For years we were told leadership was about strategy.
Targets. Budgets. Market share. Efficiency.
Then along came Lina Githuka and started redesigning “the humanity around the people in the business” — and the things that matter to them.

A week ago, the Managing Director of Kenya Wine Agencies Limited found herself at the centre of a national conversation after introducing a Feminine Leave Policy granting female employees one paid day off every month for menstruation, perimenopause and menopause.

No doctor’s note.
No complicated forms.
No interrogation.
Just trust.

Predictably, the internet did what the internet always does. Some praised the move as progressive leadership. Others asked whether businesses could afford it. A few wondered whether employers would quietly start preferring male hires. And somewhere between the applause and the outrage, most people missed the more interesting story.

The policy did not arrive out of nowhere. Ms. Githuka joined KWAL in November 2018 — the first woman, the first local, to hold the Managing Director’s seat in a company founded in 1969. She did not arrive chasing headlines.
In 2019, lactation rooms.
In 2021, maternity leave expanded from three months to four, extended to cover adoption, surrogacy and stillbirth.
Paternity leave grew to three weeks.
Forty-five women managers graduated through the Ela Lidera Women in Leadership Programme.
Then came Bro-Code — a safe space for male employees to talk about mental health, pressure and the things men carry without saying. One policy after another. One uncomfortable question after another.
The menstrual leave announcement was simply the latest chapter in a six-year project most people never noticed. Her own words on the productivity question were simple: “Most women show up to work even when they are in discomfort. But are they really being productive? We know the answer to that.” That is not HR language.
That is someone who has been paying attention.

A CASE FOR MAN FLU

For years, Man Flu has been the punchline of women’s WhatsApp groups.
A man develops a mild cold and suddenly behaves like a Victorian aristocrat on his deathbed.
He requests green tea.
He demands sympathy.
Women roll their eyes.
Children continue avoiding him.
The internet laughs. Case closed. Or so we thought.

Because somewhere between the memes and the mockery, scientists decided to actually investigate. What they found was awkward for everyone. Stanford University research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that men with higher testosterone produce significantly weaker antibody responses to flu vaccines than women.
A study tracking flu-related deaths from 1997 to 2007 found that men died at higher rates than women across multiple age groups — regardless of underlying conditions. The same estrogen that drives monthly menstrual discomfort appears to strengthen immune response against respiratory infections.
The same testosterone that exempts men from that monthly cycle appears to leave them more vulnerable when a flu virus arrives.

Biology gives. Biology takes.

Women carry burdens men never experience. Men carry burdens women never experience. The mistake — in workplaces, in families, in relationships — begins when either side assumes the other’s burden is imaginary.
Because once you start paying attention to invisible burdens, you begin to notice them everywhere.

THE PAYCHECK THAT FUNDS THE PRISON

An old colleague once told me he hated his job.
Not the occasional Monday morning complaint.
Real hatred.
The kind that follows you home and sits on your chest at three in the morning when sleep refuses to come.
Five years later, he still hated his job.
His boss hadn’t changed. The culture hadn’t changed. The politics hadn’t changed.

The only thing that had changed was his commissions and bonuses.

Somewhere along the way the paycheck became too valuable to question. The mortgage got bigger. The car got better. School fees arrived. One day he woke up and discovered something uncomfortable — he had built a prison around himself, one upgrade at a time.

We measure success using almost entirely external indicators.
The title. The office. The car. The promotion.
Yet the people who know us best are running a completely different calculation.
Are you present?
Are you becoming kinder or harder?
Do you still laugh at the things that used to make you laugh?
There is a difference between building a career and building a life.
Tools, left unchecked, become masters.
The prison is not constructed overnight.
It is built one obligation, one rationalisation, one upgrade at a time.
And the most dangerous part?
You don’t notice until the door is already locked.

Which brings us to Tim Payne.

THE LEAST FAMOUS FOOTBALLER AT THE WORLD CUP

For most of his career, Tim Payne was the kind of footballer only his family, teammates and a handful of die-hard New Zealand fans could identify. Not the star. Not the captain. Fifteen years of gruelling training sessions, injuries and quiet sacrifices — the kind of work that builds a professional footballer from the inside out, in stadiums where the attendance figures were more embarrassing than inspiring.

Then an online campaign targeted FIFA’s World Cup to make the tournament’s least famous player famous. Within days, Payne’s social media following exploded past five million — more than the entire population of New Zealand. The internet had done what the internet always does. It celebrated the sudden outcome while completely ignoring the fifteen years of work it took to get there.
The scorecard the internet wrote for Tim Payne had nothing to do with football.
It had everything to do with novelty.

Which is worth remembering as the tournament kicks off. Because 104 matches are about to compete for your attention, your sleep and your marriage. Choose wisely.

WORLD CUP FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS

The FIFA World Cup has expanded to 104 matches. Students think this is wonderful. Those of us with bosses, school fees, spouses and WhatsApp groups requiring immediate responses are conducting a different exercise.
The question is no longer “What’s on?”
The question is “What can I realistically watch without getting fired?”

CALL IN SICK
England vs Ghana (23 June, 11PM EAT) — History, pride and continental honour in one fixture. Non-negotiable.
South Africa vs South Korea (25 June, 4AM EAT) — Bafana chasing magic. Set the alarm or regret it.
Croatia vs Ghana (28 June, Midnight EAT) — Could decide whether Ghana’s bags get packed early.

Cancel The Meeting
Uruguay vs Spain (27 June, 3AM EAT) — Two football aristocrats. One mistake changes the entire draw.
Tunisia vs Netherlands (26 June, 2AM EAT) — North African resilience meets Dutch efficiency.
Senegal vs Iraq (26 June, 10PM EAT) — Senegal’s golden generation faces another examination.

Stream On Your Phone
Morocco vs Haiti — Moroccans are no longer the surprise. Managing expectations is harder than chasing them.
Algeria vs Austria — Could quietly shape the knockout bracket.
Portugal vs Colombia — Two nations equally capable of brilliance and self-destruction.

Rugby Notebook
While football dominates the headlines, rugby delivered its own reminder that sport remains gloriously unpredictable. The Hurricanes ended a ten-year wait for a Super Rugby Pacific title by dismantling the Chiefs 60-5 in Wellington.
It was not a final. It was a demolition.
Leading 29-0 at halftime, the Hurricanes ran riot — one of the most one-sided championship performances in professional rugby history.

Meanwhile attention shifts to the All Blacks squad announcement. Every coach has a scorecard. Every player believes they have done enough. By Tuesday morning, somebody will discover those are not always the same thing.

THE SCORECARD THAT SURVIVES

Last week, at the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, Michelle Obama stepped to the microphone and quietly changed the register of the room. While the world measures Barack Obama through election victories and approval ratings, Michelle spoke about pressure, character and the moments nobody sees. She looked at him directly:
“Not once did you melt from the heat. Not once did you let it harden you.”
The room went quiet. Because she wasn’t describing a President.
She was describing a man she had watched up close when the title was off and the cameras were gone.
That is the private scorecard.
The one that no election result, no viral moment, no online campaign can produce.

Lina Githuka spent six years rewriting the institutional scorecard at KWAL, policy by policy, person by person. A male colleague told her: “This is the kind of organisation I would want my daughters to work for.” That is someone saying — what you built here changed what I believe is possible. Tim Payne spent fifteen years writing his own scorecard in empty stadiums. The internet rewrote it in 48 hours and called it his story.

The question was never what’s on the scorecard.
The question was always who gets to write it.

Lina decided she did. My colleague never asked. Michelle reminded a room full of powerful people that the most important scorecard is kept by the person who sees you when the performance is over.

If the people who know you best were handed a microphone today — would they describe your achievements?
Or would they describe your character?

Father’s Day Dedication
To every man who has ever helped raise a child.
Whether the child carried your surname or not.
Whether they called you Dad or Uncle.
Whether they lived in your house or simply passed through your life for a season.
Thank you for showing up.
Thank you for trying.
Thank you for carrying more than you said.
The world needs more good men.
Happy Father’s Day.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.
Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.
Go with song

FIXTURE NI FIXTURE

Last week we broke the internet.
What started as a simple story about a man called Agal Koko and 29 years of marriage somehow escaped the Facebook algorithm, jumped the walls and found its way into thousands of conversations I was never supposed to see.
By the time the dust settled, the article had recorded:

25,976 views, reached 14,069 unique readers and generated 2,626 engagements.

More interestingly, 70.9% of the people who read it were not followers of this page. They arrived because somebody sent it to them.
The algorithm contributed very little.
People did the heavy lifting. Friends tagged friends. Former classmates tagged former classmates.
Husbands quietly sent it to wives. Wives sent it to husbands.
Some readers appeared in the comments section carrying stories of their own.
Others arrived in my inbox. A few picked up the phone.
Which is both flattering and dangerous.

Kwanza, Asanteni sana. Jah Bless.

Because success has a way of making people lazy.
An old friend of mine called Lion has a saying:
Fixture ni fixture. Game ni game.
And fixtures must be honoured.
Yesterday’s win does not count today.
Last quarter’s numbers do not count this quarter.
The H1 target you exceeded will not help you hit the H2 target.
As a famous Nitpicker once reminded me after a successful article:
“You’ve created the beast. Now get ready to feed it.”
And so here we are again.
Another Sunday. Another deadline.
Another attempt to make sense of the world.

The FIFA World Cup is underway. The New York Knicks have finally climbed their mountain. Men’s Mental Health Month is in full swing. And as I looked around this week, I noticed something interesting. Men seem to be gathering again.

The first time I heard about men gathering in June was 117 years ago.

Sometime between the 2nd and 4th of June 1909, a group of Kikuyu men gathered to discuss what they believed was a problem.
Her name was Wangu wa Makeri.
To some, she was a pioneer. To others, a collaborator. To still others, a woman who had become far too powerful for the comfort of the men around her. Wangu was no ordinary woman. In a society where leadership was overwhelmingly male, she had risen to become a colonial headman, collecting taxes, enforcing rules and exercising authority over men who were unaccustomed to taking instructions from a woman.

Then came the Kibata dance. (I imagine it was the 2026 equivalent of a pole dance)

Accounts differ on exactly what happened, but the broad outline remains consistent. Wangu participated in a sacred dance reserved for initiated men.
Naked.
Whether it was confidence, defiance, miscalculation or a carefully prepared political trap depends on which historian you read.
What happened next is less disputed. The men gathered. The elders mobilised.
Her opponents found common cause. And within days, one of the most powerful women in colonial Kenya had fallen from power.

Now before the ladies reading this sharpen their tongues and prepare a strongly worded WhatsApp message — breathe.

This is not a story about whether the men were right or whether Wangu was wrong. It is a story about something far more interesting. Because as I looked around this June, I could not help noticing that men seem to be gathering again. Not around a dance. Not around a chief. Not around a rebellion. But around a very different question altogether.

What does it mean to be a man in 2026?

A few weeks ago I noticed a discussion on NTV built around pressure, purpose and power. Men talking openly about responsibility, expectations and the weight many carry quietly.

Then came an invitation to Ololua Forest. A poster from an old classmate.
Not a networking event. A wellness conversation.
Men stepping away from the noise for a few hours to compare notes on life.
A few days later my former Limuru Golf Captain & Tournament Director of the Magical Kenya Open Golf sent me a message.
”Mzae uko na roho” (Old man are you game)? Karen Country Club.
Different venue. Different speakers. Similar questions.
When A Man Fails. Midlife regrets. Recovery. Reinvention.
Not theory. Not motivation. Not social media wisdom.
Just men talking plainly about life.

Then I remembered that June is Men’s Mental Health Month. At first I thought these were isolated events. Then I stopped counting. Television discussions. Podcasts. Forest walks. Country club conversations. Church groups. WhatsApp groups. Former classmates. Coaches. Business leaders. Everywhere I looked, men seemed to be gathering. Not because they had all discovered the same answer. Perhaps because they had all arrived at the same question.

What does it mean to be the best man I can be?

The funny thing about brotherhood is that it often reveals itself when people are supposed to be competing.

As the FIFA World Cup kicked off this week, a statistic caught my eye. Four sets of brothers are representing different countries at the same tournament. Nico Williams plays for Spain. His older brother Iñaki Williams plays for Ghana. Désiré Doué represents France. His brother Guéla Doué represents Ivory Coast. John Souttar plays for Scotland. His brother Harry Souttar plays for Australia. Brian Brobbey represents the Netherlands. His half-brother Derrick Luckassen represents Ghana. Same parents. Same homes. Same childhood memories. Different passports. Different national anthems. Different dressing rooms. The World Cup is supposed to divide countries. This year it has also produced four examples of families finding themselves on opposite sides of international football. I suspect most non-football fans reacted exactly the same way I did.
“Wait... what?”
The salespeople in this room figured this out a long time ago.
The movies celebrate the lone wolf.
The rainmaker.
The closer who walks into a room, signs the deal and rides off into the sunset.
Reality is usually much less dramatic.
Most successful sales teams hunt in packs.
There is the morning huddle before the day begins.
The colleague who tells you a competitor has just changed prices.
The veteran who quietly shares a contact.
The rookie who spots an opportunity everyone else missed.
The individual may close the deal. The pack usually helps make it happen.
After over two decades in boardrooms and sales floors across East Africa, I have come to appreciate that some of the most valuable conversations happen before the customer ever walks into the room.

Perhaps that is why so many men seem to be gathering this June.

The New York Knicks have just won their first NBA championship in 53 years. Championship teams are often built around a single superstar. The Knicks took a different route.
The turning point came in 2022 when they signed Jalen Brunson in free agency. The following year they brought in his former Villanova teammate and close friend Josh Hart. Then OG Anunoby. Then Mikal Bridges. Then Karl-Anthony Towns. One by one the pieces arrived. Not overnight. Not through a single blockbuster move. Not through luck. Through a series of deliberate decisions made across four years. Sports fans will remember the points, the rebounds and the championship parade. What caught my attention was something quieter.
The title was not built in June.
It was built one relationship at a time.
One player. One trade. One conversation. One piece at a time.

Fifty-three years is a long time to wait for anything.
Irrefutable proof that doing it together still works.

On Saturday 27th June, a group of men will sit on a stage at Karen Country Club and discuss a topic that many men spend years avoiding.
When A Man Fails.
Midlife regrets. Recovery. Reinvention. Not theory. Not motivation.
Not social media wisdom.
Just a group of men comparing notes on what life actually looked like when the plan did not survive contact with reality.

By the time this conversation happens, the World Cup will still be underway. The Knicks will still be celebrating a championship 53 years in the making. Men will still be meeting in forests, churches, boardrooms and WhatsApp groups trying to make sense of life.

Which makes me wonder whether all these gatherings are really about the same thing. The men who gathered in 1909.
The men gathering in 2026.
The brothers on opposite sides of the World Cup.
The sales teams sharing intelligence before the day begins.
The championship teams built one relationship at a time.
Perhaps all of them are searching for the same thing.

Perspective.

Because age does not eliminate uncertainty.
Experience does not eliminate mistakes.
Success does not eliminate questions.
As we say in the mtaa (neighbourhood):
Piga luku bro. (Clean up). Tukutane “Keren” 27th.
Hata paka mzee hukunywa maziwa. (Even an old cat still drinks milk.)

And perhaps that is why men continue to gather. Not because they have all the answers.
But because they have finally become comfortable admitting they still have questions.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.
Go with song.

Last week a Luo man caused trouble.

Not Pawa trouble.
Not financial trouble.
The kind of trouble that begins when women start forwarding screenshots into WhatsApp groups and ends with innocent husbands being subjected to performance reviews Mid Quarter.

His name is Agal Koko.
Agal Koko woud Professor.
To celebrate twenty-nine years of marriage, he wrote a public tribute to his wife B. Anyone who has spent enough time around Luos knows they have many gifts. Storytelling. Confidence.
The ability to turn a simple greeting into a keynote address.
A Luo man can answer a yes-or-no question and take you through family history, three proverbs, a funeral in Alego and a brief detour into national politics before arriving at the answer.
So when Agal started writing, most people expected the usual eloquence.
What they did not expect was the reaction.
Women smiled. Men became uncomfortable.
I kept wondering…….when will he stop……
By the end of the post, Facebook had reached the only conclusion that mattered.

Whose husband is this?

The joke is that everybody focused on the words. The real story was the years.
Twenty-nine years.
School fees. Rent. Hospital visits. Family drama.
Good seasons. Bad seasons. Ordinary Tuesdays nobody ever posts about.
The difficult part is not writing a beautiful paragraph.
The difficult part is still being there when the anniversary arrives. That is the part nobody photographs.

The world celebrates milestones.
It rarely celebrates maintenance.
A marriage. A business. A reputation. A dream.
None built in one dramatic moment, but in thousands of small decisions repeated long after the excitement has faded.
It was not really about love.
It was about showing up
Again. And again. And again.

The Millennial Who Refused To Take A Beating

For the better part of two decades, Millennials have been everybody’s favourite punching bag.
According to the internet, they killed newspapers, golf, napkins,
marriage, home ownership, loyalty,
and Kapuka.
Boomers think they complain too much. Gen X think they overthink everything. Gen Z think they are old.
The middle child.
The one who got the hand-me-downs.
Caught between the aloofness of one generation and the chaos of the other.

They were told to study hard, get degrees, find jobs, buy homes and patiently wait their turn. Then they graduated into recessions, expensive housing and shrinking opportunities. When they asked questions, labelled entitled. When they challenged old systems, labelled difficult. Yet many of them kept showing up. Not by winning arguments on social media, but by surviving long enough to inherit responsibility.

Which is why Abelardo de la Espriella caught my attention.
El Tigre. The Tiger.
A Colombian criminal defence attorney with expensive suits and a habit of refusing to stay in the box people built for him. On May 31, 2026, he upended every pre-election poll to finish first with 43.7% of the vote. Country heads to a runoff on June 21.
El Tigre is the frontrunner.
What interests me is not his politics. It is what he represents. A generation that got tired of waiting for permission.
The funny thing about persistence is that people call it stubbornness right up until it works.

The Spreadsheet Problem

There is a line often attributed to Peter Drucker: “What gets measured gets managed.” The trouble is we started believing the opposite — that if something cannot be measured, it probably does not matter. I have sat in enough boardrooms across East Africa to know how this plays out.
Someone presents the numbers.
The numbers look clean.
Then you walk outside and reality does not match the spreadsheet. Because the spreadsheet measured what happened.
Nobody built a column for why.

Rory Sutherland, Vice-Chairman of Ogilvy, has a habit of making clever people uncomfortable.
His point is simple: human beings are not spreadsheets.
There is no formula for loyalty.
No dashboard for sacrifice.
No KPI for forgiveness.
Nobody has calculated the value of choosing the same person for twenty-nine years when life keeps giving you reasons not to.
Data documents what happened yesterday.
It struggles with what people hope will happen tomorrow, but
sometimes that future arrives on a flying carpet.

A Whole New World

There is a reason some songs survive long after the charts have forgotten them. They stop being songs.
They become time machines.
For many of us, the opening notes of A Whole New World transport us immediately. November 1992. Disney’s Aladdin.
A magic carpet. A princess. A street hustler pretending to be a prince.
Performed by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle, it became the first and only Disney song to win Grammy Song of the Year. It dethroned Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You after fourteen weeks at Number One.

The song was never really about a flying carpet. It was about possibility.
Aladdin did not offer Princess Jasmine a strategic plan.
He offered her something more dangerous.
A different way of seeing the world.
Every generation inherits a map that stops working halfway through the journey.
Its no more about whether they can preserve the old map.
It is whether they have the courage to explore a new one.

Who’s Your Mama?

As the NBA Finals unfold, most attention is on Victor Wembanyama.
The Alien.
At over seven feet tall, with the agility of a guard and the wingspan of a small aircraft, he looks less like a basketball player and more like a software update. When people watch Wemby they ask the obvious questions. How tall? How many points? How many rings? The more interesting question is the one nobody asks.

