Mwalimu Dee writes poems the way elders tell stories — slowly, in the dark, until everyone leans in.
Mwalimu Dee began writing verse on the back of exercise books, in the years he taught Kiswahili to restless afternoon classes in Eastlands. What started as notes in the margins became a decade-long practice of turning ordinary Nairobi — matatu horns, tin roofs, church bells at dawn — into lines worth reading aloud.
His work moves between English and Kiswahili without apology, borrowing rhythm from sermons, proverbs and the call-and-response of the choir stalls he grew up in. Every poem is written first by hand, in the same worn notebook, before it ever meets a stage or a page.
Home is the smell of paraffin lamps / and a mother's voice counting coins / by candlelight, calling it enough.
Read the full poemShe spoke in proverbs I am still translating, / each one a seed I did not know / I was planting in myself.
Read the full poemUnder a sky the colour of old brass, / Nairobi hums its one long hymn — / horns, hawkers, and the rain that always comes.
Read the full poemOne email a month. No noise, just verse.