Wangui Kimari

For the last year, Andrew Franklin, a former US marine and now security consultant in Kenya, has been advocating for the building of a separation barrier between Kenya and Somalia.

“React or be Dead” is a campaign initiated by many Black communities and movements in Salvador, Bahia, and that has been taken up nationally, with the objective of organizing to fight against the police brutality, prison industrial complex and genocidal state of affairs in their communities.

I am not a slave. Say it again. I am not a slave. These are words that have been getting Afrikans into trouble for a long time, and our present and our imaginaries are often shaped by an acquaintance with the trouble that will follow any expressive recognition of our ownership of self.

I have not sat in many Kenyan embassies around the world. In fact, I would rather not. But a few months ago I went to one such embassy in the northern hemisphere awaiting some unavoidable assistance.

One sunny Saturday morning in April this year, over 30 of us sat in a community hall in Mlango Kubwa, Mathare, listening and reflecting.

When my sister was in primary school (the school where we all were had a supposedly pious nature that was the talk of town), like all of the students within this institution she had to take a mandatory ‘ethics’ class.