Who raised him?

By the time we discover elite performers, somebody else has already spent years building them. The spotlight always arrives late.
Then Jalen Brunson. Long before Madison Square Garden was chanting his name, there was Rick Brunson teaching habits, standards and expectations. Confidence is often borrowed before it is owned. Somebody believes in you before you learn to believe in yourself.

And then Mike Brown. Hired by the New York Knicks in July 2025 with a career most people would politely describe as complicated.
Fired twice by Cleveland.
Fired after one season in Los Angeles.
Questioned.
Doubted.
Written off.
He kept showing up. He kept adjusting. When asked how he survived so many endings to reach the 2026 NBA Finals, his answer was three words.

“Me. I adjust.” (I think he’s Kenyan)

Which brings me to Aymen Onyango.
Many Kenyans know his father, Lucas “Lukaka” Onyango — a winger who wore the Kenya Sevens jersey for years, part of the Shujaa and Mean Machine pipeline that put Kenyan rugby on the map. Lucas has spoken publicly about his son’s football journey — the training, the sacrifices, the daily commitment to a dream most people around them could not yet see. Before any scout wrote Aymen’s name in a notebook, there was a father who already believed. #GodspeedAymen

We celebrate stars because they are visible. We celebrate trophies because they are measurable. But behind almost every success story sits a mother, a father, a coach — someone whose greatest contribution will never appear in any statistics column. The athlete gets the headline. The family gets the journey.

Who’s your mama? Who’s your papa? Who’s your coach?

Twenty-nine years after he started a conversation with a beautiful woman,
Agal Koko still chooses Beryl.
In Colombia, a generation told to wait their turn is on the verge of taking power.
Rory Sutherland keeps reminding clever rooms that spreadsheets cannot measure everything that matters.
Peabo Bryson left behind a song that still tells whole generations the horizon is not the end.
And Mike Brown, written off more times than most coaches get hired, is on the biggest stage in basketball because he refused to stop adjusting.

Different stories. Different countries. Different generations. Different outcomes.
Yet somehow they all arrive at the same place.
Consistency. Showing up.
Again. And again. And again.

Show me the person who stayed.
Show me the parent who sacrificed.
Show me the coach who kept teaching after being fired.
Show me the spouse who kept choosing the same person.
Because beneath every headline is usually a decade nobody saw.

The magic carpet was never really magic. The championship was never won in June. The marriage was never built on the wedding day.
The visible moment is usually just the receipt.
The real work happened earlier. Much earlier.

The forest changes. The monkeys change. The generations change.
But the rules rarely do.

Plant. Water. Wait. Repeat.

And eventually something beautiful grows.

As for Agal Koko and B… see you at your 30th.
If you hear noise at the gate, tie up the dogs.
J’okuyo has landed. With Karatina Juogi. Wadwaro donjo!!

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.
Mubarikiwe, Jah Bless.
Go with song

See you next Sunday.

#SalesFundiKe #SameForestDifferentMonkeys

As I write this article, I am watching Kenya Lionesses vs South Africa on Rugby Afrique’s Facebook page.
The score keeps changing. 8-7 half time.The comments keep flying.
The referee is is hard of hearing and seeing to at least seventeen people.
75th minute. Snyder Mokaya receives the ball around half way dashes for about 20 metres steps one defender, rolls around another, drives low, Try Time!!
Kenya 20 South Africa 22.
She’s lining up the kick……

And I have a publishing deadline to beat.
And somewhere in the middle of all that, the camera pans to the crowd.
Parents. Fans. Former players.
People carrying flags. People carrying hopes.
And I find myself wondering how many parents in that crowd are having a silent argument with themselves.
Not about rugby. About their children.
Because somewhere in Kenya tonight, a mother is staring at a pair of rugby boots worth several thousand shillings.
A father is looking at the cost of chess lessons.
Another parent is being told that a smartphone is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity.
Then school fees arrive like an uninvited relative.
Again.
The committee meeting begins.
The practical member speaks first.
“Na hiyo rugby itamsaidia aje?” (how does this rugby help her)
A fair question.
Most rugby players never become Lionesses or Shujaa.
Most chess players never become Magnus Carlsen.
Most TikTok creators never see a sponsorship cheque.
Many dreams never make it past the starting line.
Which is why parents worry.
Because every dream looks expensive when viewed through the lens of school fees.
The funny thing is that every generation thinks it is being sensible.
The generation before us questioned Dee-Jaying.
Then the internet.
Then social media.
Then content creation.
Now many parents find themselves standing on the same ground, asking similar questions with different words.
The rugby field simply happens to be today’s version of the conversation. As the camera pans across the crowd again, I realise the debate may not be about sport at all.

Maybe the question is no longer: “Which dream should we fund?”
Maybe the better question is: “Which dreams are connected to the future we’re walking into?”

The real argument in my view is risk.

Parents are not arguing about rugby.
They are arguing about probability.
Because they have seen enough life to know that talent is common.
Success is not.

As I write this, Shujaa are in Spain fighting for survival on the World Rugby Sevens circuit.
The margins are tiny. One missed tackle. One dropped pass.
One conversion. One injury.
The difference between a hero’s welcome at JKIA and a difficult conversation with selectors.
Thousands of young Kenyans have dreamed of wearing that jersey.
Only a handful ever will.
“Na hiyo rugby itamsaidia aje?” (How will that rugby help?)
The funny thing is that the same question could be asked about chess.
Magnus Carlsen is probably the most famous chess player on earth. His net worth is somewhere between US$25 million and US$50 million.
That sounds impressive.
Until you compare it with the machine sitting next door

A Forbes graphic stopped me in my tracks.
Twenty of the world's 50 highest-paid athletes were NBA players.
The NFL had nine.
Soccer had seven.
Golf had four.
Formula One had three.
A rookie sitting at the very bottom of an NBA roster can earn over US$1 million a year.
Not Victor Wembanyama. Not Jalen Brunson. Not LeBron or Steph Curry.
The guy at the far end of the bench.
The one casual fans cannot even name.

Twenty. From one sport.

The question is no longer whether sport is risky.
Every dream is risky. The question becomes: why does one machine produce so many highly paid people?
Why does one ecosystem keep generating players, coaches, owners, broadcasters, sponsors, podcasters and investors at industrial scale?
Suddenly the parent staring at rugby boots is no longer comparing rugby against school fees.
They are comparing ecosystems.
Maybe we’ve spent our lives comparing dreams.
Instead of comparing the machines behind those dreams.

Let’s stay with the NBA for a moment.

Back in 2004, Jay-Z reportedly bought a small stake in the New Jersey Nets for about US$1 million. Most people saw a rapper buying into a basketball team. Today the Brooklyn Nets are worth more than US$6 billion.

Then Justin Timberlake. Not a player. Not a coach. Part of the ownership group of the Memphis Grizzlies — valued at over US$3 billion.

Then J. Cole. Another musician. Another audience builder. Another owner. Charlotte Hornets. Roughly US$3 billion.

Three artists. Three cities. One recurring idea.

People who understand audiences eventually buy the places where audiences gather.

Then the pattern crossed the Atlantic.
In 2025, Tems became part of the ownership group of San Diego FC. Reports put the MLS expansion fee at around US$500 million. Half a billion dollars just to join the league.
That should tell you something about the value of attention.
A few years ago, if somebody told you that Bien-Aimé Baraza and Chiki Kuruka would invest in a basketball club, many people would have laughed.
Yet they bought into Nairobi City Thunder.
Not because they suddenly became obsessed with pick-and-rolls or Zone defence.
“A crowd has value.
A fan has value.
A community has value.
Ask any politician, church, football club or salesperson.”

The people making these moves are not buying sport.
They are buying proximity to the future

Which brings us to Kahawa Pride FC.
Because most people still think they are looking at a football club.
The numbers suggest something else.
223,590 views. 679 paying Discord members. 109 jerseys sold.
US$23,568 in revenue in a single month. (Figures published publicly by their founders — “they said it I didn’t :)”
Most Kenyan football clubs would kill for that kind of direct relationship with their supporters.
Because the traditional model looked like this:
build a club, hope fans come, hope sponsors come, hope money comes.
Kahawa Pride ran the equation backwards.

Build an audience. Build a community. Build content. Then build the football club.

The football club becomes a media company.
The media company funds the football club

I work in sales. I have spent years watching talented salespeople lose to less talented ones.
The difference is almost never product knowledge.
It is almost never price.
The difference is almost always this: one person built a relationship before they needed it.
The other arrived when they needed something.

That is the same logic Kahawa Pride is running. That is the same logic Bien is running. That is the same logic every creator earning KSh 100,000 from their bedroom is running.

Build the audience before you need it. Because the day you need it is too late to start.

And suddenly the argument about rugby boots, chess lessons and smartphones starts looking different.
Because a smartphone is no longer just a smartphone.
It is a camera. A studio. A sales desk.
A distribution channel. A broadcast station.
A community-building tool.

Today there are Kenyan creators quietly earning KSh 10,000–50,000 a month from content. Others are making KSh 100,000–200,000 and beyond.
Not millions. Not private jets.
Just enough money to make parents start saying: “ulikuwa serious.” (you were serious)

Here is what I want to say plainly.
Kenya has never been short of talent.
We are in a machine shortage.

We keep producing world-class people and sending them into systems designed to eliminate most of them. We celebrate the one who survives and call the rest unlucky. Then we feed the next generation into the same machine. Again. And again.

The parents in that crowd are not wrong to worry.
But maybe they are asking the wrong question.
The question is not whether the dream is risky.
The question is whether their child understands how the machine works.
Because the machine doesn’t care about talent.
The machine rewards people who understand the machine.

So maybe the rugby boots are an investment.
Maybe the chess set is an investment.
Maybe the smartphone is an investment.
The answer depends less on the tool and more on whether the child understands what they are building.
Not just a skill.
A machine.

So let me ask you something.
If you had KSh 10,000 to invest in a 15-year-old today — boots, chess set, smartphone, or something else entirely — what would you choose?

More importantly: would you tell them why? (share in the comments)

Because that conversation — the one where a parent explains how the machine works instead of just funding the dream — that might be the most valuable investment of all.

The forest hasn’t changed.

The monkeys who thrive are the ones who finally understood the trees.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.
Go with song.

The Orange Light

There is a meme doing the rounds: a glowing orange fuel light on a dashboard. The caption reads: “This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine.”
Funny. Until it isn’t.

That light isn’t celebrating; it’s warning you that your tank is empty. If you don’t stop to refuel from something real, you will sputter and stop somewhere inconvenient, pretending you meant to pull over. This week, major stories in sport and business asked the same question: when things stop working, do you reinvent? Or do you remember?

Not reinvent.
Not rebrand.
Not another post filled with words like pivot, disruption, and ecosystem.
Refuel.
Go back to your roots, your depth, and the things that worked before the world convinced you they were outdated

Do You Remember?

You can walk into almost any party gathering—a wedding in Nairobi,
a nyama choma joint on Friday night, an old school reunion where someone has had two shots more than wisdom recommends.
Or just go to 213 Lavington. Ask For NiJo.
When those first notes drop, something strange happens.

The young, the old, the cool,

and even the people with bad knees suddenly remember the choreography. For four minutes, human beings agree on something. No one is arguing about politics, fuel prices, or MMF returns. Everyone is just there, in the same forest.

That song is September.

Maurice White understood something modern creators still struggle to learn:
people rarely remember perfection;
they remember feeling.
His lyricist, Allee Willis, once begged him to remove the famous “ba-dee-ya” line, (the hook sung on September) asking what the f*** does it mean.
Maurice White replied: “Who f****** cares?”
But there was a deeper reveal.
Questlove recently shared that the “21st night of September” was connected to the expected birth date of Maurice White’s son—a secret love letter hidden inside a joyful anthem.
When his wife Marilyn finally heard the meaning years later, she said,

“My whole body smiled.”

Suddenly, the groove becomes something else entirely. Not just disco or nostalgia, but memory. The real genius of Maurice White was where he went looking for it.
He went back to Kemet—ancient Egypt. He put the Ankh and the Eye of Horus on album sleeves. He took the kalimba—a thumb piano from Zimbabwe—and turned it into a sound that conquered American radio. He went backward thousands of years to sound timeless.

That is not nostalgia. That is architecture.

The Special One, The Professor & The Apprentice

Florentino Pérez did not call José Mourinho because he ran out of options;
he called him because he ran out of excuses.
After two seasons without a major trophy and a fractured dressing room full of expensive players behaving like HR problems with shin guards,
Real Madrid looked past the fresh tactical geniuses.
They picked the 61-year-old who already knows where the walls crack.
Sometimes you don’t need somebody new; you need somebody who knows where to tap.

Across London, Arsenal just won their first league title in twenty-two years. Mikel Arteta was never the superstar in that story; he was the apprentice. He sat quietly in Arsène Wenger’s dressing room, absorbing ideas, rhythm, discipline, and culture. People mocked Wenger for years, claiming football had moved on. Then, his student quietly rebuilt a champion using Wenger’s core principles: technical discipline, attacking identity, and cultural cohesion.
Modern kit,
Old architecture.
Same Forest. Different Managers. #COYG

The Headmaster is marking papers again

Across rugby, the All Blacks did the same. Dave Rennie took the job with less than 500 days before the Rugby World Cup. With the rugby public behaving like panicky corporate shareholders, his first call was to Sir Graham Henry ( The Headmaster)—who is nearly 80 years old.

Critics called it sentimental.

Many teams love pretending experience expires like yoghurt.
Yet, Henry walked into their first meeting having already scouted over 60 Super Rugby players, complete with a working shortlist.
That is not a man trapped in the past; it’s a man who never stopped doing the work. Rugby understands what business forgets:
Experience is not the opposite of innovation.
Most times, it is what stops innovation from becoming stupidity.

The Man with Two Gloves

Until recently, Aaron Rai was mostly known as the PGA Tour golfer who wears two gloves. Now he is a major champion. But the beautiful part of the story is the ritual.

Rai turned pro at 17, convinced he was ready. He was not. He lost status twice and nearly disappeared into the brutal machinery of professional golf. His mother, Dalvir Shukla, immigrated to England from Kenya as a teenager. His father used to clean Aaron’s clubs with baby oil because replacement equipment cost money they didn’t have.
Aaron still cleans them that way today.

Then came the PGA Championship. A 68-foot putt on the 17th hole made history. He became the first Englishman to win it since 1919, and the first player of Indian heritage to win a men’s major—achieved with clubs still cleaned the old way. The ritual survived the success.

Compare that to the sales manager who replaced her veteran rep with someone younger, cheaper, and more “dynamic.” The veteran knew clients by name and knew which objections were fake before the tea arrived.
The new rep had energy, a clean LinkedIn profile, and buzzwords like
generating new leads using Linkedin, scalability and cross platform storytelling.
Twelve months later, the pipeline is halved.
Experience reads the room before the meeting starts;
Enthusiasm walks in ready to pitch.
Know the difference.

Bank Otuch. K’Ogalo Pawa.

Eish yawa Gor Mahia.
K’Ogalo.
The club Nairobi built, feeds, and the one that somehow survives every funeral prediction Kenyan football throws at it. This season, they didn’t just win matches; they monetised identity:

• Ksh 15 million in league prize money

• Ksh 12.9 million from CAF preliminary rounds

• Ksh 85 million from SportPesa

• Ksh 38.2 million from Azam TV

• Ksh 22.78 million from gate collections

That is roughly Ksh 179.88 million in one season, built stream by stream, gate by gate, win by win.

People love the trophy photo, but very few respect the repetition that created it.
That is why most people quit too early;
they want harvest-season emotions without planting-season discipline.
Bank otuch does not arrive because you manifested it.
It arrives because you kept showing up long after the applause disappeared.
K’Ogalo bende nigi dhiang’ (Gor Mahia also has money)—we are no longer beggars, we are the standard!”
— Ochieng’ Jalamo, Lifelong Gor Mahia Supporter

What Light Are You Letting Shine?

Stop rebuilding from zero every time life punches you in the mouth. You already have lived experience, scar tissue, and the knowledge of where things break.
There is a difference between nostalgia and architecture.
Nostalgia says, “Those were the good old days.”
Architecture says, “These foundations still hold.”
That orange fuel light is not your enemy—it is honesty. It is telling you that whatever you abandoned too quickly might still contain the answer.

Three Truths:

Depth is not defeat: Going back to roots, systems, and rituals is not a retreat. It is reconnaissance.

The ritual is the architecture: Aaron Rai still uses baby oil on his clubs.
Maurice White went back to Kemet.
Arteta modernised Wenger without disrespecting him.
The ritual remembers what success forgets.

The cheque will always arrive: Gor Mahia’s millions are not luck; they are compound interest on years of identity and consistency.
Build properly, and eventually,
bank otuch.

The Braai is on Sunday

The Kenya Lionesses beat Uganda 43-10 yesterday. Faith Livoi walked away with Player of the Match in front of a loud home crowd at RFUEA. Earlier, South Africa dismantled Madagascar 64-5. The Bok women arrived in Nairobi looking like people who already believe the trophy belongs to them.

Wednesday is Madagascar, where every bonus point matters. Because Sunday is South Africa—the four-time defending champions who have ruled since 2019.

But hosting changes things. This time, the noise will not be green and gold from a distance.
It will be Kenyan isikuti, Kenyan lungs, and Kenyan expectation sitting right on the touchline. The Lionesses—forever cast as “almost there”—finally get to hunt this title at home.
We snacked on the Cranes;
We sharpen the fangs against the Makis on Wednesday.
Then comes Sunday:
The braai.

The Benediction

Dalvir Shukla left Kenya as a teenager and watched her son chase golf using equipment cleaned with baby oil.
“He had already lifted a trophy on Kenyan soil at Muthaiga.
Years later, he lifted a major.”
That is not a golf story;
it is a mother story.
It is the kind of quiet faith that keeps producing people capable of carrying heavy things.

To everyone being told their best chapter is behind them: maybe the answer is not to start again.
Maybe the answer is to remember properly.
What did you leave behind that was actually working?
Please share your thoughts in the (forest) comments.

This week’s hymn
Fittingly, Questlove’s new HBO documentary Earth, Wind & Fire: (To Be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World) releases to the public on June 7 on HBO Network, and globally on Max — nearly fifty years after Maurice White taught the world that rhythm, memory and roots could still sound futuristic.
Not just because the groove is medicine.
But because Maurice White hid a love letter inside one of the world’s happiest choruses and nobody noticed for nearly fifty years.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.
Go with song.

Somewhere inside a sleek Nike boardroom last week, there must have been panic.
Not normal panic.
Corporate panic.
The kind where PowerPoint decks suddenly become prayer requests.

Adidas had just spent the week dancing on everybody’s timeline after Sebastian Sawe’s marathon heroics. Records broken. Screenshots everywhere. The internet doing what it does best — emotionally printing money for whichever logo happens to be standing closest to greatness.
Meanwhile somewhere in Oregon, a quarterly sales target was quietly gasping for oxygen.
I imagine the Monday morning sales meeting was tense. One executive loosened his tie, stared at the numbers and muttered:
“Y’all need prayers.”
Unfortunately, somebody in the room took that literally.

So now I imagine some Armani-suited Nike executive squeezed into a cramped Catholic confession booth.

