Otiato Guguyu, Author at Newsroom by Maudhui

March 19, 2023 Otiato Guguyu

The tyranny of ‘King Dollar’

I heard about dollar propaganda even before I knew what it was, I sang I will never go to Moscow any more, more more. There is a big fat policeman by the door, door, door. Who will catch you by the collar and ask you for a dollar, and in my juvenile mind I must have understood this dollar was something valuable. But I scarcely had ideas about money, nor how it worked. I remember money as something for adults. If you were found with it you had been sent to a shop or had stolen it. It was something only adults could bestow upon…

Economy News

March 19, 2023 Otiato Guguyu

The currency of debt

As journalists, the cardinal rule is to tell even the most complicated story in a way ‘your grandmother’ in the village can understand. But here I was struggling to explain to my better half, NyarSindo, why her shopping is accommodating less items each month at a much higher price and the fact that the current prices will not go down even if Russia and Ukraine stop fighting or Baba gets to the doors of State House. All attempts to explain why 9.2 percent inflation, has been caused at least in part by an increase in tax on petroleum products and Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG), loan…

Corporate Health News

March 12, 2023 Otiato Guguyu

In Kenya, alcoholism is a mass disease

I did not touch any alcohol on my wedding night. I had pictured my wedding night before, and frankly I had not ever imagined myself, entirely sober. But I sat there elated with an ear to ear grin, as alcohol was passed around me, in front of me; I also participated in passing it around, then I turned to my bottle of mineral water. I was learning the taste of water and reading faces of the unfortunate looks the people drinking around me gave me before forgetting about my existence turning to laugh their hearts out in self absorbing alcoholic bliss. But I could take…

Economy News Technology

March 12, 2023 Otiato Guguyu

WhatsApp to the aid of pubs amidst a post-pandemic glut

Apishi’s number was recorded almost at the same time in two of my friends’ missed call logs. And it was not by accident that they hadn’t picked her calls. None was willing to return the call either. They were simply drifting away, avoiding her like the plague, and I was jesting with them as to why two adult men could not answer her and simply tell her the truth. Apishi was calling to offer them a mid-week drink at JB’s. I found the offer of a drink in the middle of January’s inflation as something to go for. But not so with my friends. One…

Corporate Economy Markets News

March 7, 2023 Otiato Guguyu

Banks as inflation busters

Inflation is like a sharp-eyed hawk swooping down on your earnings chick after chick, picking out your ability to use the same amount of salary to buy the same shopping each month. My people believe that if you paint the chicks, somehow the hawk will miss them and you stand a chance at more frequent protein-packed meals. Investing can be a way of beating inflation – if the returns on putting money into the stock market – are higher than the rate of inflation. If you had money in cash it will be worth less than if you bought a bank stock, earned dividends, and…

Featured

March 5, 2023 Otiato Guguyu

Cash is still King for the bouncing bellies of Camp Toyoyo

When I dream of playing football, I am happiest. The twisted view of the movement, the giddying roll of the ball in my dream as I twist with slight muscle for a move only Messi is capable of, I’m in heaven. And I always score a goal and double over a bellyful of laughter just like I used to, twenty-four years ago at Mayenje Primary school, rollicking in the grass feeling like Ronaldinho in his prime as king of football. But I have not dreamt about playing football in such a long time. Anxiety can play games on anyone in this uncertain economy. Especially us…

Brands Corporate Health News

March 5, 2023 Otiato Guguyu

A banking Midas touch on hospitals

Like any reasonable man, I do not like visiting hospitals. But working at the bureau, you get medical insurance and with a little discomfort, you rush to the hospital to satisfy that devil insurers call the moral hazard. I had agreed to return to the Nairobi Hospital but as soon as I saw those toll stations, I knew I would regret my decision. I know this question has been asked before and possibly answered, that maybe hospitals should drop the plan to charge parking fees. I have always come across this argument that once malls and hospitals are prohibited from charging, rogue motorists will troop…

Corporate Markets News

February 28, 2023 Otiato Guguyu

Why is it easier to gamble than to buy stocks?

The first time I gambled I was drunk as a fish in a Nairobi City casino believing nothing but luck had led my steps from my usual drinking places to an adult candy shop with all these coloured machines. I was beyond understanding rules on how cards worked and settled on the roulette spinning round the wheel of fortune while the man dressed like a butler explained that each spin of the wheel provides a multitude of options from single numbers, rows of numbers, or on adjacent numbers. A player also may play colors, odd or even numbers, among others. I bought some chips and I…

Lifestyle News

February 26, 2023 Otiato Guguyu

Rise of the selfie

Most photographers I have met do not like to have their photos taken and because I do not like to take photos, I thought maybe I was cut to be a photographer, too. But reality shows I am a pretender, just because I can get one clean shot out of a few blurry ones or can comment about that perfectly timed photo, I cannot change a thing on the settings if you give me a camera. So I asked a photographer why is it they do not like to have their photos taken? He said maybe it is an industry quirk, they are the men and women…

In Kenya, ‘Nikw’a ngwete’ famine of dying while holding money unfolds

A severe drought—stretching from the hitherto food-rich farms in Tetu on the slopes of Mt Kenya to the sunbaked pasture grasslands in Isiolo and Marsabit counties—is evoking awful memories of a similar experience about 40 years ago when a nationwide drought led to a famine in Ukambani popularly referred to ‘Yua ya nikw’a ngwete’ meaning ‘I will die while holding’. Under nikw’a ngwete famine in 1983/1984, there was no food to buy in the markets even for those with money. And now, as farmers across Kenya grapple with the sixth failed rain season in a row, the ongoing provision of government-subsidized fertilizer is offering little…