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History,Our Story

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  By Kevin Kogo Ian Herdason thought he was immortal. And that his father’s 3,000 acres of Kahawa in Nyeri were all the world needed to survive. So he taught himself Kikuyu and spent his life building what would become today’s National Intelligence Service. While Ian was busy smearing mud on his face to blend in with the locals in Mathira, Dedan Kimathi's impatience had morphed into full-blown paranoia. He was a man trying to glue together an army that had given up the cause. It was too much. Jomo Kenyatta had been gone for three years now. Everyone Kimathi had started the fight with was dead. Even the legendary Stanley Mathenge. The spirit was broken. Dedan was now a man pointing a gun at anyone who dared disagree. It was August 1955—three years since Governor Baring declared a state of emergency. When the gun didn’t work, Dedan turned to the only two things a lonely man can cling to: Religion and cigarettes. A General now self-declared Prime Minister, spending six hours a day on ...
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Is the Ballot the Solution?

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  By Kevin Kogo Is the Ballot the Solution? Daniel Moi is dead. He’s been dead for five years. He died peacefully, surrounded by family and friends, his final years a golden sunset of great-grandchildren’s visits, state-of-the-art doctors, and honorary awards.   Unlike his victims—bodies dumped, maimed, rotting in thickets and riverbanks, broken by unlawful detentions, trumped-up charges, and torture chambers—Moi slipped away smiling. Retired by the ballot to his vast estates, he faded silently into the night, untouched by his past: 24 years of absolute terror.   Then came Emilio Mwai Kibaki and his Rainbow Coalition, promising to save a drowning nation. Kenyans roared into 2003, hungry for change. But within 100 days, the cracks showed. Scandals. Corruption. The Coalition MoU collapsed. Tribalism festered. Authoritarianism slithered back—exiles, enforced disappearances, media raids, extrajudicial killings.   Kenyans, refusing a refurbished KANU, voted...
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GOONS

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  By Kevin Kogo  They came with hired hands,   not signs, but switchblades—   smiles like split receipts.   The state’s dirty change   jangling in their pockets,   each coin a betrayal.   "Make it ugly," someone whispered,   so they did.   Broke windows we didn’t own,   threw stones we didn’t throw,   set fires we didn’t light.   All while grinning,   like this was just another gig—   another day, another bloodstain.   They wore our struggle like a cheap suit,   ill-fitting, borrowed,   stained with someone else’s agenda.   Cops hugged them like brothers,   then turned and clubbed ours.   We saw it—   the way they checked their phones   mid-chaos,   waiting for mobile money confirmation   before throwing the next brick.   Traitors don’t alwa...
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Silence is Betrayal

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  By Kevin Kogo Silence Is Betrayal.   To know, to see, to comprehend the grotesque injustice the state and its machinery inflict upon its own citizens and still choose the cowardice of fence-sitting is to admit that your education, however expensive, has rotted into nothing. You are a collaborator in your own oppression.   A young man—a father, a husband, the only son of an aging parent—was torn from his humble home 400 kilometers away. Dragged onto a bodaboda, hurled into unmarked Subaru, beaten, tortured for hours, and finally strangled to death. But the monsters weren’t done. They paraded his grieving father—exhausted from a night-long journey—onto a cold bench at Central Police Station, left him to wither for hours, then spat in his face with a lie: "Your son banged his head on a wall killing himself ."  Albert Ojwang’s death didn’t just break the camel’s back—it shattered our faith in this system. We were the obedient ones. The ones who marched with f...
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Happy Madaraka Day

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  By Kevin Kogo Happy Madaraka Day 13 years.   A whole decade choking on smoke and silence,   bare feet splitting on thorns,   unarmed—just fists and fury,   untreated—just wounds and whispering spirits.   200,000.   Not numbers—   bodies stacked in the mud,   mouths stuffed with forgotten names,   bones left to bleach under government sun.   The forest remembers.   The trees still hum with bullet holes,   the mugumo roots cradle old screams,   the dirt hoards the weight of dreadlocks   shorn and scattered like cursed seed.   They called it victory.   But what is a victory when the hangman’s rope   still swings in the wind 62 years later?   When the generals’ ghosts rot in unmarked soil,   and the new masters wear their faces?   Today, we scrape your memory from the dirt.   W...
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Frontline Romance

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  By Kevin Kogo    We never kissed.   Just stood close enough in the chaos   that your sweat mixed with mine   when the police trucks came.   You had that look—   not the kind that makes poets write shit,   but the kind that makes men stupid.   The kind that makes you charge armored vehicles   with nothing but a rock and a prayer.   I remember how you held your sign   like it could actually change something.   How you screamed yourself hoarse   for people you’d never meet.   (How I wanted to be one of them.)   Then the stun grenades hit.   You grabbed my arm—not romance,   just survival instinct.   But for three seconds,   I was yours.   Afterward, we shared water from the same bottle.   Your lips didn’t touch where mine had been.   I watched you walk away ...
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Rat Race

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 By Kevin Kogo I woke today and realized   I have been building a house inside a machine.   The walls are made of unanswered emails,   the floors—worn thin from pacing   between what I owe and what I’ve lost.   Every morning I oil the gears with my silence,   let the conveyor belt of expectations   pull me through another day   of assembling a life   that isn’t mine.   I saw my face in the bathroom mirror   at 3:17 PM—   a stranger with my eyes,   hollowed out by fluorescent lights   and the weight of pretending   this is what living looks like.   They call it "work"   but I know it by its real name:   a slow excavation of the soul,   shoveling myself into piles   labeled efficient  professional  disposable.   One day I will stop   and the machine won’t no...
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