“Father, I have sinned. It has been three product launches, five major sporting events and two celebrity campaigns since my last confession.”
The priest sighs. God does not judge he whispers. “Say 52 Hail Marys.”
Hail Mary number 11 — nothing. Number 24 — still nothing.
By number 38 he is bargaining directly with heaven about market share.
Then somewhere around the 52nd, his phone vibrates.
An image.
Pope Leo.
Old-school Nikes.
No paid influencer. No Super Bowl commercial. No emotionally authentic campaign. Just a photograph.
The internet did the rest.
One viral image later, Nike’s quarter two numbers must have filled the dashboards faster than Kenyans on the eve of the fuel hike.
And somewhere inside Adidas headquarters, a man who had watched their $500 Sebastian Sawe sneakers sell out and reappear online at $1,500 probably whispered the same thing every struggling salesman eventually whispers:

Ni God manze. (Its God man)

Funny line. But modern life runs on belief systems more than we admit.
A football fan buys a jersey after a terrible season.
A politician survives another scandal.
A Kenyan abroad sends money home after saying “this is the last time” for the sixth consecutive month.
Which is why the diaspora remittance story has become impossible to ignore.

Ali Hussein and the FINTAK newsletter highlighted this week that Kenya’s diaspora remittances crossed $5 billion in 2025.
Bigger than tea.
Bigger than coffee.
Bigger than sectors we proudly debate on TV panels every evening.

That is no longer supporting relatives.
That is infrastructure.

One cousin abroad quietly becomes school fees, hospital cover, funeral committee, b…k tax headquarters and emergency liquidity facility for an entire family tree. You see them quietly shaking their hears as they read the message.

“Nitumie kakitu.” (Send something)

Small sentence. Massive economy. Banks know it. Telcos know it.
Fintechs definitely know it.
Entire products are now being built around emotional obligation.
People rarely wait for perfect systems before surviving.
They start rebuilding first.
Then institutions arrive later — pretending it was their idea all along.

By the mid-1980s, Vietnam was exhausted.
Not “I am done with this relationship” exhausted.
Properly exhausted.

They had fought the French. Then the Americans. Won both wars. Reunified the country. Then nearly collapsed trying to run the economy through rigid Soviet central planning. By 1985, inflation was estimated to be above 700%.
Farmers were struggling. Food shortages were real. The Soviet aid pipeline keeping them afloat was drying up fast.

The country had beaten foreign powers only to start losing to its own system.

That’s what got me most. Because many countries can unite against an external enemy. Very few can admit: “Maybe the problem is now us.”
Then came 1986. The 6th Party Congress. Vietnam introduced what became known as Đổi Mới.
Renovation.
Not revolution. Not motivational quotes on social media with sunsets in the background.
Renovation.
But the most important detail is the one most people miss. The Vietnamese people had already started adapting before the government officially changed policy.
Farmers were already informally trading. Workers were already improvising.
Markets were quietly emerging underneath the formal structure.

The people renovated first. The government eventually caught up.

Between 1993 and 2014, over 40 million Vietnamese people rose out of poverty. (they are over 100 million people)
Vietnam went from food shortages to one of the world’s major rice exporters.
That is why Đổi Mới means more than it sounds. Not because Vietnam became perfect. But because ordinary people started rebuilding before the system fully believed rebuilding was possible.

Kenya has its own quiet renovators. Most just don’t get documentaries made about them yet.

Take Felista Mutheu Mugo.
Born in Kibwezi. Grew up in South B. Studied baking and pastry.
Not exactly the traditional origin story of a professional cage fighter.
Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) was never the plan. She started karate for self-defence in 2019, became a national champion, then slowly realised she needed more.
Boxing. Grappling. Kickboxing. Discipline. Pain.
Then came a very modern African story. She started posting training clips on Instagram. In Lubumbashi, a Congolese MMA coach called Yadad Moser saw them and reached out.
And like every sensible African woman taught not to trust random men on the internet — she ignored him. For almost a year. Eventually she replied. Eventually she moved. Eventually her life changed. Not through an institutional program. Not through a federation masterplan. Not through a motivational seminar with tips on how to get what you want.
Lubumbashi.
Her first professional fights did not go well. Losses. Hard lessons. Reality arriving quickly. But she stayed. Better grappling. Better striking. Better composure. Quiet renovation.
Last month she became the first Kenyan woman signed by the Professional Fighters League and beat Uganda’s Annet Kiiza in Pretoria. Zero federation support. Friends and family rooting for her.
Resonable prize money all on her own.

Just years of rebuilding quietly before cameras arrived.

David Raya’s story is basically Đổi Mới wearing goalkeeper gloves.
He has a tattoo on THE BASE OF HIS NECK. The date 13-08-21. No big deal, right?Well. That date commemorates his Premier League debut — a moment worth remembering forever.
Except Raya’s debut happened to be a 2-0 victory over a certain club called Arsenal.
He tattooed the day he beat his future employers, onto his skin.
That is not arrogance. That is a man who understood exactly where he had come from and refused to let himself forget. Because the journey to that tattoo was not glamorous.
At 16 he left Barcelona for Blackburn Rovers. Alone. Barely spoke English. Living by himself while most 16-year-olds were still negotiating curfew and asking for fare.
Raya got loaned to Southport. Fifth tier of English football.
Cold mornings. Small crowds.
Win bonuses that mattered because they helped pay bills. Blackburn had spoiled him — meals ready, laundry done, structure provided. Southport changed that quickly. Do your own laundry. Handle your own life.
Play against men whose mortgage depended on Saturday results.
That is where the renovation happened. Not the Emirates. Southport.
He climbed every level properly. League One. Championship. Brentford.
Then Arsenal — where Aaron Ramsdale had just been in the Premier League Team of the Year.
Raya arrived on loan carrying all the emotional warmth of a KRA return.
Four games later, Arteta changed goalkeepers.
Now: three consecutive Golden Gloves. Record clean-sheet pace. Champions League final. Potentially the greatest clean-sheet season by a goalkeeper at an English club in UCL history.
But the part that stayed with me wasn’t the trophies.
It was the tattoo. 13-08-21.
The day before everything. Inked permanently.
A quiet man’s loud reminder that the renovation — all of it — was worth it.
#COYG

And next week the renovation comes to Nairobi.
The Rugby Africa Women’s Cup arrives at RFUEA Grounds on Ngong Road. May 23 to May 31.
Kenya Lionesses. South Africa. Uganda Lady Cranes. Madagascar.
Circle May 31. Kenya vs South Africa. Potential title decider.
Women’s rugby across Africa has survived mostly through stubbornness for years — shared physio tape, small allowances, long bus rides, players balancing jobs and training simultaneously.
Quiet renovation. Same pattern as Vietnam, Felista, and Raya. Rebuilding before recognition.
Go find your Kenya shirt. Tukutane RFUEA grounds.
Wishing coach Simon Odongo, Captain Sheila Chajira and the Lionesses success.
The rebuild is on show. Godspeed.
#LetsGoKenyaLionesses

Tukuwe serious kidogo though. (lets be a bit serious)
One of the strangest things about modern African life is how quickly we notice failure and how slowly we notice rebuilding.
A team loses one match — everybody becomes a tactical expert.
A project delays — national mourning on social media.
But quiet rebuilding? That rarely trends.

Nobody claps for the woman doing double shifts abroad quietly paying school fees. Nobody claps for the Lionesses doing gym work at 7am. Nobody claps for the athlete training in an empty South B gym while the country debates softer things.

That work is boring to watch. Until one day it suddenly looks like overnight success.

Sometimes our governments behave like this. They arrive late to momentum and then speak like they created it personally. Meanwhile the real renovation had already started — in estates, in WhatsApp groups, in diaspora apartments, in muddy training grounds, in fifth-tier football towns, in Lubumbashi gyms, in tired households surviving another month.

Perfect systems are the reward at the end of rebuilding. Not the beginning.

I saw the stat above recently.
79% of men admit apologising even when they believe they are right.

Really? That number felt way too low.

Because by a certain age, most men are no longer arguing purely for truth. They are calculating consequences. School fees. Rent. Co-parenting. Office politics. Family WhatsApp groups. Emotional fatigue.
Starting over at 43.
Three-day silence in the house over something that started with “did you call me fat.”
Sometimes “I’m sorry” is not surrender.
It is infrastructure maintenance.
And maybe that is still part of renovation too. Less ego. More continuity. Less performance. More rebuilding. Most people are honestly just improvising adulthood one month at a time — hoping the system around them does not collapse before payday.
Which is why next week I will go find my old Kenya shirt and those battered old Nikes at the back of the house and head to RFUEA.
Not because the rebuilding is finished.
Because it isn’t.
But because sometimes the most important thing you can do is show up while the rebuilding is still happening.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.
Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.
Go with forgiveness.

The WhatsApp Message

It’s a Monday morning. You’re back at your desk. Last month’s “conjugal visit” is a warm memory — good weekend, good vibes, you handled your business like a responsible adult. Life is good. The Premier League run-in is heating up.
West Ham tuko disco matanga (1-0 full time).
Burnley on the 18th. Palace on the 24th. Champions League final on the 30th —
and the end-month Q1 commission bonus is sitting pretty.
Calendar sorted. Priorities clear.
Then the WhatsApp notification drops.
“Babe... niko na ball.”

You smile. Immediately you go into fixture mode. Ball? Which game? PSG is the 30th. West Ham is buried. Burnley the 18th. Palace the 24th — actually, let me check if that’s on a Saturday because the boys were talking about—

She drops the second message.

“Si football. I am pregnant.”

The room changes temperature. You put the phone face down. Pick it up again. Open the calculator. Open Google. Type “safe days calculator” with the fingers of a man who is suddenly very interested in biology. You check your M-Pesa messages — specifically the one from the pharmacy three weeks ago that you filed mentally under “handled.”
You count backwards. Count forwards. The math is not mathing.
The Champions League final is the least of your problems. Because in approximately nine months, a human being is arriving. And unlike West Ham, Burnley, and Crystal Palace —
this fixture cannot be rescheduled.
Welcome to the most important match of your life.
You haven’t even started warming up.

The Numbers Nobody Told You

Kenya just crossed a line the World Health Organisation drew thirty years ago.
Twenty percent of all facility-based births in this country are now C-sections.
The WHO ceiling is fifteen.
We blew past it and didn’t stop to discuss it.
Kirinyaga — 40%.
Kiambu — 33%.
Kanairo — 21 to 25%, depending on which side of the insurance divide you sit. Mandera — below 2%.

Same country. Different realities.

These numbers are not just medical.
They are a map of class, planning, and what happens when a man spends the first trimester calculating safe days instead of calculating costs.
SHIF (Social Health Insurance Fund) covers Ksh 32,600 for a C-section.
An executive private hospital charges at least 180k. That gap — Ksh 140,000 minimum — lands in your lap. Before complications. Before NICU. Before anything goes sideways.

You have nine months to close it.

The Virile Kenyan Dude’s Birth Preparedness Starter Kit

This is not an attack. This is a briefing.

The same man who can quote Haaland’s expected goals, who has a WhatsApp group dedicated to analysing Arteta’s tactics, who knows the UEFA away goals rule — that same man often cannot tell you the difference between SHA maternity cover and a private hospital top-up. Has not spoken to his insurer about pre-authorisation. Does not know Linda Mama has been absorbed into SHA. Has not looked at a single maternity package brochure.

He was busy with the fixtures.

So here is the kit. By tier.

Public — KNH, Pumwani, Mbagathi: SHA covers you. What you need is not money — it is presence. Be the man who brought the delivery kit, stayed the night on the plastic chair, and did not treat it like a sacrifice.

Mid-tier — Coptic, Neema, St. Mary’s: Budget Ksh 50,000 to Ksh 70,000.
Not locked in a 91-day T-bill that matures after the baby has arrived.
Liquid.
A money market fund with monthly access. Or a SACCO loan — 9-month repayment, most SACCOs will structure it if you ask early. The interest is manageable when you plan. Criminal when you panic.

Executive — Aga Khan, Nairobi Hospital, MP Shah: Budget Ksh 250,000 minimum. Call your insurer this week — not in month eight. Know your co-payment. Know your annual limit. The paediatrician’s receiving fee will appear on the bill and surprise you if you weren’t paying attention.
A real emergency fund is one positive pregnancy test away from becoming a maternity fund.

Virility without liquidity is a high-risk strategy.

When Volkswagen Left the Building

In 2021, Volkswagen sold Bugatti to Rimac — a small Croatian EV startup. The headlines celebrated it as liberation. Bugatti, finally free. Ready to show the world what it was really made of.
Then the world started watching.
Because Bugatti without the Volkswagen ecosystem — the engineering pipelines, the supplier relationships, the institutional capital quietly holding the scaffolding — had to answer a question it had never been asked before:
Are you actually as good as you looked?
Sit with that for a bit. Not because you are a car.
But because you are a salesperson.Or a manager.
Or a Coach/CEO who has spent years performing brilliantly inside a particular organisation and is now either thinking about leaving — or has recently left — and is finding that the numbers are not travelling with you the way you expected.

The most dangerous illusion in professional life is attributing your environment’s results to your personal talent.
The market that was growing anyway. The brand that sold itself.
The territory that was warm before you arrived.
The manager who quietly cleaned up your messes while you collected the commission.

The ones who were genuinely good rebuild. The ones who were riding the machine spend eighteen months explaining why this new company doesn’t understand them.
You already know which category you are in.
The market is simply waiting to confirm it.

Gandalf at the Goan Institute (A rugby story)

Last week I was at the Goan Institute on Juja Road when the Mwamba Ladies lifted their fifth consecutive Kenya Cup trophy.
Five in a row.
Unbeaten two full seasons.
Final score 30–20 against Kenya Harlequin Queens. After the trophy, after the photographs, after the ululation that belongs exclusively to women who have worked for something and taken it without apology — I walked into the clubhouse.

And there, alone behind a laptop, surrounded by cables, dressed in the manner of a man who has been in every room that mattered in Kenyan social life for six decades and has no intention of vacating any of them — was Douglas Pereira.
Kenya’s oldest working DJ. Born 1949. DJing since he was sixteen — which means he was probably rocking the house at the very first Madaraka Day in 1964.
Still present. Still adapting. Still there.

The Goan Institute was founded in 1905. It has outlived colonialism, independence, three constitutions, and the kind of Nairobi real estate pressure that erases institutions without the stubbornness to survive. As of January 2025, it is the official home of Mwamba RFC — Kulabu — formed in 1977, forty-nine years of Kenyan rugby, relegated from the Kenya Cup in 1994 and again in March 2025.

Every commentary called it the end of an era. It was not the end of anything.

Under Chairman Edwin Waita, Mwamba went into the Championship and rebuilt. April 18 this year — promoted. May 9th, yesterday — KRU Championship winners, 34–33 over JKUAT Cougars in a final that probably shortened lives.
They came back with a Ksh 9 million sponsorship and a 120-year-old home on Juja Road — where 5,000 government affordable housing units and another 5,000 from private developers are going up.
Ten thousand young families moving in.
Children being born into estates hungry for community, for a team, for somewhere to belong.
Mwamba, relegated and bruised twelve months ago, is now positioned at the centre of the next generation of Nairobi rugby.

And Gandalf is still behind the decks.

Some institutions survive because of money.
Most survive because a few stubborn people refuse to stop showing up.
Douglas Pereira is not a relic.
He is the proof. And so is Mwamba RFC.
R Family Buda (whatever that means)

3 Things This Week

Planning is love. Not flowers. Not words. The man who opened a spreadsheet in month one and calculated the gap between SHA cover and the hospital bill — that man loved his partner in a language that actually pays the anaesthetist.
Love without a plan is a feeling.
Love with one is a foundation.

Systems reveal talent. When the ecosystem falls away — when you change companies, when the sponsor leaves, when the relegation comes — what remains is the truth of what you actually built. The ones who built something real will prove it. The ones who were riding the wave will have a very educational next eighteen months.

Rebirth requires showing up. Gandalf behind the laptop. Mwamba back in Kenya Cup after a year of soul searching.
A mother in theatre at 3am while the man she chose is in the room — not in the car park.
Showing up is not complicated.
It is simply the decision to be present for the thing that matters,
Without requiring an audience.

As you face the new week

To the woman who has been through the cut — any version of the cut, surgical or otherwise, visible or invisible — this one is for you.

You carried it.
You planned it when nobody was planning with you.
You managed the fear and the finances and the family opinions and the body that was no longer entirely your own.
You are not the opening scene of somebody else’s story.

You are the infrastructure.

Every family functioning in this economy, every child fed, every household held together — behind almost all of it is a woman who decided to show up every day without a trophy ceremony, without a sponsorship deal, without a five-peat announcement.

Happy Mother’s Day.

The forest sees you, even when the monkeys don’t.

The Benediction

2Pac — Dear Mama ▶ Listen here

Tupac wrote it in 1995. Thirty-one years later, every word still lands. Some truths don’t age. They just wait for the right moment to find you.

Play it for your wife, mother or baby mama today.
Or play it quietly, alone, and let it do what music does when words have reached their limit.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.

Share with the man who needs to sort his virility budget —
and the woman who already sorted hers.

🎵 Human Nature

Early this week, I received a message from a close relative. One of those WhatsApp messages that you almost ignore… then leaves you staring at the wall.
She had just picked up her son from swimming. You know the routine. Towel. Bag. Water bottle. Half-finished homework. The child is talking. The parent is listening… but also tired.
They get home. She sits down for that quiet 1-on-1.
“How was your day?”
“What did you learn today?”
“Show me your homework.”
Then the boy pauses. Looks at her. And asks:
“Mama… when were you born?”

She laughs it off. “Forty-something years ago.” (Actual number withheld to protect the innocent.)
He does the math. “Ah… so around 1986?” She nods noting the compliment.
Then he leans back… completely serious… and says:
“So… how was it being a slave?”
Silence. The kind that is not empty… but full.
“He wasn’t insulting her. He was auditing her life.”
Her son was not being rude. He was being logical. From his perspective, the equation didn’t add up.
One job.
Multiple hustles.
Loyalty. Stability. Delayed rewards.
In his world?
You’re too busy.
So when he looked at her life… he didn’t see sacrifice.
He saw constraint.
“That question didn’t hurt. It exposed.”
Which is exactly where Dr. Eliza Filby enters the story.

🎵 Man in the Mirror

In a conversation with Simon Sinek on A Bit of Optimism, Dr. Filby reframes the entire debate.
Not: “What’s wrong with this generation?”
But: “What world did we hand them?”
She is 44.
Millennial.
A mother.
A historian studying generational inheritance.
Her central point is simple, generations don’t just behave differently. They respond to different systems.
After 2008, those systems shifted. Job security weakened. Housing moved out of reach. Cost of living outpaced income. One structure quietly replaced another:
the “Bank of Mum and Dad.”
Which means for many young people today, the biggest financial variable is not effort. It is access.
So when that boy asked his mother that question… he wasn’t comparing effort. He was comparing systems.
“And systems don’t reward effort. They reward position.”

🎵 They Don’t Care About Us

That same week, something else happened. Not quietly. But strangely… almost invisibly. Former journalist and editor Wallace Kantai put out a comparison of front pages; side by side, a simple visual audit of what was being prioritised.
What filled the space? Politics. Infighting. Recycled narratives.
What didn’t?
Excellence.
Front pages are not neutral. They are curated. They tell you what a system chooses to preserve. And in that moment, the signal was clear: we say we value achievement, but we consistently reward visibility.
“We don’t ignore excellence. We just don’t prioritise it.”
Then comes the proof. Sabastian Sawe ran a full marathon in under two hours. A barrier that has defined human endurance for decades — broken. In any structured system, that becomes a national moment. But the outcome didn’t match the input. Locally, muted.
Internationally, amplified.
That gap is not emotional.
It is structural.
People inherit systems that tell them what matters.
If the system rewards noise, noise dominates.
Sawe’s run had no shortcuts, no drama, no daily controversy — just performance.
The dominant narratives operate differently.
Built for reaction. Rewarding conflict. Easier to consume, easier to monetise.(or so they think)
When the system shifts, behaviour follows.
“If performance spoke louder than noise, our headlines would look very different.”

