Tim Querengesser

shaking the ethiopian baby tree

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia: For several minutes, the entrance of the chic Lime Tree restaurant becomes a colourful spectacle the Ethiopian bar kittens…

ras tafaris retirement ranch

SHASHAMANE, Ethiopia Brother Zulu is … slowly … looking for a phone number. The elder painstakingly leafs through pages in his black…

Passed over at Passover?

GONDER, Ethiopia What makes someone Jewish? Standing beside what appears to be the largest pile of matza ever baked, a cheery Getu Zemene makes the…

Finding the exits

KIBERA, Kenya While we eat lunch in a packed restaurant — one I suddenly realize has only one door — Salim Mohamed explains why his eyes…

meeting grandma obama and other african fiction

ALEGO-KOGELO, Kenya To discover the source of the Nile, David Livingstone wandered Africa for more than a decade.

my curtain call in kenya approaches

LAKE NAIVASHA As David and I walked through the moonlit meadow, pieces of Kenya that I will miss and bits I hope to forget revealed themselves to me…

a battered country unites behind its most famous son

NAIROBI Barack Obama could never win a presidential election in Kenya. It’s not that he isn’t popular here.

dare we utter the word

It was a chance encounter with a nearly forgotten friend. The two had bumped into one another in their home village of Molo, a blip of civilization…

an ignored call to reveille

NAIROBI As blank-eyed men hacked away lives with machetes and women packed families on trucks to flee with their lives, 45,000 Kenyan soldiers sat…

a very old womans power to unite

ZANZIBAR Bi Kidude bint Baraka squeezes my hand so hard I worry my fingers might break. She has just left the stage after at the internationally…

how cocktails can shape news from africa

NAIROBI They picked up the bodies from the streets of N’Djamena on Wednesday, when the fighting stopped.

The (new) tribe has spoken

NAIROBI Kenya is falling apart in a very organized way. Yet another week of violence here has nonetheless seen the emergence of a whole new chapter…

kenyas next political class looks a lot like the current one

Plied properly with a litre of cold beer, Murage will tell you politics in Kenya, “Is all about the yacht.

friends or foes

On a lazy side street near the torched main drag here the people look as burnt as the buildings. As I approach two of them wasting time near a wall,…

the cache was at pelly crossing

The above photo was taken in the Pelly Crossing Village about 35 years ago. This was New Year’s in Pelly Crossing.

a new normal for kenya

NAIROBI How quickly it all came back. The flocks of thin men swimming in too-big suits and over-polished dress shoes are back.

What next for Kenya and the Horn of Africa?

As the lone kerosene lamp sputtered, election officials, observers and journalists in the dark classroom realized the situation could get a lot worse…

a death in kibera during the election

On November 25, Laban Githaiga woke up and kissed his widowed mother goodbye, a woman who had paid for his education through bursaries and begging.

a shoeless girl and a new yorker run against aids

KISUMU, Kenya Richard Brodsky isn’t so much running toward me as maintaining forward movement. His back is rigid and his arms point straight…

welcome outsider

I have a walk-on role in a sitcom every morning just outside my apartment as I stroll past an upscale hotel with a taxi stand.