Sikiliza

Binyavanga and Chiqy  Love Lives here RIP Dear Sweswe, What I wouldn’t give for you to walk in here with that bellow laugh of yours and loud voice....calling out my name. “Chiqy, sasa!?” Thank you for being an amazing big brother. For pushing me to be true to myself no matter what. You were so good at ordering us around to take care of ourselves and very bad at listening to the same advice. And we love you because you are love itself. You saw the power that creativity and freedom could offer and spent your life sharing this vision with others. You taught us to find and most importantly listen to our inner voice and let that voice speak its truths. And even when the voice told us difficult things and surfaced the inner conflicts we battled within ourselves. We love you for this because you knew that love not hate would transform this world. You challenged us to push back and question institutions of power that obscure and dull us; that erase our sense individ...

Binyavanga Wainaina One of my earliest memories about my brother is me telling on him to Baba after the bathtub was left running and it flooded and messed up part of the house. There was serious damage on the parquet floor near the bathroom; it was easy to accuse him, he used the bath last and was kind enough to draw me a bath as I was next in. In the ways I was known to be absent-minded and fleeted off to say hi to the dogs outside promptly forgetting about bath-time. When I got back into the house, it was disaster galore when the flood was discovered. And Baba who could be sweet, could also be a loud thundering force when he got pissed. Blaming Binya was easy and I could not look him in the eye after that when he got a major spank and was asked to mop up the mess. He took that hit for the team without so much as a squeak, and he never justified himself or tried to explain.  Filled with guilt, I wanted to help him clean the mess but dare not as he had this silent sullen ...