🎵 Smooth Criminal

Once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it.
It shows up where decisions are made, in the market, in the boardroom, in the moment a customer quietly switches and says nothing.
For years, Nike didn’t just sell running shoes.
They sold belief.
Walk into a Nike store and the first thing you encounter is not the product, it is the story, the identity, the version of yourself you are being invited into.
Run clubs. Community. Belonging.
And for a long time, it worked, because when stakes are low,
People buy alignment.

Then something shifted. Not in the marketing. In the outcome.
At the London Marathon, athletes chose what delivered.
Adidas didn’t out-market Nike.
They out-performed them.
The requirement was not identity,it was efficiency, fatigue reduction, execution under pressure.
Every business, every salesperson, every brand operates across two systems:
the shop window and the outcome.
The shop window attracts.
The outcome answers the only question that matters when stakes rise:
What happens if I choose you?
When stakes are low, identity leads.
When stakes are high, performance decides.
Emotion opens the door. Performance closes the deal. Talent travels.
But value is captured by structure.
“Brand builds attention. Results close arguments.”
“Most people don’t change brands because of marketing.
They change when the outcome disappoints.”

🎵 Dirty Diana

That same shift shows up on the ground.
This week, I was at my local gathering my thoughts waiting for my half kilo maji maji. Same place. Same routine.
Then my phone buzzed: a story about “nyama ya gumboots.”
Meat that didn’t follow the expected system.
I looked up. Walked to the proprietor.
A Frenchman from Nyahururu.
His name of course Monsieur (throw in Kinuthia, Njuguna or Kungu for local context)
Asked one question: Is your supply clean? He answered immediately.
Credible source. Showed me pictures. Ranch-based.
Transaction complete. Pricing understood.
But the decision had already changed.
In a system optimised for affordability and speed, the trade-offs are not always visible at the point of purchase.
Lower price often means a different process.
Faster access often means fewer checks.
Sometimes the cost has just been moved out of sight.
Two systems. Same market. Different outcomes.

🎵 Thriller

A bunch of billionaires had been watching.
Not tweeting. Not commenting. Watching.
Put up 3 million dollars.
Then the Rugby Premier League showed up.
Not with nostalgia,
Not with development narratives,
With hard cash.
Six franchises. Broadcast deals. Ten-year partnerships.
A format built for television, sponsors, and return.
This wasn’t a tournament. It was a system.
From Kenya’s sevens setup — Patrick Odongo, Samuel Asati, Nygel Amaitsa, John Okoth to Delhi Redz. Kevin Wekesa to Hyderabad Heroes.
Then the ladies showed up.
Not as dates. Not as “flower girls”.
Part of the main act.
Gracie Okulu to Mumbai Dreamers.
Sheila Chajira to Chennai Bulls.
That is not random selection. That is pattern recognition.

Top players earning $15,000 for a two-week window. Others $2,500.
Same player. Different system. Different outcome.
Kenya produces talent, that is not in question.
What changes is what happens after the talent appears.
One system supports.
Another packages.
We don’t inherit opportunity.
We inherit what happens to opportunity.
Because left alone, talent is just potential.
It is structure that turns potential into a contract, a number, a career.

“We don’t lack talent. We lack systems that can afford it.”

🎵 Remember the Time

Now the pattern is clear. A child’s question sounds disrespectful but is analytical. A historian explains that behaviour follows structure. A front page reveals what we choose to preserve. A marathon exposes the gap between effort and recognition. A market shifts from identity to performance. A league monetises what another system develops.

Same inputs. Different structures. Different outputs.
A good friend and colleague named after a murima Forest once told me….

“Talent gets you noticed. Structure gets you paid.”

“Let’s stop calling it patience.”
“Some of us weren’t waiting. We were stuck.”
But let me be honest, and I say this as someone who has sat in enough boardrooms, enough sales meetings, enough performance reviews to know how this goes.
We love to celebrate Kenyan talent. We put it on billboards.
We clap at galas. We repost the wins.
But the moment it is time to build the structure that retains that talent, compensates it fairly, creates a system around it, we go quiet.
Suddenly there’s no budget. Suddenly it’s not the right time.
Suddenly someone is asking why we need to professionalise something that has “always worked this way.”
Patrick Odongo didn’t need Delhi Redz to tell him he was talented.
He already knew.
What the league gave him was a structure that agreed with him financially.
There is a difference between being celebrated and being valued.
One costs nothing. The other requires commitment.
“Talent doesn’t change. The cheque does.”

And this is where I want to push you — not the system, not the billionaires.
You.
Are you operating in a system that matches your output?
“Or are you loyal to a structure that has never planned to reward you?”
Or have you been so conditioned by loyalty and delayed reward that you’ve started calling constraint sacrifice?
That boy wasn’t wrong. He just had better information.
The question isn’t whether he’s right.
The question is what you’re going to do now that you’ve heard it.

Before I leave you, I want to come back to her. Not as a data point.
As a woman who drove to a swimming pool after a long day, sat in traffic with a wet towel on the back seat, asked her son the right questions — and got one she wasn’t ready for.
She could have been defensive. Instead she sat with it. Let it land.
Sent a WhatsApp and said: can you believe this child?
That is the quiet intelligence of a mother who knows her son is not her enemy — he is her mirror.
“And mirrors don’t lie. They just arrive earlier for some generations.”
What he reflected back was not a failure of effort. It was a question about whether it was time — not for regret, but for revision.

There are a lot of women and men like her in this forest.
Running homes and businesses and teams, carrying the weight of both the old system and the new one.
They don’t get the billboards.
They get the quiet 1-on-1 at the kitchen table.
Sometimes, if they’re lucky, a question sharp enough to make them think.
That is worth more than any front page.

Which brings us back to the beginning. That question:
“Was it like being a slave?”
It wasn’t disrespect. It was analysis.
A different generation, looking at a different system.

So the real question becomes: what system are you operating in… and what happens when someone chooses you?
Because in the end, its not the story that carries the weight.

Its the outcome.

Pull up a seat — wherever you’re reading this from.
Nairobi. London. Cape Fear.
What does this look like on your side?
Share it. Tag your squad. Comment.

Same forest. Different monkeys.

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.

Go with song.🎵

There was a time when we were the problem.
Not “these days kids.”
Not Gen Z. Us.

Friday evening had a rhythm back then.
Not planned. Not structured. But somehow always the same.
I had a friend called Webster — not his real name — who was our Mobility Mobiliser. Keys negotiated, sneaked, or justified with a story that would not survive five minutes of cross-examination.
Someone fuelled the car — just enough.
Someone else contributed something liquid.
Then we’d link up with the Nairobi campo crew.
Awala, Boozer, The Loved, Jamo, Franco, Michael Jegzen— six or seven of us, identities protected for their safety.
First stop: Uchumi, Sarit Centre

The hole in the wall.
Slightly flickering lights, a kiosk window that knew what a car full of young men wanted without asking.
Engine idling. Music low but confident. Heat, laughter, noise.
A Mzinga of Vodo, Ksh 100 Smirnoff — that erased ones memory and reduced every girl who partook to tears by the halfway mark.

Pre-game.

Like we were preparing for something important.
The game itself was usually unclear.
But the pre-game?

Sacred. Ritual. Identity.

Our parents thought we were unserious. You’d hear it — not always directly — in passing comments, in adult conversations they assumed you weren’t tracking.
This generation… Lazy. Distracted. No direction.
Too much fun. Too little focus.
Sound familiar?

Because now we are the ones saying it.
We became the voice we used to roll our eyes at.
Today it comes packaged better — LinkedIn posts, newspaper columns, WhatsApp forwards, long voice notes that open with “Let me tell you something about these young people…”
Same verdict. Same confidence. Same blindness.

The Boardroom Consensus

Gen Z has been tried, judged, and sentenced. Lazy. Entitled. Addicted to screens. Unwilling to grind. And the certainty with which we deliver this verdict is dangerous, because we are not guessing.
Boardrooms, family dinners, chamas, rugby clubs. Same conclusion, different tables: “They don’t want it bad enough.”
But here is what we keep skipping

Same week. Two headlines. One — thousands of young people lining up, degrees in hand, for jobs paying thirty thousand shillings.
Long queues. Desperate hope. Serious faces.
The other — same week, same generation — lazy, soft,
WiFi-addicted, mzinga on the weekend, no ambition.

Both cannot be true. Or maybe they can. Because what we are actually looking at is not a lazy generation. We are looking at a filtered generation. A system that takes in millions and allows only a few through.

Over 4.6 million Kenyans are in the diaspora.
Opportunities are global.
Competition is global.
At home, youth unemployment is at levels that force people to improvise in ways that don’t look structured from the outside.

What we call chaos might just be creativity inside a broken system.

The Engineer Who Didn’t Complain

In 2021, Joseph Nguthiru was on a boat on Lake Naivasha with Egerton University classmates. The boat stopped moving. Not engine failure. Water hyacinth — the world’s most invasive aquatic weed — had surrounded them completely. Five hours. Trapped. Going nowhere.
Most people complain. File it under bad luck. Tell the story at dinner.

Nguthiru went home and built a company.

HyaPak converts water hyacinth — the very weed that swallowed their boat — into biodegradable packaging that breaks down within three to six months. A working business that has cleared over twenty acres of weed from Lake Naivasha while creating jobs for fishing communities whose livelihoods the weed was destroying.
The Obama Foundation noticed. UNEP named him Young Champion of the Earth. COP28 — one hundred thousand dollars and a global platform.

The same generation we call distracted is solving problems we have debated for decades. And they are not waiting for systems to approve them.
They are building while we are still discussing them.

What Sales Has Always Known

Out of thirty prospects, twenty-five will not pick a cold call.
Of those who do, most will say no — four, five, sometimes ten times.
80% of deals only close after the fifth to twelfth contact.
Follow-up is not a tactic.
It is the system.

And here is the number that should worry anyone in sales:
44% of salespeople quit after the very first rejection.

Nearly half. After one no.

What you are seeing in outcomes — a few people closing,
most not — is not talent or character.
It is a filter.
The ones still in the room are simply the ones who stayed.
That is the only variable that consistently separates results.

Now bring that back to the generation conversation. What looks like laziness is often just someone who stopped after the first no.
What looks like success is usually someone who stayed long enough to find the timing.
Same generation. Different outcomes.
Not because of character.
Because of persistence inside a system designed to remove the ones who leave early.

The Pacer Who Didn’t Stop

Sabastian Sawe grew up in Barsombe, Uasin Gishu. Mud walls. No electricity. During secondary school, he didn’t even compete — Leseru High School prioritised academics.
By our traditional metrics, already behind.
Late start. No pipeline. No exposure.

In 2022, he was hired as a pacemaker at the Seville Half Marathon. Set the tempo. Lead the field. Then step aside. Know your role.

At seven kilometres, he felt strong. So he didn’t stop.

Past the point where his job description ended. Past the elites. Past the course record. First place — a man who had never raced beyond 5,000 metres.

He flew home from Seville immediately. Not for media.
To bury his grandmother, Esther Sitienei, who passed away while he was running in Spain.
She was the one who believed before there was evidence worth believing in.

Valencia 2024 — marathon debut, second fastest in history. London and Berlin 2025 — back to back wins.
World Athletics Out-of-Stadium Athlete of the Year.
Twenty-five voluntary drug tests before Berlin.
Clean.
Then London, April 26, 2026: one hour, fifty-nine minutes, thirty seconds.
Four marathons. Four wins. One world record.
One grandmother who never got to see London, but saw Seville — and knew.

We call it talent. What it actually is, is consistency under conditions where most people stop.

Welcome to Philly

Joshua Weru started watching rugby at Kenya Harlequins the moment he could walk. At 7 age grade rugby. Age 13 Rosslyn Park School 7s (UK) representing Kenya IAPS. Then at fourteen, the UK — Rugby School, Northampton Saints Academy.
Coaches calling his ball-carrying world-class before he’d played a professional minute.
August 2022 — first professional contract, Northampton Saints, while studying at Loughborough.
November 2022 — contract terminated.
Not performance. Not attitude. Visa rules.
Tier 3 rugby nation. Needed ten international caps.
Made his debut with Kenya Simbas got only three.
Door closed. Cleanly. Bureaucratically.
France. US Dax. Still building. By 2024 — a decision most people would have found impossible.
Start over. Focus on education. Enrol Arizona State. Degree in Global Business Management.
Then the agent called.
Different sport entirely. NFL International Player Pathway.
178 Africans fighting for a space.
Only 13 picked.
Training camp Florida 10 weeks.
Bodies pushed to limits unknown.
Draft night Pittsburg 2026 — 805,000 people in attendance,
Undrafted.
All 257 picks without his name.
Then the Philadelphia Eagles called.
UDFA. Undrafted Free Agent.
On the team.
Six foot four. Two hundred and forty-four pounds. 4.45 seconds in the forty.
A Kenyan with a flag over his shoulders, holding an Eagles ball, in front of a stadium that seats sixty-nine thousand.

Not drafted. Chosen anyway.

I’m not going to say much more about Joshua. Those who know, know why this one lands differently for me.
What I will say is this: the system said no more than once.
He did not translate no into never.
He changed the sport he was playing,
not the direction he was moving in.

The Correction

The boys in that Uchumi parking lot — engine running, music low, plans unclear, energy high — eventually found their way. Not because we were special. Because the system eventually made space. And because we stayed in it long enough for that space to appear.

We don’t get to claim wisdom about resilience and then deny that same story to the generation behind us.

Mambo ni matatu (3 things)

If you lead a team — stop measuring noise. Track who is still in the room after the third rejection. That is your talent.

If you are coming up — stay longer than the system expects. The reward is on the other side of the timeline you were given. When you feel strong, don’t stop at the distance you were assigned. That is where the separation happens.

If you are watching from the sidelines — update the lens. Or you will miss the next breakthrough. And you will have been wrong, loudly, in public, just like every generation before us.

Gen Zs are here. They are already in the building.

Pick a side.

Or move out of the way.

Some people don’t wait to be invited. They just show up and become undeniable.

We danced to Motownphilly in living rooms, in discos, in borrowed moments.
Today… we sit back and watch one of our own dance to that same rhythm.
But this time — the world is watching too.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

If this story stirred something in you
Pull up a seat. The music hasn’t changed.
Only the stage has.
Subscribe. Like. Share

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless
Go with song.

Earlier in the week I was having lunch with a good friend of mine. One of those Kenyans who have made a life out there and still create time to come home.
We appreciate you. And those who don’t too but still fly the flag high. Hat tip.
Lakini I asked myself, lest I upset her — “when do you guys work?”
When you’re here long enough to watch the baby mbuzi (goat) your grandma gave you in December grow horns, we start wondering.

Ama huyu amefutwa job.

You know how we roll outchea in Haters Ville….
Anyway, somewhere in the banter, the WhatsApp Republic coughed up one of those long forwarded messages about love languages.
You know the type.
Too neat.
Too sure of itself.

Written like it has solved relationships for the whole world in eight bullet points and a pastel-coloured diagram.

I had heard the phrase before. Nodded at it. Seen people quote it like gospel.
But I had never stopped to ask what it actually meant.
Not the imported version. Not the TED Talk version. The real one.
The one that can survive rent, traffic offenses, silence, 101 missed calls, school fees, and somebody saying “sawa” with a full stop.

So I asked her to break it down. Properly.

She said it’s simple.
Some people need words. To be told. To be reassured. To hear it.
Others need action. Not speeches. Things done. Burdens carried. Life made lighter. Others need time. Real time. Not this modern arrangement where you’re in the same room but one of you is scrolling and the other is explaining themselves to a forehead. Others respond to gifts. Not because they’re materialistic — because thought has weight. And then touch. Warmth. Presence. The quiet language that says “I am here.”

Same love. Different reception.
And that’s where most people get it wrong.
You think because you’re doing your part… it must be working.
But effort is not the same as being understood.
(and you question why we ate the apple)

Now translate those things into Kenyanese, and the fog clears quickly.

Words of affirmation is simply: Usinyamaze. Hata kelele ni sawa. Talk to me.
Tell me I matter. Tell me you see me.
Because around here, silence is not always maturity. Sometimes silence is confusion. Sometimes it is the beginning of a meeting that has not yet been called.

Acts of service is even simpler:
Babe you know Friday golf is with the boys.
Love is….. gas imejazwa mbele iishe. (gas bill done)
A problem handled before it becomes a discussion.
Someone noticing you are struggling and stepping in
without making a documentary about their sacrifice.

Receiving gifts is not about money. Niliona hii nikakukumbuka. (I saw this and thought of you)
That small thing that says you occupy space in somebody’s mind even when you’re not physically there.
Sometimes a thoughtful KSh 500 beats a lazy KSh 5,000.
Because effort has its own exchange rate.
There’s two others, Quality Time and Physical Touch. I will write about those later.
They probably need a whole article.
I see synergies.
But today I write about Receiving gifts — because it connects to something thats interfereing with my love language this week.

Safaricom’s OneApp

.You know something is off when you have to enrol to learn how to use an app that was meant to simplify your life.
Not log in. Not navigate.
Enrol. Tutorials. Step-by-step guidance. For an app.
(Ok I've ongezad firi firi (added chilli)… but the meat is real)
Somewhere between the idea and the rollout, we crossed a line.
We stopped building tools for people.
We started building systems people must adapt to.
And at almost the same time,
I’m here trying to build this story — and my AI assistant has already given me a full structure.
Beginning. Middle. End. Lessons.
Everything lined up before the idea has even settled.
It didn’t wait for context. It didn’t wait for facts. It didn’t even wait for me.
And that’s when it clicks.
This is not just a Green Giant problem.
This is not just an AI problem.
This is a mindset problem.

We used to struggle to execute what we were thinking. Now we are struggling to think before we execute.

Launch now.
Start the year with a BANG!!!
Respond now. Fix later.
Kesi baadaye.

And the most uncomfortable truth?
It works just enough for us to accept it.
Because speed sometimes creates the illusion of progress.

SAME EFFORT, DIFFERENT OUTCOME

Sport is where the truth lives. No spin. No PR. Just results.
Take Augusta.
Rory finishes at -12. Walks away with $4.5 million. Scottie sits at -9. Takes home $2.4 million.
Three golf shots.
Roughly $600,000 to $700,000 per shot.
Same course. Same weather. Same preparation.
Same level of excellence.

The difference was not effort. It was who read the moment correctly.
One putt that needed a softer touch.
One drive that needed restraint instead of aggression.
One moment where understanding mattered more than power.
That’s the gap.
And once you see it there, you start seeing it everywhere.

WHEN SYSTEMS FAIL, LIFE ADJUST

There’s a joke doing rounds.
Simple. Clean. Straight to the point.
“Dear parents, please remind your kids to bring 5L of petrol for a science project tomorrow.”
No panic. No apology. Just instructions.
And the scary part? It makes sense.
Because right now, fuel is no longer just fuel. It’s uncertainty. It’s queues. It’s “system iko down” becoming a normal sentence in places where money has already been paid. So what happens?
We adjust. Not to reality.
To dysfunction.
What used to be a crisis becomes a workaround.
What used to be unacceptable becomes manageable. And before long, nobody is asking “Why is this happening?” The question becomes “How do we survive it?”

Bring that same energy into the home

Schools are opening. Kids have been around long enough for routines to collapse. Parents are tired. Quietly overwhelmed. And slowly, without saying it out loud, we have taken the language of work and brought it into our relationships.

Targets. Expectations. Performance. Structure.

We are managing life the way we manage teams. If we are honest, we are one step away from formalising it. Thirty days. Clear objectives. Weekly check-ins. Improvement required.

We are applying structure where understanding is required.
Managing behaviour where connection is required.
Fixing outcomes without reading the situation.

