Author: Kiarie Salim

Salim Kiarie Mbogo is a Kenyan writer, community historian, and cultural educator based in Nairobi, Kenya. His work focuses on the preservation of oral tradition, intergenerational knowledge transfer, and the living memory practices of rural East African communities. He has documented community resilience across Kenya's central highlands, writing at the intersection of ancestral wisdom, food sovereignty, and African identity. Salim contributes to Ubuntu Village as a field correspondent and guest writer, bringing direct witness to the organization's East Africa programs in Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria. His writing asks what it means to carry a people's story forward—and what is lost when that story is interrupted.

The African Philosophy of Ubuntu: Why Your Humanity Is Connected to Mine

Black Kenyan neighbors of all ages building a family home together at golden hour, showing the African philosophy of Ubuntu in action

Ubuntu Philosophy · Community Power · Guest Writers “There was an understanding that life was not meant to be lived entirely alone.” The African philosophy of Ubuntu begins with a simple claim: none of us becomes fully human alone. In this guest essay, Nairobi-based writer Salim Kiarie Mbogo asks what that claim asks of us […]

The Price of Being Strong: What Happens to People Who Never Get the Chance to Break Down?

A Black Kenyan father resting at dusk on a wooden bench beside his daughter, a quiet picture of the price of being strong

Health & Wellness · Community Power · Guest Writers Your worth is not measured by how much you can carry for everyone else. Every family, workplace and community has a person everyone leans on. In this piece, Nairobi-based writer Salim Kiarie Mbogo asks a question we rarely stop to consider: when everyone depends on someone […]

Before the Applause: The Road Young Artists Travel in Kenya

Young artist in Kenya rehearsing a dance beside a phone propped on books

African History & Culture · Community Power · Guest Writers The lights may make the artist visible. The work began long before they came on. Young artists in Kenya carry a road the audience rarely sees: the long commute, the unpaid rehearsal, the family conversation about a “real job,” the audition that went nowhere, and […]

Traditional African Cultures and Practices That May Shock You to the Core—and the Meaning Behind Them

Grandmother in beaded collars teaching a young woman under an acacia, traditional African practices across generations

Ancestral Wisdom · African History & Culture Behind every ancient ritual is a group of human beings trying to make sense of life. Traditional African practices are too often shown to the world as spectacle, stripped of the people who hold them and the questions they were built to answer. In this piece, Nairobi-based writer […]

Kenya’s Beautiful Mysteries Part 3: The Places Where Nature Does Something Unexpected

Massive volcanic boulders along a riverbed in semi-arid Baringo Kenya with a natural spring emerging between ancient rocks surrounded by green vegetation — Kenya natural mysteries geology wildlife

ANCESTRAL WISDOM · SCIENCE MEETS SPIRIT About This Series In Part 1, we asked what happens when Kenyan folklore and modern science look at the same landscape. In Part 2, we visited lakes that turn red, change their chemistry and boil beside flamingos. Now, in Part 3, we follow the trail deeper — to a […]

Kenya’s Beautiful Mysteries: The Complete Series Guide

A Kenyan elder in traditional ochre and red shuka stands on a volcanic crater rim, looking out over Kenya's Rift Valley at dawn, geothermal steam rising and a vast lake shimmering below

ANCESTRAL WISDOM · SCIENCE MEETS SPIRIT · COMMUNITY POWER “Kenya is richer when we allow both questions to be heard: what does this place mean to us, and how does this place work?” There are places in Kenya where the land has something to say and two very different traditions have been listening. A rock […]

Kenya’s Beautiful Mysteries Part 2: Lakes That Change, Boil and Rise

Kenya Rift Valley lakes mysteries: crimson soda lake with flamingos and rising steam at golden hour, escarpment backdrop.

ANCESTRAL WISDOM · SCIENCE MEETS SPIRIT Perhaps the most beautiful mystery of all is not that Kenya has strange places. It is that we are still learning how many stories those places can tell. There are places in Kenya where nature behaves just strangely enough to make you wonder whether somebody forgot to tell the […]

Kenya’s Beautiful Mysteries: Where Stories Meet Science

A sweeping view of Kenya's Rift Valley at golden hour with steam rising from volcanic terrain—the landscape where community stories and geological science hold knowledge together

ANCESTRAL WISDOM · COMMUNITY POWER Kenya has a talent for making visitors stop mid-sentence. A rock appears to weep beside a highway. Water seems to ignore gravity. A spring tastes as though someone quietly opened a soda bottle underground. A vast crater carries stories of ghosts, war and prayer. The easy response is to pick […]

The Richest Man I Ever Met Owned Nothing: Complete Series Guide

Villagers gathered around a man speaking in front of a corrugated metal house

ANCESTRAL WISDOM · COMMUNITY POWER “How does a man who owned so little leave behind a crowd this large?” Hundreds came to bury him. He lived in a tiny iron-sheet house. He owned almost nothing. Yet every person in that village carried something he had given them — and none of it could be counted. […]

The Price of a Smile: Complete Series Guide

Elderly Black Kenyan woman with warm genuine smile selling roasted groundnuts at a busy Nairobi bus stage

ANCESTRAL WISDOM · COMMUNITY POWER “A smile cannot solve someone’s problems. But it can remind them they are not invisible.” Nairobi had a way of making people forget each other. In the middle of all that noise, very few people still looked at one another. This is the story of one who never stopped — […]

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