When an Eastlands matatu route goes cashless, veteran conductor Wambua discovers that the new system can count money but not people. His old fare tin, once loud with coins and gossip, becomes the last witness to a kind of work Nairobi only misses after deleting it.
In a Kasarani kitchen, a separated couple pins their civility to the fridge in neat colours, only to discover their toddler has been reading the timetable as a map of love. The city applauds the paperwork; the child asks what the boxes really mean.
On an Embakasi nganya, paid adverts are supposed to make the evening commute feel clever and expensive. Then one screen starts showing the private debts, bargains, and borrowed respectability of regular passengers, and the matatu learns that attention is never as harmless as it looks.
When a wrong fertilizer-voucher SMS lands in Kevin’s Nairobi bedsitter, his mother, uncle, and landlord all read it as proof that he is finally becoming a man of land. By the time the sack reaches his room, the mistake has already grown roots.
A glossary of the Sheng and Swahili words that run through these stories: chama, mteja, harambee, and the rest, with the meanings they actually carry.
When an aging Thika Road matatu needs brake repairs before inspection, its passengers contribute money—and immediately become noisy shareholders in the vehicle that carries them.
A wrong WhatsApp screenshot turns Sunday announcements into a tender public tribunal about family, money, privacy, and mercy.
A Class Seven boy in Eastleigh asks a patient app the questions adults are too tired to hear, until his mother discovers what the phone has become in their home.
The CBD closes without warning. The pavement organizes itself.
At a Nairobi school gate, a boy watches his mother turn love into paperwork at the fee-verification desk. A tender-wry story about school fees, dignity, and the purple stamp that lets a child back into class.
An estate loses water and accidentally forms a government.
There are things you can only say over meat. This is about those.