Born in the village of Ihithe, near Nyeri, in the Central Highlands of Kenya on April 1, 1940, Wangari Maathai was a vivacious woman who was passionate about the environment. She did not shrink from a fight to save her cause, not even against the highest powers on the land.

There are only a few things that get a writer giddy with excitement. Quite obviously getting published and winning a literary award rank highly. However, in my book, attending a literary festival combines both joys because it is a window into a possible future in which one is a published and award-winning author!

When I started having sex I used to think the end was the only thing. And by end I mean sexual climax. Of course the end mattered but it didn’t take long to learn the process of attaining the climax was also important. It is the thing that differentiates the sexual ability of girls. When I was a novice in my kind of work I was not sure why men pay for sex. Was it because they were sexually starved or because they were seeking variety? If it was the former then the end is what would matter, but if it were the latter, then the process would be crucial.

On September 27th the Kenyan Boys Choir will share the same stage as Grammy Award winner, Nelly Furtado, Award winning actor, film director and political activist, Danny Glover among other notable individuals at the We-Day festival in Toronto, Canada.

The Boys secured a slot after performing a Luo rendition of Nelly Furtado’s favourite song, ‘Powerless’, during the opening of an art centre at Kisaruni Girls High School in the Maasai Mara this May.

Her name is Wangui. Where she comes from, a woman’s worth is weighed by the success of her children. If the children are sons, the expectations rose a notch. Daniel, her only child, is 8 months old now.

Water drips from the shirt she is hanging on the clothesline onto her slipper-shod feet. “Sasa mama Dani!” a neighbour calls out from a window overhanging the drying yard. “Poa sana mama Alex.” Wangui can’t stand that word ‘poa’. What kind of response is that anyway? Answering in any other way would however offend the neighbour and be considered haughty. Wangui has had 2 years to learn.

There is every reason to trust a man in his forties, who drives a Jeep and has several copies of The Economist magazine on the back seat. Such a man if he speaks in a deep voice, is collected when picking a girl, and genuinely seems interested in your welfare gives the impression he is self assured; not one to play boyhood games of the twenties. But that is not always the case like I found last night.

Billed to be the biggest comedy night on Kenyan soil, ‘Night of a thousand laughs’ held at Bomas of Kenya last month was truly a hoot. The line-up featured Klint the Drunk and Gordon (Nigeria), Pablo (Uganda), Tshepo Mogale (South Africa) and Kenya’s very own Eric Omondi.

It’s 3:00a.m. You have been drinking for hours on end. You shuffle out of a club in Westlands, rummaging through your pockets for loose change to tip the security chap who was keeping an eye on your car. You find a few coins, some crumbled notes and a paper bearing a phone number and a name: Wendy. Hmm…I could have sworn she was called Winnie, you mumble under your breath as you slide into the driver’s seat and bang the door shut. Oh, the dregs of the night, the results of debauchery. What would be life without a note bearing a phone number from Wendy…or Winnie?