Mutuma Mathiu

2 days ago | nation.africa | Mutuma Mathiu

On climate change, man has three options: one, mitigation, that is reduce greenhouse gas emissions, two, adaptation, meaning learn how to live on a hotter, more hostile planet with less potable water and more flooded coastlines, or, three, suffering, which is basically to die, starve, drown and otherwise shed a lake of tears.

1 week ago | nation.africa | Mutuma Mathiu

Maybe it is the lunar cycle casting a spell on my mind. Perhaps, it is the house in which my astrological star is at that has hitched a cosmic Bluetooth to my brain and taken control of my thoughts. But I just can’t keep my mind on the important and urgent things. Last week, I dwelt at length on some entertaining pettiness. This week I have gone into a psychotic loop on some dream at a time when there are weighty issues which require to be dissected. It is not any dream though.

2 weeks ago | nation.africa | Mutuma Mathiu

There is a benefit to keeping wild, overgrown hair and an unkempt beard. I have discovered that monkeys, and even the more civilised cobras by the way, tend to respect hair. Monkeys, which, in general, treat women with annoying disrespect, take off on seeing a luxuriant goatee. The cobras keep a low profile in their holes and their hisses to a decorous minimum when there is an unkempt man abroad.

3 weeks ago | nation.africa | Mutuma Mathiu

If budget makers and financial masterminds “forgot” a whole exam, how sure are we they did not forget to put aside money for bullets and oil for the tanks in this year’s budget? Accountants, popularly and pejoratively referred to as “bean counters” are famous for their tunnel vision and obsessive attention to detail. They never round up numbers, however big.

4 weeks ago | nation.africa | Mutuma Mathiu

The annual Economic Survey and the ugly picture it paints is only a hint of the profoundly terrifying moment many Kenyans are living through. The bottom seems to have fallen out of our lives. The abjectly poor are no longer just peasants and squatters, poverty has taken root among professionals and small business owners.