WHO READ THE MOMENT RIGHT

Then rugby does what rugby always does. It tells the truth without explaining itself.
I say this with a bit of Schadenfreude — the kind only community clubs understand when one of the “CMB” boys gets clipped. (Cash Money Brothers, a famous rap group who’s leader was called….. Prezzo)

Nondies didn’t just beat Oilers. They disrupted a narrative. The same Oilers — structure, power, consistency, the kind of team people pencil into semi-finals without thinking twice. And then suddenly — not so certain.

The jokes write themselves. Oil cartel… exposed.

But strip away the banter. This was not about strength. It was about reading the moment. Who understood what the game was asking for, when it mattered most.

Same goes for Shujaa in Hong Kong. They didn’t collapse. They competed. They adjusted. They even led. But sevens is not a 14-minute game. It’s a 2-minute test at the end. And that’s where the difference shows.
Same effort. Different outcome.

Now bring in Madina Okot

“Madina Okot posing with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert after being selected 13th overall by the Atlanta Dream in the 2026 WNBA Draft at The Shed in New York City on April 13, 2026.”

Last week she was a story. The kind people clap for politely and move on. Potential. Promise. “We are watching.” This week? Drafted into the WNBA. Atlanta Dream.
That’s not narrative. That’s proof. And the moment proof arrives, everything changes. The same people who were quiet become loud.
Because the system does not reward effort. It rewards conversion.
And while we are still debating effort, intention, potential — others are converting. Others are positioning

Look at our neighbours Rwanda.
While teams fight for results on the pitch, Rwanda is doing something else entirely. Arsenal. Bayern. PSG. Atlético.
Not on the table. On the sleeve. On the screen. On every replay.
In swahili we say….”waliona mbele”
In corporate hiring its called “the ability to see round corners”
To the spiritual….is this … “Serendipity” or “kuangukia” (to fall on something)
That is not marketing.
That is understanding the game behind the game.
In a world where everyone is moving faster, the advantage is not speed. It is clarity.

THE LINK

We are not failing because we are not trying. We are failing because we are not reading the moment correctly.

In relationships → we are speaking the wrong language.
In golf → we are misreading the putt.
In business → we are building for ourselves, not users.
In systems → we are explaining instead of fixing.
In rugby → we are competing but not closing.
In success → we celebrate effort, but reward proof.

Same forest. Different monkeys.

The difference is not effort. It is interpretation.
Most people are not losing because they are lazy.
They are losing because they are misreading the moment.

Before you say things are not working
Before you say people don’t understand you
Before you say the system is broken

Ask yourself one question:

Are you doing the right thing…
or are you doing things right?

Because sometimes the gap is not effort.

The gap is understanding.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys

If this one landed somewhere… don’t just scroll. Don’t sit with it.
Share it with someone who needs that reminder
or someone you’re still trying to understand.
And if you’re new here… pull up a chair. Subscribe. Tag. Share.
We’re building something. Slowly. Intentionally.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless🙏🏾
Go with song.

.

As I watch the KSSSA Term 1 games, my mind drifts back to the last century when we played those same games in Term 1.
The Kadenge Cup.
Under 55 kilos.
That was the rule.
Simple. Clean. Binary.
You either made weight or you didn’t.

Now around that time I was in that awkward phase.
Voice cracking somewhere between soprano and alto.
Eating like food might be banned tomorrow.
Half a loaf of bread compressed into 2 fat slices.
Condensed before your senior could say
“One rabble”.(mono,junior etc)
Disappearing without discussion.
Every term a new shoe size.
Parents looking at you and saying to themselves “Seriuosly?”.
I was sitting at 60 kilos.
The cutoff was 55.
Close enough to dream.
Far enough to frustrate.

So I did what desperate boys do. I starved myself for two days.
Dropped to 57.
Still not enough. Still outside the line.
But I had to play.
I walked toward the weighing area, there was that old scale.
The heavy one.
The type used to weigh warus (wedges), vitunguu (onions) and carrots for the dining hall.
No digital forgiveness. No rounding off. Just truth.

Before I stepped on, a dimunitive guy pulled me aside.
Quietly. Like he was about to show me something important.
He pointed to a group of boys upside down against a wall.
Not quite a handstand. Something in between.
“That’s how you do it,” he said. Ten minutes upside down.
Lose two, three kilos on the scale.
Game live.
That’s how I played the Kadenge Cup.
Not because I couldn’t make weight.
Because I had just been introduced to something NEW.

We met it on a school field.
That one team everyone feared. Not because they were better.
Because they were older.
The bearded striker with shoulders like a teacher.
The “transfer” that happened just before the finals.
Quiet. Efficient.
Nobody asking too many questions.
The name on the team sheet that didn’t match the face warming up.
And in the stands?
Adults clapping. Coaches explaining. Officials looking away.
That was the first classroom.
Not where we learned how to win.
Where we learned that winning could be negotiated.
Last week the KSSSA released an audit for the 2026 Term One Games in Kisumu. Western Region alone. Thirty-eight students flagged. Overage players.
Falsified documents.
Names not in NEMIS.
Faces that didn’t match the portal.
Thirty-eight.
One region.
One term.

The whistle that didn’t blow in 1987 is the same whistle that didn’t blow last week. Only difference is now we have systems to prove what we already knew.
Here’s the real problem. Once you see something wrong happen often enough without consequence, it stops feeling wrong.
It becomes normal.
And once it becomes normal, nobody needs to teach it again.
It just shows up later.
In offices. In tenders. In boardrooms.
Same script. Bigger stakes.
That’s when you realise… nobody is coming to fix it for you.

The Line
Somewhere else, far from school fields and excuses, a man walks into a ring.
Looks his opponent in the eye and says,
“I’m sorry… I love you.”
Then proceeds to thump him with Burukenge-ish fervour.
(severe, merciless, or thorough beating)
Deontay Wilder
That line sounds mad until you understand the context.
This is not a game.
Fighters have died in that ring.
That’s not storytelling.
That’s record.
And yet, inside that violence, there is something the school field didn’t have.
A line.
Not a referee’s line.
A personal one. Internal. Non-negotiable.
You don’t walk into that ring hoping the other guy cheated.
You don’t hope the officials look away,
You either respect the line… or leave with serious injury.
Sport exposes you like that. Eventually.
You can fake documents. You can manipulate systems.
But when it’s just you and reality, the truth comes out.
Always.

Accumulation Doesn’t Make Noise
While some of us were learning how to bend rules, someone else was learning something slowly.
Madina Okot started playing basketball in 2020. Not 2010.
Not with much backing. Not with an elaborate plan. 2020.
Six years later, the numbers start telling their own story.
12.8 points. 10.6 rebounds. 22 double-doubles. SEC leader.
First-round WNBA projection.
Same origin. Same environment everyone complains about.
Different response.
No shortcuts. No tricks. No negotiation.
Just repetition.
The thing about accumulation is that it’s invisible while it’s happening.
Nobody claps for practice.
Nobody celebrates discipline.
Nobody trends consistency.
It looks boring. It feels slow. It tests your patience.
Until one day the numbers arrive.
And then people call it talent.
It’s not talent.
It’s time.
Applied properly.
For longer than most people can tolerate.

The Almost Trap
Then there’s Arsenal F.C. Top of the table. One goal up. Game under control. Everything in their favour. They lose 2–1.
Not because they’re bad.
Because they didn’t close.
That’s the uncomfortable truth most people avoid.
Failure doesn’t always collapse loudly. Sometimes it leaks.
Quietly. Slowly.
You don’t notice it until it’s too late.
Almost winning. Almost finishing. Almost getting it done.
Almost is dangerous.
Because it feels like progress.
But it pays like failure.

The Excuse We Love
Kelvin Kiarie boards a flight alone.
No federation. No ministry. No delegation.
Crowdfunds his trip. Lands in Benin. Competes.
Gold. Silver. Clean.
Same flag. Different mentality. The system didn’t show up.
He showed up anyway.
That story is uncomfortable. Because it removes our favourite excuse.
“We’re waiting for the budget.”
(some pundits argue that skating falls under ministry of transport)
He didn’t wait. He moved. Results followed.
Simple. Not easy.
Hungry

Your WhatsApp Is Not the Problem
You’ve sent that message. “Hi boss, hope you are well.”
Blue ticks. Silence.
You wait. You justify. “Maybe they’re busy.” You follow up. “Just checking in.”
Silence.
Let’s stop lying to ourselves.
That message was never going to get a response. Because you didn’t ask for anything.
You didn’t direct anything. You didn’t close anything.
You started a conversation you had no intention of finishing.
This is not a WhatsApp problem. It’s a clarity problem.
The old email culture trained us badly.
Long intros. Politeness before purpose. Padding before point.
That world is gone.
Today you have two seconds.
Not five.
Two.
Appointment seeking. A hot topic with most of my sales training cohorts.
“Hi [Name], I’m reaching out because of X. I can help you achieve Y. Can we lock 15 minutes on [day/time] or on later date/time]?”
(Pro tip) Your prospect will almost always choose the later date/time (delayed commitment)
That’s it. Direct. Clear.
Uncomfortable if you’re not used to it.
Effective if you are.
Comfort is expensive.
Clarity closes.

THE COMPTON CAPITALIST (Andre Romele Young)
Iteration Is Not Sexy
A kid in Compton is making beats.
Unknown. Underpaid. Learning.
That kid becomes Dr. Dre.
Not overnight.
N.W.A. Death Row. Aftermath.
Working with 2Pac, Eminem, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar.
Each step refining the last.
Only Three Individual albums in thirty years.
Not because he couldn’t produce more.
Because he understood something most people don’t.
More is not better.
Better is better.
Then he pivots. Headphones. Beats.
2014, Apple Inc. buys it for $3 billion.
People call it luck. People call it timing.
I call it genius.
It’s none of those things in isolation. It’s iteration. Over time.
Talk about success becoming Chronic.

Even Legends Must Move
For years, power had a sound.
Engine. Precision. Control.
Aston Martin.
James Bond.
Now the world is shifting. Electric vehicles. New manufacturers.
New definitions of premium.
The question is no longer whether Bond goes electric.
It’s who builds the car.
And if that answer changes, then power has already moved.
If Bond can evolve…
What makes you think you don’t have to?

Same Voice. Different Frequency
There was a time Africa had one dominant sound.
Rooted. Powerful. Commanding.
Angélique Kidjo carried that.
Now the sound is faster.
Global. Digital.
Ayra Starr is the embodiment of that shift.
Old vs new.
That’s the narrative we like.
It’s also lazy.
The real story is collaboration.
The moment the old voice doesn’t resist the new one.
The moment the new voice respects the old one.
That’s when evolution happens.
Not replacement. Expansion.
Same forest. Different frequency.

The Thread

From the school field to the ring. From Mumias to the SEC.
From Compton to a $3 billion deal.
From your WhatsApp to missed opportunities.
Same pattern.
Some people learn early that rules can be bent and never recover from that lesson.
Some people learn where the line is and never cross it.
Some people wait. Some people move. Some people almost finish.

Some people close.

The basics are not boring. They are everything. Ignore them and life exposes you.
Respect them and results follow you.
Madina didn’t skip them.
Kiarie didn’t skip them.
Dre didn’t skip them.
The Elephant is slipping. And the table doesn’t negotiate.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

If this one landed close to home… good. It means you’re still paying attention.
Most people aren’t.
They’re scrolling, reacting… but not responding to their own lives.
So before you disappear—pause. Not for stories. For a decision.
Stop hiding behind “I’ll get to it.” Silence is not a strategy.
Unread messages don’t change outcomes.
Avoided conversations don’t fix themselves.
Delayed action becomes regret.
If this touched you—pull a seat. Welcome to the conversation.
Subscribe. Share. Tag a buddy.

Before you go:

Send one message that actually asks for something.
Finish one thing you’ve been “almost” doing.
Revisit the rules you made optional.

Because life checks. And when it does… no blue ticks.
Only results.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.

Go with song.

Lets start with truth.
Not opinion, not theory, not comfort—facts.
The numbers are not subtle, and they are not hiding.
In Kenya today, adolescents and young adults aged 15–24 account for roughly 40–45% of new HIV infections.
Within that same bracket, young women are nearly three times more likely to acquire HIV than their male peers.
Move slightly older into the 25–40 age group and you are still looking at another 35–40% of new infections.
That is not a fringe. That is the core. The working population.
The dating population. The decision-making population.
This is not somewhere else.
This is here.

And once you see that, something changes permanently. You lose the ability to say you didn’t know.
The conversation moves from ignorance to awareness, and then quietly into responsibility.
Because the uncomfortable truth is not that people suddenly changed.
It is that systems lagged.
Same country. Same streets. Same exposure.
Different awareness. Different outcome.

But the story does not end with risk. It turns with access.
Because for the first time in a long time, the individual is not empty-handed.
PrEP exists—daily medication taken before exposure, reducing the risk of HIV from sex by up to 99% when used consistently.
PEP exists—emergency medication taken after exposure, but only within a strict 72-hour window, followed by a 28-day course.
Same science, but timing becomes everything.
One is preparation. The other is reaction.
Between the two sits a decision that cannot be outsourced.

Access is no longer theoretical. Kenya now has over 900 public and private facilities offering these services. A month of PrEP costs roughly KSh 1400–2500 in private settings, with delivery fees around KSh 149. PEP ranges between KSh 900-1500.
The system is no longer locked.
It is searchable. Reachable. Immediate.
You can literally Google it and find a pathway within minutes.

So the equation has changed. Access exists. Affordability exists. Distribution exists. Which leaves one thing—decision.
Because after 72 hours, the window closes.
Completely.
Now bring it back home.

Because nowhere is “same system, different outcome” clearer than in the donkey story.

Kenya is currently the extraction point in a global supply chain. From a population of 1.8 million donkeys in 2009, the number has dropped to less than 500,000 today. That is not decline. That is liquidation. Between 2016 and 2019, four licensed slaughterhouses wiped out roughly 15% of the national herd supplying an external market. When the ban came in 2020, and later the African Union imposed a 15-year ban, the trade did not stop. It moved underground. Theft. Night raids. Bush slaughterhouses. Smuggling routes.

And this is where the story turns.

Because in Kenya, a donkey is not livestock. It is infrastructure. Water. Transport. Livelihood.
When one donkey disappears, a household can lose up to 73% of its income. Now layer the biology.
A gestation period of 11 to 14 months. One foal every two to three years.
Slow reproduction. Fast slaughter.

Same donkey.

China sees supply for a luxury wellness product. Australia sees a pest problem with overpopulation. Kenya loses a lifeline.

Same world. Different outcome.
Now add time.

Alessandro Nesta, World Cup winner in 2006, was asked about his son. His son has never seen Italy play in a World Cup. Not once.
That single sentence collapses two decades of history. Legacy does not transfer automatically.
Yesterday’s success does not guarantee today’s presence.
Same country. Same badge.
Same history. Different outcome.

Then something shifts. From individual to collective.

Fifty-two years. That is how long the Democratic Republic of Congo waited to return to the World Cup.
The last time they played, the country was called Zaire.
Entire generations have lived without seeing it.
On April 1, 2026, in the 100th minute, the goal came.
But the real story was not the goal.
It was the streets. The release. The sound of something returning.
“Toleki. Biso nyonso.” (We are going. All of us.)

That is not qualification. That is resurrection.
But emotion alone does not build systems.

That’s where people like Sitoyo Lopokoyit come in.

Not as celebrities. But as builders. System thinkers.
People who understand that transformation does not happen through motivation.
It happens through structure. Through systems that outlive individuals.
Through platforms that allow others to move, grow, and build.
(Don’t ask my headmaster.)
Sitoyo’s old headmaster called him “an average student who works hard.”
Turns out… that’s more than enough.

Because the real story is not the scale you see today.
It is what came before it.
Approximately KSh 50 billion in failed transactions.
That is where it started. Most people would panic.
Blame users. Blame behaviour. Blame the system.
Then move on.

He didn’t. He studied it.
Failure became data. Data became product.
M-Shwari. Fuliza.
And the rest, as they say, is the message that lands quietly on your phone:

“Dear Fundi, Did you know you qualify for a KSh XXXXXX limit. on Fuliza”

That is not luck. That is design.
That is the difference between noise and impact.
Noise talks. Systems sustain.
And that is where the final layer lands.
Same system. Same country. Same exposure.
Different outcomes.

In sport, the greats don’t just endure.
They move.
Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United at his peak and stepped into Real Madrid — a different system, a different expectation, a different scale.
The result?
Goals multiplied. Records followed. Champions League nights became routine.
LeBron James did the same.
Cleveland to Miami. Miami back to Cleveland. Then Los Angeles.
Same league. Same rules.
Different outcomes.
Not because the game changed.
Because the environment did. Because the decision did.

LeBron moved teams and changed outcomes.
Sitoyo redesigned systems and changed access.
DRC returned and changed belief.
So the system is no longer the question.
You are.
Because resurrection is not an event. It is a decision.
Every sinner has a future.
But only if they are willing to build it.
Same Forest Different Monkeys.

If this one hit home, don’t keep it to yourself. Pull up a seat. Bring your people.
Tag the one guy still blaming the system.
Forward it to that partner who knows… but hasn’t moved.

And if you’ve got your own version of this story (and want to see where it goes)
Add your two lines.
Get three comments. We’ll build the rest together.
Because the forest is not short of monkeys. Just short of those willing to move.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

Till the next episode
Mubarikiwe, Jah Bless
Go with praise

Easter has its own language.
Not the church version. Not the sermons. The real one.
The one that moves through WhatsApp groups, Facebook timelines, office banter and nyuma ya tent conversations.
That meme you’ve already seen this week.
Bottles lined up like soldiers.
Someone captions it, “He is risen… so are we.”

You laugh. You forward. Someone says “hii weekend hatuhesabu.”
It feels harmless. It feels normal. It feels like culture.
But Easter is not interested in what feels normal.
It is interested in what is true.
And the truth is, most of what we call normal… many of us did not choose.

Start with something small. Innocent even.
Gripe water. (aptly named)
Every Kenyan home (in the last century) had a version of that story.
Mtoto analia. Mzazi amechoka.
A few drops. Silence. Relief.
No one asks too many questions because the result is immediate.
But buried inside some of those early solutions was alcohol.
Small amounts, controlled, functional. It worked.
That’s all that mattered.
But solutions have a way of travelling.
From medicine to habit. From controlled use to normal use.
From something we administer… to something we participate in.
No one stands up and announces the shift.
It just happens. Slowly. Quietly.
Until one day, you are not asking why anymore.
You are swimming with the sharks.

To combat malaria in India, British soldiers mixed bitter quinine with sugar and lime. The addition of gin transformed a medicinal necessity into the “sundowner.”

It’s a classic bait-and-switch: What begins as medicine in one century becomes a lifestyle in the next. Packaged better. Marketed louder. Sold smarter.

What was once a solution for survival is now an identity for the weekend. The “refreshment” we defend loudly is often just a habit we inherited quietly.
We think we are choosing the drink, but often,
we are just following the script of the system.

But systems hate interruptions.
In my opinion, the uncomfortable truth about the Kenyan narrative isn’t that we drink more—it’s that we drink fully.
Intensity over frequency.
The “release” becomes the ritual. And that is where the meme stops being funny, because what looks like culture starts looking like a cage.

Then you move from the pattern to people.
The Lion of Muthurwa
this time, the Lion does not just move;
he changes forests.
Victor Wanyama.
From Nairobi to the world.
Four countries. Six clubs. Over 400 professional appearances.
UEFA Champions League nights.
Captain of Kenya.
Not stories. Not hype. Data.
Now place that next to the system we just described.
The weekend partying. The release culture. The inherited patterns.
Wanyama did not come from a different Kenya. He came from this one.
But somewhere along the line, choice interrupted the pattern.

Not every story ends where it begins.
Same country. Same streets.
Same exposure. Different outcome.

