🍹 Picket Fence

L: Mliamua mnachoma nchi.

H: Kiswahili is one of the languages you're fluent in?

L: Continuity and relatability improve if that hypothesis is true.

H: Your Google Translate seems to be a bit off, though. Kenya isn't on fire.

L: What was Wednesday, then?

H: Apart from the Kessentials relaunch?

L: Yes, dummy.

H: Um-- Oh, you mean the demonstrations?

L: I love how every new one is supposed to be “the mother of all demonstrations.”

H: Rapid-fire generational changes. Anyway, why would you think that amounts to Kenya being set ablaze?

L: It kinda feels like that, theoretically, at least. I don't think anyone could've envisioned such an unfolding of events, even a year ago when the political temperature was at a fever pitch.

H: It’s been one hell of a rollercoaster ride. But lots of things have changed between then and now.

L: I hate to bring this back to movies again, but-

H: Yaay. You’re enhancing your story-telling skills.

L: -it looks like the dystopic end we're shown before being rewound to the past where everything was rosy, and the characters couldn't imagine that their lives would soon spiral out of control.

H: Alarmist.

L: The news about it is plenty muted in international media; I guess the French protests are more newsworthy. What are they vandalising and looting and getting killed for?

H: You'd need a whole political history to really get it.

L: You took History in high school, no?

H: Yeah, but I only internalised as much as was enough to pass the next exam.

L: How'd that work out for you?

H: History being one of my only two As in KCSE.

L: Darn. Thought I was onto something.

H: You kind of were. The journey was riddled with undeserved Ds and Es, but we're meant to believe that was all in service of the refinement of our A-scoring potential.

L: The structure of “standardised” national exams is crazy.

H: Despite all that, I can't exhaustively tell you why Kenyans are simultaneously politically charged and neutral.

L: Seems irresponsible to be unbothered by the undercurrents creating your country's political tides.