and mainly in a newspaper. A crisis might unfold somewhere far away, but it would take days or weeks before the details reached ordinary people. By the time the fear arrived, half the story had already resolved itself. That distance created a kind of psychological buffer. The world was still heavy, still complicated, but it did not press against your mind every waking moment. Today, there is no buffer. Wars update in real time. Missiles launch and within seconds the videos are on your phone. A flood happens across the city and you watch it swallow streets while you sit at your desk. A crisis unf...