That is the uncomfortable truth, because it removes the excuse.
Wanyama did not come from a different Kenya. He came from this one. And somewhere along the line, choice interrupted pattern.
That is what makes him dangerous. Not the tackles. Not the goals.
The interruption.
Because once one person proves it can be done, the system loses its power to explain everything.
And that is why the Lion of Muthurwa matters. Not because he escaped, but because he returned with proof. That even inside the system, movement is possible.
He was never just noise. He was always carrying something bigger.
Kenya’s hope.

Godspeed, Big Vic.

Wanyama does not fix the system. He breaks the excuse.
Because now you’ve seen both sides.
The pattern… And the interruption.
Same country. Same streets. Same exposure.
Different outcome.
So the question is no longer what is happening around you.
The question is what you are choosing inside it.
Because at some point… you stop observing the system.
You become part of it.

Every saint has a past.

👉 Continue to Part 2: Every Sinner Has a Future — The Resurrection
Because the story doesn’t end here… it turns.

It started the way most Nairobi stories do.
Trying to beat the Friday jam with a genius move.
Grab a boda boda.
Brilliance or 1,000 ways to die?
Quietly, then suddenly.
Another nduthi cuts across without warning. Not recklessly — confidently.
The kind of confidence that comes from doing something a thousand times and never paying for it.
Metal catches metal.
Not enough for an ambulance. Not enough for a headline.
Just enough for a small crowd, a few opinions, and that signature Nairobi shrug — hii traffic — before everyone moves on with their evening.
My life choices flashed by. Was attendance to this event that necessary.
Will Arsenal win the league,
Will Kenya Harlequins make the playoffs…..
Life choices can come and haunt you.
Lakini mungu yuko.
Our unending trust in a Higher Power carries the day again,
and Kanairo moves on.

I say this not as someone standing on a hill. I say this as someone who has been in that story.
Nineteen years old. Riding shotgun, edging the Pilot on.
Pick-up full of young folk leaving The VUU — carnivore for the younger readers — headed at breakneck speed to catch morning breakfast from the grandfather of Chips Mwitu.
Munyiri’s fish & chips, Moi Avenue.

Full of that particular arrogance that masquerades as skill at that age.
A mistake. Vehicle flipped round the Mbagathi Way roundabout.
Tipped on two wheels — luckily we had a guy called Tunji on board.
Built like a tank, he shifted all his 120kgs to the tipping side and the pick-up fell back on four wheels.
Small enough to recover from.
Big enough to stay with you.
Those moments don’t announce themselves as turning points.
They arrive ordinary. They leave ordinary.
But they stay.

Now take that same story. Same human error. Same outcome. Different stage
Enter Eldrick Tiger Woods.

A fender bender. A moment.
The kind of thing that happens in parking lots and estate roads across the world every single day or not.
Except this one involves the most recognisable name in the history of golf, and suddenly the story is no longer about the car.
It is about the man. The pattern. The history.
Was it the people around him. The friends who said nothing.
The staff who looked away.
The inner circle that chose comfort over confrontation. Because here is the truth we don’t like to say out loud: most public failures are not individual.
They are environmental. Someone saw something. Someone knew something. Someone chose silence.
And silence is never neutral. Silence is participation dressed in comfort.
The real question is always who was there and what they chose to do.

They say every saint has a past. And every sinner a future.
But how many times will you tempt fate?

And yet. While we are busy arguing about one man, one car, one mistake — something else is happening. Quietly. Consistently. Without seeking permission or applause.

Africans are moving.

Somewhere in the United States, a list was released. Names. Positions. Colleges. Countries of origin. To most people scrolling through timelines, it was another sports update. Something to pass. But if you paused — really paused — you would see what it actually was.
Eleven Africans.
Ten Nigerians. One Kenyan.
Standing inside one of the most brutally competitive sporting systems ever constructed.
Not as development projects. Not as diversity initiatives. As competitors.
Measured. Tested. Selected.
The NFL does not do charity.
It builds pathways because it found something worth developing — young men from across the African continent who could absorb new languages of movement, new systems of discipline, and come out the other side good enough.

One name stays with me. Joshua Weru.
Defensive End.
Kenya. Rugby background. Arizona State.
On paper, just a line.
But I have been close enough to this story to know what that line represents. It is not one man’s effort.
It is the accumulation of everyone who refused to walk away.

And it is not just him. Behind each of those eleven names is a family living a version of the same story.
A mother who prayed in the specific way that only mothers pray — not loudly, not with an audience, but consistently and structurally, the way a foundation holds a building.

A father who second-guessed himself and kept going anyway.
Friends who stayed when staying was inconvenient.
And a young man on the edge of something that has no map.
This is not an American story. It simply happens to be located in America.
This is an African pattern — of patience, of accumulation, of showing up without guarantees until the door either opens,
or you build a new one.

And while those eleven are stepping forward in Ashburn, Virginia, millions of others are doing something equally powerful. Less visible. Rarely celebrated.

School fees arrive whether or not there was a good month. Medical bills get sorted even when the exchange rate bites. Rent in Nairobi is paid from a salary earned in Manchester, Minneapolis, or Melbourne.
Wave after wave.
Kesi baadaye — not as resignation, but as philosophy.
Handle today. Send what you can.
The diaspora engine does not make the front page.
It makes the country function.

And back home, the pipeline is shifting. Benni McCarthy is not waiting for talent to announce itself.
He is looking for it.
Deliberately.
Moving through diaspora networks, identifying players with Kenyan roots who may never have considered representing the flag. Linton Maina at FC Köln in the Bundesliga. Tyler Onyango from the Everton academy, now at Stockport County. Zech Obiero — son of former Kenyan international Henry Obiero — committed to the Harambee Stars. Silko Thomas at Leicester City. Brooklyn Kabongolo in the Scottish Premiership. That is not potential. That is pipeline. Already built. Already producing.

Because that is what good pipeline management looks like. You do not wait for the right prospect to walk through your door.
You go and find what you missed, reorganise what you have, and refuse to let old relationships decay.
A pipeline is not about the deal you are closing today. It is about the relationships you developed two years ago.
Pipelines behave like roads — if you stop moving on them, you do not simply pause. You get overtaken.
Old prospects do not disappear.
They either convert or they become obstacles.

Which brings us back. To the nduthi. To Tiger.

We are more comfortable analysing failure than sitting with success. One man makes a mistake — a pattern of mistakes, if we are honest — and we discuss it for days.
But eleven Africans walk into the NFL system and we scroll past it in seconds.
Why?
Because failure gives us something to judge. Success asks something from us. Reflection.
And reflection is dangerous because it cannot be directed outward.
It has to turn inward. What have you been building?
What pipeline have you neglected?
What conversation have you been postponing because the return is not immediate enough?

Narrative beats truth. Every time. Without contest. A story lands well on a timeline and it becomes fact before anyone checks the source. A WhatsApp screenshot circulates and an opinion forms before the second paragraph.
But truth is patient.
It does not compete with narrative in the short run.
It simply waits. And eventually — it shows up.
Congratulations Kenya Mens 7s on your qualification.
Sisi ndio….Shujaa…

Somewhere else, in a different kind of arena, Michael B. Jordan stands on a stage. Lights. NAACP Image Awards. Recognition.
But look past the acceptance. Look at who came with him.
His mother. Not in the background. Not obscured.
There. Visible. Sharing the light.
Because across the world, the same shift is happening that has always been happening but is only now being acknowledged.
Mothers are sometimes the invisible architects of what the world calls success.
Women who carried more than biology. Who invested before investment was cool. Who showed up in the years that don’t have photographs.

Behind every one of those eleven names on that NFL list is a mother who lived that story.
Different countries. Different languages. Different circumstances.
But the same particular kind of hope — the kind that does not require an audience, that exists in the quiet dark of early mornings and the specific silence of waiting. Success has many fathers.
Many people will step forward when the door opens.
Let them. The truth does not need defending.
It is already written in the years that nobody documented.

Mambo ni matatu (three things only)

Responsibility is rarely individual. It is environmental. Who surrounds you matters. Who speaks matters. Who stays silent when speaking is uncomfortable matters. Comfort is what allows the nduthi moment to happen again.

Momentum does not announce itself.
The Africans entering the NFL system did not arrive this week.
They have been showing up for years.
Do not confuse visibility with arrival.
The work was already done.

Narrative will always try to replace truth. But truth has a particular stubbornness. Given enough time, it surfaces.
Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

If this one stirred something in you, don’t scroll past it—carry it forward. Share it with the one still sitting on the fence, tag the partner who needs the nudge, and remind your circle that this journey is bigger than survival—it’s about stepping into the arena and playing full out.
Around here we don’t hide behind safe answers; we speak straight, we show up, and we build together.
If you’ve been watching quietly, this is your moment—step in, take your place, and belong.
Subscribe 😉

The Benediction.

For the eleven.
For every family that held its breath across time zones, currencies and competing demands on their hope.
For the mothers who carried more than we will ever fully see — who invested in years that have no receipts, no applause, no record.
For the fathers who doubted themselves quietly and showed up anyway.
For the coaches who pushed when the result was invisible.
For the friends who held the line when holding it cost something.

There is a famous Kenyan Christian spiritual — Parapanda inalia — the trumpet blows, announcing the entry of the conquering soldiers.
This time a different Joshua, with a Kenyan flag on his shoulder and wrist, is blowing that trumpet at the Washington Commanders practice facility on March 30.
Blowing it for the entrance of eleven Africans.
Because no longer shall we be fed scraps.
We have a seat at the table.

May the walls keep falling.
May they be ready.
Because we are.

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.

Same Forest. Different Musicians.
Go with song

Somewhere in the new millennium,
around the time Kenya said Tosha
things started moving differently.
New ministers, new money, new businesses, new energy.
The telco wars had just begun to twist behavior in ways we didn’t fully understand at the time.
Peculiar habits became bae,
Many started started wearing green like it was ideology,
others defending per-second billing like it was a political position,
calling themselves “The Better Option” with chest.

There was optimism in the air. A feeling that something had shifted. History requires perspective, but in that moment, it felt like the country had taken a step forward.

Credit became accessible. Especially for cars.
And for many of us, that’s where the real decision-making began.
I was right in that dangerous middle
where you can almost afford the life you want,
but not quite.
Not struggling. Not comfortable.
Just close enough to make decisions that can quietly define the next ten years of your life.

So the question wasn’t just about buying a car.
It was about what kind of life I was choosing.

The Choice of Compromise

Do I take a chill pill—pace myself, build slowly, play the long game?
Or do I go all in—burn fuel, take risks, chase life properly with everything that comes with it?
Marriage, responsibility, work pressure, sherehe, the full Nairobi starter pack.

Like many young professionals at the time, I was looking for a car. But not just a car. A statement.
Because at that age, the car is never transport.
It is arrival. It is validation.
It is proof—mostly to yourself—that you are on the right track.

There were two obvious choices.
If money was not a problem, you went Subaru.
Clean lines. Aggressive stance. Fast.
The kind of car that doesn’t ask questions and says “kesi baadaye”
But money was a problem.
Not a big one. Not a small one.
Just enough of a problem to introduce something far more dangerous than lack: Compromise.

So I bought a Mitsubishi.

The Mitsubishi was not a bad car. In fact, it was a very good car. Reliable. Respectable. Practical. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. And that is precisely what made it dangerous.
Because the Mitsubishi sits in a very specific place in life (at the time).
Not first choice.
Not last choice.
Somewhere in the middle. Second. Third. Fourth.
Fighting quietly between
doing the right thing (Toyota)
and doing things right (Subaru).

The kind of decision you make when you are thinking long-term, managing risk, balancing ambition with reality. And if we’re honest, many of you reading this have made a Mitsubishi decision.

• With jobs: You didn’t take the dream role; you took the stable one.

• With business: You didn’t go all in; you adjusted the model to fit what looked sensible.

• With relationships: You didn’t choose the chaos; you chose the one that made sense on paper.

At the time, it felt wise. But somewhere between your mid-thirties and mid-forties, something shifts. You stop asking, “Did I make the right decision?” and start asking, “Did I make the only decision I could maintain?”

The Flight to Nowhere and our Flying Sikh

This past week, a story quietly made the rounds.
An Air India flight took off, burned fuel, followed procedure, did everything it was supposed to do—and landed back where it started.
No destination reached. No crisis. No catastrophe.
Just movement without progress.
A clean execution of a journey that went nowhere.
At least The Kenyan Flying Sikh won the rally.

And that is where it becomes uncomfortable.

Because if you strip away the aviation language, what you are left with is something many of us understand very well.
Activity that looks like progress.
Motion that feels like achievement.
The dashboards are green. The reports are clean.
The meetings are happening.
But the destination?
Still pending.

That is the Mitsubishi decision at scale.

Because once you commit to that middle path, you don’t crash.
You don’t fail loudly.
You don’t even look like you are struggling.
You simply move.
Consistently. Respectably. Safely.
In circles. And the world will even applaud you for it because from the outside, everything looks like it’s working.
Until time passes. And you start asking yourself the question nobody wants to ask out loud: Is this a journey, or just a well-managed loop?

The Market of “Potential”

The pitch deck. You’ve seen it. Big numbers.
Africa rising. Slides full of potential. Charts that go up and to the right.
And technically, none of it is wrong.
”Lakini vitu kwa ground ni different” (the ground says something else)

But potential is not realized value. The same way an individual makes a Mitsubishi decision, so do businesses.
We don’t go all in. We “see how it goes.” We build models that can survive instead of models that can dominate.
We celebrate entry instead of scale. We become very good at operating within limits we quietly accepted at the beginning.

It looks like stability. But it’s actually a flight that took off, flew beautifully, and landed exactly where it started.

The Third Choice: Readiness Over Planning

Now here is where it gets interesting. Because life is rarely a binary choice between the Subaru (Risk) and the Mitsubishi (Safety). Sometimes,
there is a Third Choice.
The one nobody planned for. The one that shows up when systems break and decisions are forced.
Th Independent reports:
”Leonard Prescott, a 16-year-old goalkeeper for Bayern Munich, is set to make his senior debut at the age of 16.
Prescott’s calm demeanor and technical skills have earned him praise, and he is seen as a promising talent for the club. His debut could mark him as the youngest goalkeeper to play in the Champions League, potentially breaking records for Bayern Munich and Germany. (yes he’s german)

Think of Stephen Donald at the 2011 Rugby World Cup.
He wasn’t the first-choice fly-half.
Or the second. Or the third.
He was literally on holiday when he got the call because the “planned” systems had failed.
He didn’t come in to “manage” the game; he came in to take it.
He kicked the decisive penalty and delivered the cup.

This is the bridge we often miss. We spend our lives choosing between “Safe” and “Risky,” but the universe often demands “Ready.” When the system breaks, it doesn’t matter if you drive a Mitsubishi or a Subaru.
What matters is whether you are standing there with your boots on when the moment arrives.

Then the Thunder Struck

Nairobi didn’t whisper this weekend.
It announced itself.
Just like the floods.

On 21st March 2026 at Nyayo Stadium, Nairobi City Thunder faced Ghana Revenue Authority. They didn’t just play; they controlled. An 84–69 victory.

This wasn’t a “Mitsubishi” performance—it wasn’t about just showing up or managing a respectable loss.
It was an execution of momentum.
If only the headlines would read

“Taxman Knocked. Nairobi Answered — Not Today.”

When you zoom out, the pattern becomes clearer.
Shujaa (Kenya Mens 7s rugby) delivered moments in Montivideo.
The Lionesses (Kenya Women 7s) fight through transition.
And now basketball steps forward.
These aren’t people making “safe” decisions.
They are people who realized that the “middle path” of just being “competitive” is no longer enough.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

Some of us chose the Mitsubishi.
Safe. Balanced. Sustainable.
Some chose the Subaru.
Fast. Risky. Unapologetic.

But every once in a while, a moment comes that ignores both. A moment that doesn’t care about your careful planning or your calculated compromise. A moment that asks a much simpler question:
Are you ready?

Because in the end, the question was never the car. It was never the job. It was always this:
When your moment comes, will you manage it?
Or will you take it?

Reflection for the week: * In your career choices, your team selection —
Are you choosing “safe” over “true”?

• In your business—are you building for survival or for dominance?

• In your life—what decision are you postponing because it is uncomfortable

“Because sometimes… the real win is not the scoreboard. It’s the moment you stop negotiating with fear —and start playing your own game.”

If this one hit home, don’t keep it to yourself.

Pull up a chair. Bring your people.
Tag the one guy still playing it safe.
Forward it to that partner who’s been hesitating.
Share it with the team that needs a reminder that this thing is bigger than survival.

This is the arena. This is where we talk straight. No filters. No safe answers.
Because everything about this life is a fight.

Welcome to the journey.
Same Forest. Different Monkeys.
If you’ve been reading quietly every week… it might be time.

Subscribe. Join the journey. Don’t just pass through — belong.

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.
Go with song

How my week began.

Trying to decompress after last Sunday’s article, I was certain I would make it to my pal’s funeral on Monday.
Then I read the advisory.

Influenza (flu) is a viral respiratory infection (that spreads easily through droplets and contact). Most affected individuals recover well with supportive care.

I thought to myself what a contradictory statement.

It talks about droplets, close contact and contaminated surfaces.
Yet most people recover well with supportive care.

How do I get supportive care without touching?

Anyway, oblivious to the warning I called a buddy who was going to the funeral. Given the floods in the country, he had a Noah.

Quite apt.

Destination. Idaho, Nyeri County.

As I opened the door to the dark roomy interior I saw several bloodshot eyes, probably straight from the “kesha” (night vigil) held at the “Cathedral” ((Google Maps calls it 213 after the old Long Beach California area code)).

But I digress.

As I stepped into the Ark my chest exploded.
I coughed like an exhausted borehole, spraying the droplets through the car’s hold.
Immediately the grumbling began.
“How can you?”
A voice shouted from the back.
“Corona!”
“You don’t even have a mask.”
And suddenly the Ark was no longer two by two.
I was politely but firmly removed from the voyage.

Which is how I ended up watching my friend’s final journey the way many of us now attend life’s moments when we cannot physically be present — through WhatsApp messages and the occasional YouTube clip.

And that is where I first saw the buzzard.

Perched quietly in a nearby tree at the graveside.

Watching.

In many African traditions, birds at burials are messengers marking transition.
Not omens of death,
but witnesses to change,
signifying one generation stepping away for another
The buzzard seemed unbothered by the ceremony.
It simply watched.
And as the messages continued arriving on my phone, my mind wandered somewhere else entirely.

Sport.

Because if there is any theatre where endings are understood with brutal clarity, it is sport.

The Last Dance

Football fans around the world recently received news that felt almost impossible to imagine.
Germany would end its seventy-year partnership with Adidas after the FIFA World Cup 2026.
For generations the German national team and Adidas felt inseparable.
The three stripes were stitched into some of football’s greatest moments
(The Miracle of Bern in 1954, Beckenbauer lifting the trophy in 1974, the reunified Germany conquering the world in 1990, and Rio in 2014).

Players came and went. Coaches retired. Fans grew older.
But Adidas remained.
Until now.
Germany will walk onto the pitch in 2027 wearing Nike.
Not betrayal. Just the end of a remarkable partnership.
Sport has a name for moments like this.

The Last Dance.

Chicago of yore understood that phrase better than anyone.

By 1998, everyone inside the Bulls organisation knew the dynasty was ending (Jordan, Pippen and Phil Jackson would not remain together).
And yet something strange happens when great teams realise the curtain is about to fall.
They produce one last masterpiece.
Jordan’s final shot in Utah sealed another championship.
Years later Kobe Bryant offered a similar farewell — sixty points in what was meant to be a ceremonial final game.
A reminder that legends rarely whisper their exit.
They take a bow

.Kenyan rugby has its own rhythm.
Edward “The Mille” Rombo stepped his way onto the world stage wearing a Kenya Watembezi jersey.
Years later Collins Injera rewrote the record books, becoming the all-time leading try scorer in the World Rugby Sevens Series (with 279 tries).
Collo stopped sprinting and started walking.
Patrick Odongo inherited the Jets.
Different generation.
Same jersey.

