[This piece was submitted to the Future of Life Institute as part of a global AI World Building competition. The full submission containing more material was selected among the top 20 finalists. If you are reading this before June 15 2022, like the finalist announcement on Twitter and send us your feedback via the main…
The tender human heart has its seasons: Its summer’s joy, but sorrows when it snows. When silence comes, and peace surrounds, Its autumn falls, then solitude, its golden spring! Composed by V on 30th November, 2009 04:57
I remember when it first dawned on me that I was not just merely perpetually sad, negative, unmotivated or for the most part indifferent, but, that I was actually suffering from depression. At the time, I was only old enough to sprout three or four strings of hair on my chin, and I had not…
The pungent fumes of cheap cigarettes had chased me away from the back of the bar – where I liked to sit – to the counter. I found a spot that was being bathed by the evening breeze hissing through a broken pane and pulled a stool. It’s fine, I thought, no need to fuss…
Underachievement in Gifted Students It is a warm, Saturday afternoon, and I am sitting in the library of a certain National school in the distant outskirts of Nairobi. I cast my eyes about and admire the impressive collection of books all around. In front of me, a quiet Form 2 student flips through an old…
“I, Uhuru Kenyatta, in full realization of the high calling…do swear that I will be faithful, and bear true allegiance to the Republic of Kenya…and that I will obey, protect and uphold the sovereignty, integrity and dignity of the people of Kenya.“ These were the words that, at the time, the President-elect of the Republic…
The warm sunshine struggled through the heavy fog that hang above the town. The morning seemed calm and quiet, such that one would be led to believe that all was well with the world. From a red Corrado that had just sped into the hospital’s parking lot, emerged a man. It was 7.00 am. The…
The sharp clank of a metal bar colliding with bone filled the midnight air. A scream, and then silence. The weapon glowed dimly as it was spun, melting into the air with the typical transparency of a rotating blade. Beneath an amber street lamp in Nairobi, a man lay dead. At arm’s length, another man…
To my fallen comrades at the North East, a young boy now clenches his fists at the Harakat al – Shabaab al-Mujahideen. His civility has been his weakness, a weakness now discarded after living through the greatest waves of barbarity ever witnessed in post dictatorial Kenya. In him, he says, “…they now have a new…
By thought and pain mind and heart and wrought; From sin refrain, for life’s so sweet unfraught.