In the year 2000 I landed home, for my mother’s funeral, and found myself in the small steamy office of some security official at Mombasa airport. I did not have a yellow fever certificate. A group of red-eyed bureaucrats had cornered me as I picked up my luggage. I tried to plead, using my mother’s [...]

It takes a local to show you the ropes in a place like Nairobi, and that’s what Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina does. Listen to his candid revelations about the enterprising ways residents take care of business when the government’s interests are elsewhere, why some people distance themselves from tribal connections, and what works and what [...]