Living Memories - Al Kags — Strategist, Social Entrepreneur, Writer

March 8, 2022

The barriers to citizen engagement

The Open Institute works in two main ways as regards government - citizen relations. First, we promote proactive government transparency and second, we work with citizen groups and CSOs to foster active citizenship. Government transparency has in the past decade been achieved, to some level of success, by ...

August 11, 2021

A teenager’s pregnancy changed the destinies of two people forever.

Here's the story of how Benjamin Katana dropped out of school to become a breadwinner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc9w9dPUlPk Benjamin tells the story of how he became a breadwinner When I started telling you the stories of Kenyans who don't exist despite the fact that you see them every day as ...

June 14, 2020

Living Memories: I married a paramount chief when I was a teenager.

I am passionate about learning from the past and I have spent years talking to people who were alive in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. I just wanted to know how ordinary people lived in those extraordinary times. I wrote a book called Living Memories ...

November 18, 2015

#OdeToYouth Lesson 5: Forgive your parents and yourself

When I was in my early 20s, I was very angry person. It didn't take much to get me to fly off the handle and over-react with wild gesticulations and loud admonitions. A small slight would cause me to shout at a hapless person and ...

November 4, 2015

#OdeToYouth – Lesson 3: (Guest blogger) – No success without Sacrifice.

My friend, who writes the #PassionatelyKenyan blog is also an ex-youth like me - she is my age. She is a C-level executive for a large government organisation and I can tell you for sure, she has come a looong way. Here's her unedited story. I am at ...

November 1, 2015

#OdeToYouth: Lesson 2 – Learn how to sweep a floor

My last day of high school was a Thursday. My mother, one of several accomplished hoteliers and caterers in our family, had arranged that I would start apprenticeship at the Tropical African Dream Hotel in Malindi. Apprentices at the hotel were essentially being given practical ...

October 30, 2015

#OdetoYouth: Lesson 1 – Learn hard, Make a brave choice

I left Malindi, where I grew up for a major part of my life on January 6th 2000. I knew that moving to the great big city - at a time that my parents had different ideas of what I should do after high school, ...

July 10, 2015

A grand old man passes away, leaving life-long lessons behind.

When I met Mungai Gatoro in 2009, I was awed by his simple eloquence - regardless of what language he was speaking. He spoke Gikuyu, Kimeru, Kiembu, Kiswahili, English and French flawlessly. It was interesting to watch him outside his homestead speaking with different people in ...

May 18, 2014

Living Memories: a story from Lokitaung, Kenya

Today, I want to share with you one story. From Lokitaung. There used to be a prison there during the colonial era. After independence it has had little relevance in people's lives. A few years ago, I happened to be there, and I met an ...

June 2, 2012

Long live the Diamond Queen, Elizabeth II

Elizabeth II is celebrating 60 years of her reign of the United Kingdom and its 15 territories. I have no real idea how this affects me - certainly it has not direct bearing in my life that I can see, but I, like many Kenyans ...

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