"The Art Deco Buildings of Nairobi" is the latest work by South African writer Barbara Adair. More than a study of architecture, the book documents the memories and histories of Nairobi's African Asian communities, particularly Indian Kenyan families who transformed Art Deco designs into spaces that reflected their own traditions, aspirations and ways of life.

Anthropologists and historians have long distinguished between polygyny—the practice of one man having multiple wives—and infidelity or promiscuity. Across many African societies, polygyny operated within communal structures. Wives generally knew one another. Senior wives held authority. Children belonged not only to parents but to extended families. Marriage itself was understood as a union between lineages rather than merely two individuals.

Cut off from supply lines, the fighters chewed bitter wild roots that left their mouths numb. They drank from cold streams thick with silt. Each night, their stomachs clenched with hunger, their bodies curled against each other for warmth beneath canopies that dripped rain like tears. Yet even in exhaustion, they stared into the darkness and saw freedom shimmering—close enough to feel, yet still beyond reach.

Theatre is like juggling multiple balls at once. You’re in character, but you’re also aware of the audience, your scene partners, and the technical aspects of the show. Occasionally, there’s a moment—maybe fifteen minutes in a two-hour performance—when everything aligns, and you’re fully inside the character. Those moments are magical.

In Thegio Location of Nyeri, where the resistance burned hottest, Senior Chief Waithaje met a brutal death beneath a Mukuyu tree—fifty men against one, his loyalty to the colonial authorities sealing his fate. To the government, he was a hero. To the Mau Mau, a traitor.

The artists talked about issues facing Kenya, from the economy, to the taxes, to the capitation funds, the debts, the abductions, and the violence.