by Eddy Ashioya | Apr 12, 2023 | Chinedu Tales
7. Akili mjini, nguvu kijijini. Tack that on your walls—and tattooed in your brain. 12. Nairobi is an expensive city—14th overall in Africa. You wake up hivi and KSh. 2,000 is gone. That is the rate to wake up in this city. Nairobi is a designer label sewn into a...
by Eddy Ashioya | Mar 17, 2023 | Chinedu Tales
Jesus has always been box-office. You can tell by how the church, and in extension, religious organisations have been serving popcornentertainment by falling over themselves, angling to frolic in the corridors of power—from mashinani tomajuu. For a cleric, the hottest...
by Eddy Ashioya | Apr 20, 2023 | Chinedu Tales
The first thing to understand when laying down a comrade to rest is that a comrade never rests. They give up the ghost. They kufa. They chew. But they don’t rest. And a comrade is never buried when the sun is at high noon. No. It has to rain. Because rain is the tears...
by Eddy Ashioya | Apr 9, 2023 | ManTalk
So…my English teacher (teacher of English?) is one of those people who made it a criminal offense to start a sentence, much less a paragraph with ‘so..’. I never understood why. The thing is—from a writer’s point of view—is that you can use that word only once (maybe...
by Eddy Ashioya | Mar 30, 2023 | Chinedu Tales
There is a certain routine of life and I’m willing to blur the lines at the end of it, because as I get older, I have learned that I could be quite rigid, but I understand there are such shades of grey in life as in fiction. For instance, having dreadlocks and running...
by Eddy Ashioya | Mar 23, 2023 | Chinedu Tales
Look, I like to consider myself a brave, bold and beautiful man. I have applied for jobs the only qualification I had was that I was breathing; I have been sad and still said no to drugs when furaha was kulewa na marafiki. Heck, I have even dated in Nairobi, which if...
by Eddy Ashioya | Mar 15, 2022 | ManTalk
It is now exactly *checks notes* nine years since I took someone’s daughter for a date at Java. I was fresh off the high school boat, a greenhorn in matters red. I had been saving up for several terms, three to be exact, because Sauti Sol had cooed that taking a girl...
by Eddy Ashioya | Mar 15, 2022 | ManTalk
Back when I was a highly impressionable young man with a sepia tinted view of the world, I always looked at things in twos. I loved dating, I still do, but I used to, too. I consider this our first date, and I know you are a bit nervous but I want you to know this; I...
by Eddy Ashioya | Mar 15, 2022 | ManTalk
How To Advise A Man In Love: Do Not As the old romantic saying almost goes: if you love something, let it go – naturally while retaining a semblance of hope that it will come back. Is there anything left to say about that over-analysed institution, The Couple? What...
by Eddy Ashioya | Mar 15, 2022 | ManTalk
Look, I know what you are thinking. Another writer? Another guy to fill in the shoes in this high revolving door? And, what’s his name again? From where? And you are right. I no more want to bore you with primers than you want to count the stars. I feel like the new...
