From thoughts into words

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From thoughts into words by Rose Kahendi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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Mgeni siku ya kwanza...

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Remember when we were kids in primary school, and we had to sit through endless hours of Kiswahili, memorizing semi , methali and the like? And remember how Mr Macharia was constantly making us use that phrase, “ Chembilecho wahenga… ” in our essays? How about “ Wahenga hawakuropokwa na maneno waliposema… ” And then we’d have to complete the phrase with a saying or proverb that captured the apt sentiment for that paragraph. “ Haba na haba hujaza kibaba ” was a great favourite of mine. Apparently, those were choice condiments, guaranteed to spice up your essay and get you one step closer to that perfect score: 19 out of 20. (Mr Macharia would never give anyone the full 20 points.) We thought they were silly phrases back then, but still used them because we wanted good grades. And today … well I never thought I’d say this, but those old folks we were always referring to in our essays sure were wise. My life today is a testament to the deep truth encoded in those proverbs, sayings, r...
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It's time we addressed the ethnic elephant in the room

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