No one owns the shirt forever.

You wear it for a while.
Then you pass it backward.
Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

Management Transition (This is a rugby story)

Dave Rennie Appointed as New Zealand “All Blacks” Head Coach
The same rule applies to leadership.
Dave Rennie knows something about moments when the coach’s notepad moves to another hand. Rennie built a formidable reputation in Super Rugby, coaching the Chiefs to back-to-back titles in 2012 and 2013 (and later leading Glasgow Warriors and the Australian Wallabies).
Which gives context to Scott “Razor” Robertson.(Wembe for the Aoteroans)
Before the All Blacks, Robertson turned the Canterbury Crusaders into a dynasty, winning seven consecutive Super Rugby titles between 2017 and 2023.
No “significant” Test wins
Systems evolve. Boards lose patience. New philosophies appear.
Sometimes the transition is graceful. Sometimes it arrives abruptly.

But it always arrives.

One system’s frustration becomes another system’s opportunity.
Razor Robertson performed his last windmill.

Jamie Joseph shapes the next structure.

Leadership, like sport, never truly stops.

It simply changes players.

Morals vs the Deal
Transitions also reveal something uncomfortable about human nature.
Principles sound powerful in speeches.
Mission statements are written with conviction.
But the true test of values arrives when the deal appears.
Money has a remarkable way of reshaping moral clarity.
The AI industry has been living through this exact tension.
In 2025 Anthropic publicly declined a U.S. Department of Defense contract tied to advanced AI systems, citing ethical concerns about deploying frontier models in military environments.
Months later the same contract quietly moved elsewhere.
OpenAI agreed to the deal.
No long blog posts.
No public hand-wringing.
Just a press release and a signature.
The language of safety remained.

The money arrived anyway.

Most of you know the script.
Natasha needs to go to college overseas, Jayden is going to Spain for soccer camp, The mortgage repayments start choking, Our “family” Toyota WingRoad has suddenly become too small, I’ve missed the chama trip to Jo’burg for three years, We can finally take “guka” (grandpa) to India for his double hip replacement,
and “Shosh” (grandma) needs a full-time caregiver.

Principles are strongest until the deal becomes real.

Samba Fight Club

Sometimes the tension explodes completely.
Brazilian football has produced its share of beautiful chaos.
One example came during the 2026 Campeonato Mineiro final between Cruzeiro and Atlético Mineiro, where a mass confrontation erupted (after a controversial challenge).
Players from both benches joined the melee.
The referee issued 23 red cards before restoring order.

The beautiful game occasionally reveals the animal beneath the jersey.

Civilization is a thin layer.

Scratch it hard enough and the villager reappears.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

When Politics Enters the Stadium

Sport does not exist in a vacuum. History regularly storms onto the field.

The 1980 Moscow Olympics were boycotted by over 60 countries (led by the United States), and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics were boycotted by the Soviet Union and 14 Eastern Bloc nations.
South Africa was banned from international sport during the apartheid era.
Russia remains banned from multiple global competitions following the invasion of Ukraine.
Now the War in West Asia is beginning to bend sporting calendars again.
The Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Formula One Grand Prix were cancelled (due to security concerns).
Sport often reflects the world more honestly than we would like.
And through all of it the silent observers remain.
Fans. Commentators.
And sometimes a lone bird in a tree.

Watching.

Rebirth

Yet endings rarely mean emptiness.
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report projects a net gain of 78 million jobs globally by 2030 (despite automation eliminating many existing roles).
Old systems fade; new ecosystems emerge.

Open TikTok on any evening in Nairobi and you will see young entrepreneurs selling clothes, cosmetics and gadgets live to thousands of viewers.

(Across Africa, TikTok reports more than 150 million monthly users, with live commerce becoming one of the fastest-growing micro-entrepreneur ecosystems.)

No expensive shop space. No traditional career ladder.
Just creativity and connection.

Even World football reveals the pattern.
For nearly two decades, football revolved around Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
But the clock never pauses. Now another name rises.

Kylian Mbappé.

And behind him a new generation.

Lamine Yamal
Jude Bellingham
Estêvão Willian
Florian Wirtz
Nico Paz

The Next Episode.

The Whisper of Legacy

Some departures are not really departures.
Arsène Wenger spent over two decades shaping Arsenal.
The peak was the 2003-04 season: Thirty-eight matches (twenty-six wins, twelve draws, zero defeats)
The Invincibles.
Wenger stepped aside, yet his presence is still felt.
I can only imagine him on Mikel Arteta’s shoulder,
whispering calm advice:
Kaza Bro.
Hold your nerve.
Eight (8) games: five home, three away.

That’s how legacy works:
The people who built the home leave,
but their fingerprints remain.

The Warm Down

The flu kept me from Idaho (Ihururu), so I sat at my desk, watching endings on YouTube (Jordan’s final shot and Kobe’s farewell).
Meanwhile, WhatsApp buzzed with new businesses, teams, and beginnings.
Between those screens, I realized something about our strange forest:
Every week, someone takes their final bow,
And someone else steps onto the stage.

The rest of us sit quietly,
watching,
learning,
trying to understand the rhythm before pressing Send.

Same Forest. Different Monkeys.

For my mohine

If you’re not living on the edge,
you’re taking up too much space.
You showed us how to live bila fear.
Now we step to the sidelines
and let the next generation carry the fire.

Rest easy, G.
Off is off.

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.

🎵 Go with Song

If reflections like this resonate with you — about sport, leadership and the strange rhythm of change — subscribe to SalesFundike and join the conversation.

The breakup negotiations had reached the kitchen.
By that point I had already secured the television, the home theatre… and the usual boys’ toys — the PS1, the old mobile speakers, foreign rugby shirts, plaques from visiting teams, and a Bob Marley poster drawn in pencil that had followed me through several houses.
Those assets had been locked down early. Everything else was now negotiable.
Until we got to the kitchen.

Breakups begin politely.
People use words like fairness.

Then someone reaches for the sufurias.

The fridge was never really part of the negotiations. It was one of those massive Kelvinator relics from the 1980s. The kind of fridge that eventually migrates to the garage because it simply refuses to die.

Whenever that fridge switched on, the house lights blinked briefly, as if KPLC needed a moment to reconsider its life choices.

Nobody was moving that thing.
Which meant the real war moved to the smaller items.

The sufurias. The plates. The glasses. The mwikos (cooking spoons).

My carefully assembled collection of Tupperware utensils — the only real investment I had made in the kitchen.
Anyone who has ever tried to split clothes understands the problem immediately. You cannot divide them like furniture.
Which means the battlefield shifts somewhere else.
In our case, the battlefield became kitchenware.

At that stage of life I had a couple of years as a sales rep under my belt, but:
The furniture in the house had arrived the African way, through donations from parents and relatives who believed young people deserved a head start.
Which meant very little of it actually belonged to either of us.
But the kitchen…
The kitchen was where daily survival happened.
Now I should confess something important here.
I was working out every day. Which meant food was not optional.

Food was fuel.

She understood this perfectly.
And like all experienced negotiators, she went straight for the jugular.
She claimed the two-burner gas cooker and the gas cylinder.
It was a brilliant tactical decision.
She was almost certain that within a month I would be starving and would return, humbled, hungry, and ready to renegotiate the entire relationship.

And that’s how I ended up with the microwave.

For the next two years that microwave became the centerpiece of my culinary survival strategy.
Everything passed through it with the thoroughness of an Olympic dietician’s meal plan:
Protein: Matumbo. Omena. Nyama wet fry. Tong’ mang’eny (many eggs)
Hydration: Tea. Coffee. Supu ya mifupa (bone broth)
Carbo loading: Chapos. Pilau Njeri. Githeri chips mwitu
Cruciferous Veggies: Sukuma (kale). Makofisi (cabbage). African Nightshade (Managu)
Pre game: Mukimo gi rech (mukimo with fish soup)

The microwave had no sense of boundaries. Whatever had been heated the night before left its ghost behind.
Morning coffee sometimes carried faint hints of yesterday’s mukimo.
Pilau Njeri reheated in the evening occasionally carried traces of lunchtime tea.
If culinary fusion had a laboratory, that microwave was it.
Slowly, unintentionally, I began to build depth. At the time I thought I was simply surviving. Only later did I realise something important about breakups.
Depth rarely comes from comfort.
Depth comes from the moments when comfort disappears and you are forced to rebuild with whatever tools remain on the table.
And once you start looking at the world through that lens, you begin to notice something interesting.
Breakups are everywhere.
Even in places where we pretend everything is stable

Every March arrives with the same unmistakable energy.
If you think sports fans repeat their greatest victories too often, you have clearly never observed how societies commemorate milestones.

England will remind you about the 1966 World Cup.
Springbok supporters will remind you that they have four Rugby World Cups.
Arsenal fans will gently — and sometimes not so gently — remind you about forty-nine unbeaten games and the EPL in the last century.

But none of them have the institutional stamina of International Women’s Month.

It arrives every March like winter in Game of Thrones.
The messages appear everywhere.
Television. Corporate emails. WhatsApp groups.
Conference stages. Social media timelines.
Louder than CNN. Louder than Al Jazeera. Louder than Firstpost or Xinhua.
In perfect chorus:
Happy International Women’s Month.
One hundred and fifteen years of caring, giving, nurturing…
and continuously reminding the rest of us mere mortals that they did.
History supports the argument. Because some victories deserve to be remembered.
Especially the ones that forced systems to change.
Make your peace.
Early.
Happy International Women’s Month!!!
Same Forest. Different Matriarchs

But back to the breakups, and when they hit close.
Like a family disagreement.
The global sportswear industry offers a famous example.
Adolf and Rudolf Dassler once ran a shoe factory together in Germany.
Then the relationship collapsed. The brothers separated.

Adolf founded Adidas.
Rudolf founded Puma.

One had Usain Bolt. Rihanna. Neymar Jr. Lewis Hamilton.
The other Leo Messi. Samuel L. Jackson. Lamine Yamal. Bad Bunny.

One family breakup ended up creating two global brands that would compete for decades.
Competition drove innovation. Athlete sponsorship exploded.
Entire marketing strategies were invented.
Depth emerging from separation once again

I would later experience a different kind of breakup in my professional life.
Sales is one of the few professions where success as an individual contributor can become the biggest obstacle to becoming a leader.
You build your reputation by closing deals.
You become the person who solves problems personally.
You carry the targets.
You win the awards.
Then one day someone taps you on the shoulder.
Congratulations. You are now a Unit Manager.
Except management is not a promotion.
It is a breakup.
You break up with being the hero. Now your job is to build other heroes.
The insurance industry understood this decades ago. Which is why the Life Insurance Management Research Association (LIMRA) developed a training program with a very appropriate name.
Crossroads.
The program was designed to help new sales managers transition from individual performers into team leaders.
Recruiting. Coaching. Performance management. Planning. Building culture.
The lesson was simple. Your success no longer belonged to you.
It belonged to the people you helped succeed.
And once you experience that transition, you begin to see organisations differently. Which raises an interesting question.
Most of us have experienced some version of this moment.

The Founder’s syndrome.

Many small businesses explode and the success requires more heads.
More people who can do.
The founder’s voice is somehow muted in the noise of the new disciples.
The founder is forced to turn and face the orchestra.
And let the music play.
With you as the conductor and not the lead violin.
Many businesses struggle to break the founder hold.
Many founders struggle with separation anxiety.
Can they really do it the way I did?
A breakup that forced us to rebuild.
A partnership that ended and unexpectedly opened new doors.
A Series B funder that changed the rules.
If you have experienced something like that, it might actually be worth sharing.
Talk to us and lets start a conversation around it, because those stories,
The real ones, are usually far more interesting than the theories.
Same Forest Different Monkeys.

Unfortunately, organizations themselves are not always eager to embrace those conversations.
Anyone who has spent time around boards, committees, or chamas knows how silence is often mistaken for harmony.
A respected corporate leader shared this article on Linkedin.

Agendas circulate. Minutes are approved. Reports are presented politely.
And then comes the final agenda item.

Any Other Business. AOB.

This is where uncomfortable truths occasionally try to surface.
But it is also where many ideas quietly die. (The board secretary instructed that AOB’s be submitted 2 weeks before the meeting)
People hesitate. No one wants to appear disruptive. And so organisations continue moving forward, sometimes politely ignoring the very conversations that could make them stronger.
Depth requires friction.
Without friction, systems stagnate.
Sporting competitions sometimes demonstrate this better than boardrooms ever will.
Same Forest. Different Arena.

For more than two decades Italy occupied an uncomfortable position in European rugby. They joined the Six Nations Championship in 2000.
The defeats came quick and fast.
And often.
Pundits questioned their presence. Fans suggested replacing them with Georgia.
Yet Italy stayed. Year after year. Scrum after scrum. Season after season.
Learning. Improving. Absorbing pressure.
Then eventually the scoreboard told a different story.
For the first time in Six Nations history, Italy beat England.
Somewhere in the background the English anthem probably still echoed.
Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.
Except this time when the chariot swung low,
It came up, but with an Italian carrying it home.
The victory did not happen overnight. It was the result of two decades of staying in the competition long enough to build depth.
Persistence doing its quiet work.

Forza Italia!!

Which brings us back to the broader lesson history occasionally forces humanity to confront.
Conflict and separation have shaped the world in ways comfort never could.
Few speeches captured that reality more clearly than one delivered in 1963 by Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie at the United Nations.
Speaking against racism and injustice, Selassie I warned that peace would remain fragile until humanity learned to treat every nation and every person with equal dignity.
Bob Marley later turned those words into one of the most powerful songs ever written.

War.

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally discredited and abandoned…
There will be war.

The Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah understood something life eventually teaches all of us.
Depth is rarely comfortable. Sometimes it is built in kitchens during breakups. Sometimes in boardrooms. Sometimes on rugby fields.
And sometimes across the long arc of history itself.
Comfort preserves the present.
Breakups create the depth required for the future.
Depth is rarely comfortable. Depth definitely beats starving.
And sometimes depth simply begins with a microwave

If reflections like this resonate with you — about business, sport, life, and the strange ways Africa and the world evolve — you are welcome to stay in the conversation.

Should you choose to leave,
Go with song.

Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.

Same Forest Different Riddim.

Russia has long been called the holy land of chess.
Botvinnik. Karpov. Kasparov.
Infrastructure. State-backed academies. Generational dominance.

So when Kenyan prodigies show up there and win 11–2, that’s not just sport.
That’s narrative disruption.
In February 2026, at the Intellect Academy Cup in Novokuznetsk, Kuzbass, a small delegation from Kenya walked into the cold and walked out with an 11–2 victory over the host team.
Green and white winter coats.
Scarves pulled up to the chin.
DOMODEDOVO glowing in the background of arrival photos like a geopolitical subtitle.
Names matter.
Captain Floyd Wesonga.
Dylan Wema.
Amini Muhani.
Jadarudo Achieng.
Ryan Mutinda.

Not battalions. Not ballistic missiles. Youngsters.
Kenya did not send an ICBM.
Kenya sent Gen Alpha.

And in a world fractured by propaganda and counter-propaganda — or as one WhatsApp philosopher typed it, “prokopanda” — perception matters.
The group lit up.
“Isn’t there a war in Russia? Why send kids there?” “Or is the war narrative itself exaggerated?” The debate stopped being about chess.
It became about information. Global conflict does not move in straight lines.
Sanctions ripple. Energy markets shake. Food prices respond. Currencies wobble.
The probability of spillover is never zero.
And Africa, as history keeps reminding us, is usually the grass.
Ndovu wawili wakipigana, nyasi huumia.
When two elephants fight, the grass suffers.
But what if the grass learns to trade while the elephants are distracted?
Kenya during the US–Somalia war taught us something uncomfortable and powerful.
Where there is conflict, there is logistics.
Where there is logistics, there is demand.
Where there is supply, there is opportunity.
Entire villages sprouted “natural spring water.”
Kenyans became water suppliers.
One Mitsubishi Canter became a fleet of Mitsubishi Fuso FX — the one with the air brakes and that frrr frrr chhh chhh sound.
Transport networks expanded. Entrepreneurs learned to move fast.
The grass bent, but it also adapted.
Probability is not destiny. It is environment.
Same Forest. Different Hydraulics.

The Elephant at the Top of the Tree

My dear elephant is doing splits.
Arsenali.
As of March 1, 2026, Arsenal sit top of the Premier League with 61 points from 28 matches. Two points ahead. Still alive in everything.
Finalists in the Carabao Cup. Round of 16 in the Champions League.
FA Cup progressing.
February confidence is always loud.
But March is where fingernails are tested.
History remembers.
Newcastle ’96. Liverpool’s infamous slip.
Arsenal seasons where February felt like destiny and May felt like therapy.
Being number one is not stability. It is exposure.
The elephant at the top of the tree is magnificent — but heavy.
And gravity is patient.
The table tightens in March. Fixtures harden. Injuries matter.
Psychology shifts. Three points feel heavier. Goal difference matters more.
One red card changes a season’s mood.
Form is temporary.
Structure is permanent.
I truly hope our elephant is Muslim or Catholic. We need to fast and pray for 30 days. That the bough will not break.
That our #SSS stars — Saka, Saliba and Stina — will lift the sides.
Because March exposes.
That is why some teams panic and others mature.
And while everyone analysed Arsenal’s turbulence, systems elsewhere were tightening.

Australia quietly entered the rugby chat.

Brumbies and Waratahs sitting 1 and 2 after Round 3.
Reds not far behind.
Matilda waltzing.
I got an interesting comment last week. From an erstwhile rugby gentleman no less.

Robert Anthony Reeves — retired Brigadier, former President of the RFU (2013–14), Director of Sport at Bristol, founder of the Foundation for Leadership through Sport. Churchill Fellow. Honorary doctorates. Student rugby advocate. A custodian of English Core Values. A supporter of Kenya rugby. Bristol University the alma mater of a very famous Tall Kenyan, has long been a pillar of Safari 7s.
Brig. Rtd. represents structure. Pathways. Institutional discipline.
While noise dominated analysis, systems matured quietly.
Then enters Dr. Finn Russell.
And here’s SalesFundi’s ode to Scottish rugby.

There’ll Be Dancing in the Streets of Hawick (Thogoto, Kiambu County) Tonight

(Thogoto — the Kikuyu tongue’s playful rendering of “Scotland,” where early Presbyterian settlers pitched their tents in Kiambu.)

