chelangat

Today, the 14 th day of May, Muslims the world over mark with immense celebration the end of the Holy Month of Ramadan. It’s the first time I get to experience the nearly palpable emotion around this day because, in the main, of all the towns I’ve been to, Mombasa stands out as far as Muslim population goes (I bet they make slightly over 40 percent of the total population) and two, this is the first Eid I spend outdoors. There is remarkable joy on the face of every Muslim I encounter. They are easily identifiable today, more than any other day. Women are dressed in colorful boubous and hijabs, their hands adorned with golden jewelry and henna decorations and exchanging spirited “Eid Mubarak!” and “Salaam Aleikum!” greetings unlike in the past 30 days where at this time of the day, they would sound so weak, as though the voices were being forced from deep underneath layers of empty intestines and not from the neck which is where the voice box is located. I wish the latter was a unive...

  Linda rose lazily from the bed to adjust the louvers and increased the fan speed to its maximum. It swirled angrily, ruffling a sheaf of papers on a table that sat at the center of the single-roomed house. She reached for them, put them together, and placed a padlock on top to keep them in place. Then she went back to bed. As always, it was a searing hot day. One never really got accustomed to such crazy temperatures, she thought to herself. It was a quarter to noon. She still wore her light blue lace nightie. Her friend Mercy was by the sink, nearly four meters away. She had a floral lesso wrapped under her arms and knotted behind her neck making it look like a bare-back dress. She was doing the previous night’s dishes which had started to smell. They had just woken up. They had gone partying the previous night and had arrived at 2:00 am, inebriated. Mercy was feeling nauseous as she always did every time she had one too many. The last time she had thrown up so bad that she had ...