In the last month, I have had extended chats with two of my friends. One is a published Kenyan author. He has written a good novel, and a number of children’s books one of which my daughter loved before one of her play mates massacred (Kenyan board books please?). By all measures, he is a successful and active author. He however has a full time…
Read MoreReading books is fun, but not all types of books are fun to read. However, we read the”not so much fun” stuff, because it is educative. This is where my reading of management text comes in. Most of the books in this area are not at all fun to read, but they are educative. Death by Meeting by Patrick Lencioni is one of those rare management texts…
Read MoreIf I remember my high school literature theory right, one of the key elements of a good story is a resolution of the main conflict – things coming together at the end. For some reason, most fiction authors, especially Western fiction authors, interpret resolution to mean a happy ending, or at least a peaceful one. The fact that my fiction reads were mostly Western growing…
Read MoreThe first thing that hits you hard when you walk into Aristoc Booklex in Acacia Mall Kampala is the sharp smell of new books. Sharper than I’ve experienced in a bookshop. Then you notice that there are books. Books everywhere. Not so neatly arranged that you fear touching them, or wrapped in polythene as many bookshops do. No. The books are arranged in all sorts of…
Read MoreThis week I’m in Kampala for work, and with a lot of meetings lined up, I have had 4 options for transport: Hire a driver daily for two weeks. Why not hire a car?Well, while Kenyans can drive in Uganda for up to 6 months with the Kenyan driver’s license, I do not feel well equipped to drive on Kampala roads. If you think Nairobi drivers are…
Read MoreMarie Kondo has built a career and brand around helping people live in tidy homes. After reading a review of her book (The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying Up) on The Guardian, I got curious. Why is there a book on tidying up? This is one of those areas you think we’ve figured out already and don’t need books about. How wrong I was. In…
Read MoreBarbara Ehrenreich attempts to crack this in her book, Bright-Sided (How Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America), where she traces what we know as “positive thinking” and “self help” to its origins in late 1800s America, and the dominant religion of the time. The Calvinisim brought by white settlers to New England could be described as a system of socially imposed depression. Its God…
Read MoreFirst a disclaimer: This post is about bad customer care, but it also has girly clothes talk. If girly clothes talk bores you to tears, please forgive me. Also from the header, it is about an expensive clothes store so if you are in the “be grateful you can afford it many Kenyans can’t” team, please skip the post. Let us start with a bit…
Read MoreA few years back I wrote this post after buying cake from Nakumatt which I discovered to be stale on getting home. Upon returning the cake on the same day, I was treated with suspicion and I swore to never buy cake there again. I compared Nakumatt with Amazon, which treated me with absolute trust, despite the fact that I am based in this continent which is home to the…
Read MoreWhen a person shares their life story, it is supposed to serve a dual purpose: to inspire other people to achieve what the person has achieved, or to educate the audience. Learning from the experiences of others is said to be the cheapest way to learn. That said, the internet age makes it incredibly difficult to learn from others’ experience. See we have been brought up…
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