If England beat New Zealand with posture,
Scotland dismantled England with poetry.
At Scotland’s 31–20 Calcutta Cup masterclass at Murrayfield, this wasn’t just a win.
It was a memory reclaimed.
You could almost hear the late Bill McLaren:
“Ohhh, and Russell slips through — like a demented ferret up a drainpipe!”
England arrived structured. Disciplined. Pilates-aligned.
But Scotland?
Scotland arrived with mist, mischief — and a fly-half who now answers to Doctor.
Finn Russell didn’t manage territory.
He performed surgery.
He anaesthetised the English pack. He excised territorial ambition.
He turned the high ball into an oral examination.
And somewhere in the rugby establishment — perhaps even in Brigadier Bob Reeves’ study — one imagines a reflective pause.
Reeves’ era emphasised discipline.
Structure. Core Values. But rugby has always been two conversations:

England play in straight lines. Scotland play in crescents.
One wins with posture. The other wins with imagination.
And imagination — on certain afternoons — is undefeated.
You sensed the old guard stirring.
Gavin Hastings shifting in his seat.
John Jeffrey — the Great White Shark — tasting blood in the North Sea waters.
This wasn’t smash-and-grab. This was controlled chaos. This wasn’t theatre.
This was Caledonian jazz.
Reminds me of Alliance Boys rugby greats of yore with funny names to boot
Tunji, Johnny Mo’, Kinoti, Bwaab, Jacky, Ruckus, AB, Benji.
Thogoto piety.
Alliance discipline.
Scottish mischief.
And if McLaren were still with us, you’d hear his relative who’s probably a DJ in Kikuyu town shout:
Ikibamba sana, piga nduruuu!
“There’ll be dancing in the streets of Thogoto tonight!”
Raise a glass of fine single malt.
Slàinte mhath. (Slangevar in Kenyanese) 🥃

The EPL and the Mathematics of Collapse

March is when belief meets arithmetic.
Supporters talk destiny. Analysts talk probability. Strength of schedule.
Injury lists. European congestion. Home vs away splits.
Arsenal at the top is not romance.
It is a stress test.
Can the squad rotate? Can Arteta manage egos? Can momentum survive fatigue? March exposes thin squads. April punishes emotional teams.
May crowns structure.
The table does not reward noise. It rewards sustainability.
Same Forest Different leagues.

The Sales Table Doesn’t Care About Your Optimism

Kama kawaida. Sales. Numbers.
If your close rate is 20%, that means 80% rejection.
That’s arithmetic.
Call 100 prospects. Maybe 20 convert. Eighty say no.
If your pipeline cannot emotionally withstand 80 no’s, you will not survive Q1.
Revenue respects ratios.
Kenya has roughly 14,600 licensed insurance agents.
Millions of policies exist, yes — but annual new business is a fraction of that stock.
Divide agents by active policies and the ratio is sobering.
Divide new policies by agents and the average shrinks further.
The sales table does not care about your optimism.
It cares about activity, conversion and follow-up discipline.
Just like gravity exposes elephants.
Structure wins. Volume matters. Consistency matters.
Noise does not close deals.
Behaviour does.

The Odds You Already Beat

Zoom out.

The probability of closing a deal may be 3 in 10.
The probability of winning the EPL narrows in March.
But the probability of you being born?

One fertilisation among hundreds of millions of swimmers.
One.
Statistically, you are a miracle wrapped in normal clothing.
You won a tournament before you could say mama.
And now you’re intimidated by Q1?
Focus.

The Sound at 4:20

There is a song that builds slowly.
No fireworks. No climax. Just tension.
For four minutes and twenty seconds it holds back.
Then the drums land. Not chaos.
The Awakening.
March is 4:20.
The drum is not the surprise. The surprise is whether you prepared for it.
Geopolitics is tightening. The EPL table is tightening. Revenue targets are tightening.
The elephants are circling. The grass is watching.
You can argue in WhatsApp groups. You can celebrate February headlines.
Or you can calculate five moves ahead.
Like our Gen Alphas in snow. Like teams that mature quietly.
Like the salesperson who understands ratios.
Probability is structural. Improbability is possible. You are proof.

When the branch creaks.
When the table tightens.
When the pipeline thins.

Do not panic. Structure yourself. The elephants will fight. The grass will bend.
And when the drums land
Move.
Go with rhythm.
Mubarikiwe. Jah Bless.
Same Forest. Different Musicians.

When religions align something special happens.
This year, Lent and Ramadan will both begun on February 18. The last time they started on the same day was in 1943, over 80 years ago.
While the traditions are different, both seasons center around the same values of fasting, reflection, discipline, and strengthening faith.

As a teen I used to think hunger was a personality trait.
In our neighborhood it was a test of the Olfactory senses. (process of detecting gaseous odourants)
Ramadhan evenings were my Olympics. Not because I was Muslim.
Because I was seventeen.
Appetite like a horse. Metabolism of a hyena.
Mathe’s pilau njeri and mafoga (cabbage) would quietly disappear from my radar during that season.
Not out of disrespect. Out of strategy.
You don’t waste capacity before a major fixture.
Fueled purely by filial obligation, I would snack lightly at home — just enough to maintain appearances — then migrate across the fence for the pre-game warm-up.
Mumzee next door had been cooking up a storm since late afternoon.
Mahamri. Mkate wa sinia. Pilau origino.
The air itself felt seasoned.
Those days, we switched from one AM signal to another to catch the exact minute for Iftar. Alternatively listen to the closest Muezzin in his evening call to prayer.
No apps. No website. Just static and patience.
You learned rhythm through waiting.
At approximately 6:50 pm something would shift inside me.
Voices.
Not spiritual.
Gastric.
Mahamri calling. The sufuria lids lifting in slow motion in my imagination.
The discipline of the day collapsing into aroma.
In the beginning, I would pretend I had forgotten something.
A notebook. A rugby boot. THE Maxell XLII / XLII-S (High Bias/Type II Casette):
The premium, high-performance standard for home recording in the 1980s, lauded for its ability to handle high frequencies and high-fidelity, (apologies my mind wanders)
After a few days, I stopped pretending.
Hunger has a way of simplifying integrity.
Strip away doctrine and Lent and Ramadhan are built on the same architecture:
Restraint before reward.
Discipline before feast.
System before appetite.

Ramadhan asks Muslims to fast dawn to sunset for roughly thirty days. Lent calls Christians into forty days of restraint, prayer and almsgiving.

Different rituals.
Same system.

Hunger starts the journey. Systems sustain it.
And thats how Abdallah Mkatakona was born.
Around the same time, together with other dues my age, I felt that same sensation stepping into global sport.
17 and 136 days old. Kenya Under 19 / Kenya Schools Combined. The Roebucks.
Rosslyn Park 7s — 100 years of history.
Melrose 7s — birthplace of the short game.
Exposure

.Then Watembezi Pacesetters Singapore 7s. 1991. (This is not an IOD story)
We ran onto that pitch thinking talent was enough.
It wasn’t.
The speed was authentic.
Warm-ups were not choreographed.
Recovery was self governed.
Video analysis happened 6 months later.
Nutrition was an ideal.
Game plans were not precise. They were built on hunger not structure.
Gwara (Scratch) was the Holy grail.
Talent had brought us there.
Structure decided who stayed.
That was my first lesson in making the cut.
Train. Prepare. Perform. Monitor. Iterate.
Wash. Clean. Rinse. Repeat.
What happens on Tour remains on Tour.

Fast forward to Karen Country Club.

The 2026 Magical Kenya Open concluded today, February 22, at the Karen Country Club. It was a historic but weather-affected finale that saw South Africa’s Casey Jarvis clinch his maiden DP World Tour title with a record-breaking score of 25-under par.

Twenty-five under.

Precision over four days.

Out of the 12 Kenyan professionals and 6 amateurs who teed off, Njoroge Kibugu was the only Kenyan to make the cut. He carried the nation’s hopes into the weekend with a dramatic eagle on the 18th hole on Friday to secure his spot.

Final Standing: Kibugu finished the tournament at 6-under par overall. Well Done!

The Comeback: After a difficult Saturday (where he slipped to 1-under), he showed incredible resilience today, sinking five birdies in his final round to move back up the leaderboard.
Significance: His performance snapped a two-year “cut drought” for Kenyan golfers at this event.
Other Local Results (Missed Cut) The competition was exceptionally stiff this year, with the cut set at a demanding 4-under par.
Edwin Mudanyi: -2 (Missed cut by 2 shots)
John Lejirma (Amateur): -2 (Missed cut by 2 shots)
Jastas Madoya: Level par
Yardages. Putts. Inches.
Kibugu did not win.
He survived.
Making the cut means you earn Saturday. It means your mechanics held. It means appetite did not force reckless swings.
That is Lent discipline.
That is Ramadhan rhythm.
That is Singapore shock at Twenty-One.
Now zoom out.
The Kenya Open began in 1967 as a local tournament.
Over decades it aligned with the Challenge Tour, Sunshine Tour affiliations, and eventually elevation to DP World Tour status in 2019.
Prize purses increased. Broadcast matured. International field deepened.
The event evolved.
Now rugby.
Safari 7s in 1996. Invitational. Electric. Chaotic.
A kenya team was picked and went on to Tour Scotland in preparation for the World Cup qualifier later that year.
Then Kenya entered the IRB Sevens World Series in 1999.
Core team status meant repeated exposure.
New Zealand. Fiji. South Africa. England.
Not once.
Kama kawaida. (Furniture)
Academies formed. Conditioning improved. Video review became culture. Governance aligned tournament growth with player development.
Ugali was struck off the menu.
Tournament and player matured together.
By the time HSBC SVNS became global broadcast theatre, Kenyan players were already living that standard.
Exposure plus system.
In golf, the event globalised faster than the pipeline scaled.
This is not condemnation. It is governance math.
Exposure without structure produces occasional brilliance.
Exposure with structure produces consistency.
Lets bring it home to sales.
In sales, hunger and networks open doors.
Structure closes quarters.
One big deal is an eagle on 18. It saves Friday.
But professionals survive the fiscal year and the 4 days because their system holds.
Their Swings kept net positive.
The balance sheets made Par from the rough.
Prospect. Qualify. Follow up. Track. Refine. Close. Review.
Then repeat.
CRM hygiene. Territory mapping. Coaching loops.
Performance dashboards. Quarterly recalibration.
Train. Prepare. Perform. Monitor. Iterate.
Wash. Clean. Rinse. Repeat.
Faith seasons teach it. Golf exposes it. Rugby institutionalised it.
Sales rewards it.

And then this

Recently the Green Giant continued to keep us green with envy on their ingenuity.
They launched a new product better known by its street name
Kula Fare Bila shame.
The “Kula fare Bila Shame product knows how to align your weakness to your weakness.
Marriage counselors be on alert, plus Men of all ages from Mubabas to GenZs.

There’s going to be an activation....maybe not so big but Your nearest and dearest, your mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, girlfriends (not in any particular order) and the entire woman folk will hear about this and will ask you the dreaded question....have you downloaded it.... (mulika mwizi loading)
I need to meet with their product dev guys to understand the target market.
Anyone fancy a guess?
Innovation is neutral. Discipline determines outcome.
Shiriki Pay in my view may not the solve the real problem.
Lack of trust is.
Because if your household does not have governance, if your marriage does not have clarity, if your budget does not have structure, technology amplifies appetite.
Same principle.
Hunger starts the journey. Systems sustain it.
Whether it’s fasting. Whether it’s golf. Whether it’s rugby.
Whether it’s sales. Whether it’s fintech.
The pattern is structural.
I think back to Ramadhan static on AM radio.
You don’t eat at 6:47 because you feel like it.
You wait.
I think of Singapore at 21.
Exposure without preparation is humiliation.
I think of Kibugu recalibrating after Saturday.
Making the cut matters.
Hunger is loud. Systems are quiet. Talent travels.
Structure survives.
And somewhere at 6:50 pm tonight, someone will still be waiting for the clock to turn before they knock on Mumzee’s door.
Train. Prepare. Perform. Monitor. Iterate.
Wash. Clean. Rinse. Repeat.

🎵 Same Forest. Different Musicians
I thought I’d add a new section……… for connection 😉
Add it to your playlist. Your GenZ might think you’re cool.
Tell me what you think. (or which song the article reminds you of))

Bobby Caldwell … 1978
Tupac Shakur … 1998
Ahmed Ololade (Asake) … 202_

Evolution. Not competition.

Ask someone older. Ask someone younger.
Go with Rythm.
Mubarikiwe.
Jah Bless.

This week I’ve been distracted.
The energy that goes into a 7s weekend I forgot is immense.
This is the kind of article that says, I am happy with a draw.
No adrenaline rush while writing, no silence. Just an unmistakable hum of generators in the background and the screaming noise of the fans in the stands.
As I write this, I’m torn.
Do I watch the Kenya Lionesses take on Spain from the stand, or from our small operations base under the Nyayo Stadium belly?
For the last four weeks I’ve been volunteering at HSBC SVNS 2.
A small way to give back to a game that has given me everything — networks, travel, perspective, scars, friendships, discipline.
The Lionesses needed this game. A test. A measuring stick. A signal.
The showing?
Solid. Gritty. Promising.
Behind them, the Village thundered into life at 9am.
Saints.
Sinners.
And everything in between.

The Walkabout: Nairobi West & The Beer Belt

Earlier this week, I played truant.
Left the stadium bubble. Strolled to the roundabout. Walked memory lane.
Nairobi West via Madaraka Estate.
Not the Google Maps version. The 90s version.
Flint-black tarmac.
Bars that smelled of old Guinness and new dreams.
Characters who aged but never retired.
Shops that doubled as pharmacies, laboratories, nyama choma joints and confession booths.
We used to call ourselves the “Young Turks.”
Firebrands without portfolios. Full of ideas. Zero cash.
Maximum confidence.
I started at Madaraka Estate shops. Club Kutwa. Our pre-game headquarters.
They had a dish called Kutwa Bite.
It required five of us contributing mchango to afford a plate for three.
That was The Struggle Economics.
Then I crossed Langata Road into what we used to call The Beer Belt.
From Lazinos to Haridge.
From Jeans & Johns to Plan B.
Bars that have seen marriages begin, end, and renegotiate.
Dreams made. Near misses sealed. Deals struck over Tusker foam.
The Beer Belt should be declared a World Heritage site.
For ambition. For foolishness. For resilience.
I stopped at Mini Pub. One of the few survivors.
That’s where we bumped into him.

Real Ugaliman.

Not a politician. Not a celebrity. Just a man whose name sounds like a rugby chant now with an American twang. A man who flew back home from the USA to make his home tournament memorable.
He looked around.
“Look at this,” he said. “This place used to be packed every weekend. DJs. Food fights. Six-packs disappearing faster than halftime oranges.”
Pause.
“The party didn’t die. It relocated.”
He pointed toward Nyayo. “It’s in the stadium now.” And he was right.
Rugby turned the Stadium into a place of hope, family and laugher.
HSBC SVNS 2 Nairobi
The Sherehe Sevens

Fan Village: Where Culture Relocates

If you haven’t walked through the HSBC SVNS Fan Village, you’ve missed something.
Food stalls smoking early. Tusker branding humming. The Singleton pop-up glowing.
DJ sets following the matches.
Khaligraph headlining Saturday. Vijana Barubaru lighting up Sunday.
Tickets KES 300 early bird. KES 500 advance. 2500 VIP.
Chants of Tumeibiwa following the SOLD OUT announcement.
M-Pesa and TikoHub working overtime.
This isn’t just rugby. It’s culture consolidation.
The diaspora flew in. Flags unpacked. Shtundz & Angie O asking….
“Where are our tickets?” “Are you at the Village?” “Where’s the afterparty?”
The energy didn’t die.
It relocated.
From the Beer Belt. To the Belly of the Beast. The Village.
Sherehe Central.

The Unlikely Dividend: Funding Sherehe
Now let me confess something. I received a strange payment this week. One of those payments that makes you call your bank.
“Excuse me, is this meant for me?”
Am I being set up? I read through every message I sent out. Alas.
Kumbe…KenGen dividend.
Right before Valentine’s.
Right before Sevens weekend.
The Universe is playing Ferre Gola’s 100kg in the background.
I hadn’t even checked the share price first. Just knew something had landed.
KenGen shares had been playing midfield.
Not explosive. But reliable. Dividend darling behaviour.
That’s Kenya’s psychology.
We like payout. We hold for income.
Predictability beats speculation for many retail investors.
And yes — that dividend converted into:
Food at the Village. A round of drinks with old teammates. A night on the town.
Presence.
Money isn’t just capital gains. Sometimes it’s attendance fuel.
Proof-of-life revenue.

Selling to Gatekeepers: Permission to Attend

Let’s talk truth. No one attends the Sevens without first negotiating at home.
“Can I go to the 7s?” That question is not casual. It’s a sales pitch.
Gatekeepers include:
• The spouse watching the budget.
• The girlfriend demanding quality time.
• The husband evaluating logistics.
• The kids expecting Saturday attention.

You don’t sell at the stadium gate. You sell at home. Timing matters.
“It’s once this season.” Value proposition matters.
“I’ll take the kids.”
Risk reduction matters.
“I’ll be back by dinner.” Reciprocity matters. “You choose brunch next week.”
Sales mechanics in domestic format.
And here’s the trick:
If you come back happier, lighter, more present — suddenly the gatekeeper becomes advocate next season.
That’s how you get the family to buy into a weekend plan.

Performance: Why We Keep Watching Rugby
Culture gets you there. Performance keeps you.
The Lionesses showed promise.
Spatial awareness. Defensive resets. Composure under pressure.
The men?
Flashes of Kenyan flair. Breakdown intensity. Support lines opening space.
The killer punch for the home fans? Sadly missing.
We live to fight another day.
Tariffs took the Trophy.
Kesho pia ni siku. (we live to fight another day)
But this weekend was for the fans. The system under the spectacle.
Player 13.
The Kenyan supporter.
“Mama Milka” the warm up tune. The whole stadium becomes choir.
For six hours:
Strangers hug. Voices crack.
Nobody cares about politics or payroll.
That is not entertainment. That is belonging.
#KenyaCornerIsHome

The Coronation: From Princess to Queen

February 6, 1952.
Queen Elizabeth became Queen while in Kenya.
Crowned by circumstance.
Now fast forward. February 15th 2026
Those of us who could not stay on our feet long enough.
There’s another coronation happening here.

MDCCCXXIV.

Most think it’s just a club.
But 1824 is the year Scotland’s first licensed distillery opened.
Whisky legalised. Contraband turned craft. A perfect metaphor.
Music pounding like war drums. Nairobi’s gladiators wear tights.
We don’t go to conquer anymore.
We go to reconnect. To laugh. To feast with our eyes.

To ask:

“Who remarried?” “Who’s still paying school fees?”
“Whose knees survived the dance floor?”
Even Eshiring’ang’a the great, the indestructible Luhya warrior, found his weakness.
Every gladiator has kryptonite.
But today’s gladiators don’t spill blood.
They spill stories with eternal heartbreak round the corner.
The Queen had run away from the tired history of whispered dreams from latter day generals in Nairobi West. Escaped to Langata Shopping Centre for a while.
But destiny came calling. She moved back to Nairobi West. Home of her fathers.
Next to some Tanks that became a railway station.
Here she blossoms.
And today we congregate to crown her. That’s the coronation. Not of kings.
Of presence.

26,000 People = Identity

When 26,000 odd fans show up,
That’s not attendance. That’s affirmation.
Diaspora flights booked last minute.
Tickets sold out. (truly)
Fans without tickets told to stay away.
Village packed.
That’s not nostalgia. That’s relocation of energy.
Nairobi West is no longer the Beer Belt.
It’s the Belly of the Beast. The Village became the Arena.
Real Ugaliman was right.
The party found a new country.
Nyayo Stadium

Desiderata (Remixed for the Sevens)

Go placidly amid the noise and bass lines.
Observe what matters: The roar.
Not the comment section.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly. Listen to others without interruption.
If you compare your mbogi (crew) to another’s,
You may become vain or bitter.
There will always be better costumes. And some ridiculous ones.
Enjoy your attendance . Your presence. Your small contributions.
Exercise caution in sport and life.
The world has trickery and tenders.
But let that not blind you to virtue.
Many strive for honour. Everywhere life is full of heroes.
Be yourself. Especially now.
Because presence is your answer.

Thank You from the team that sold you tickets

To the 25,000 odd who showed up.
You didn’t attend. You activated. You believed.
You brought rugby memories. Diaspora longing. Family negotiations.
KenGen dividends. Old jerseys. New flags.
You are not the audience.
You are Player 13.
MAFANS.

And the sun went down on one of Nairobi’s most iconic events

NB.
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No noise. Just perspective.
See you next week.
Mubarikiwe (Jah Bless)