To Our Readers,
Hey everyone! Muthoni here, the Creative Director of YM Life. I had the pleasure of putting together this ‘70s-inspired edition. And after all the blood, sweat, and tears my team and I put into the content you’re about to see and read, I gotta say, I’m pretty proud of what we were able to accomplish. I hope it speaks to you as much as it does to me.
Like many of you reading this, I’m in my 20s. It’s a turbulent time, to say the very least. I’m trying to figure out my life— what I want to do, who I want to be with, how to secure the bag, the list goes on and on. Times are tough, and as I’ve been hustling, I’ve found myself yearning for simpler days. Oh, what I would do to be transported back to a time when Elliot bread was 60 cents and social media didn’t rule our lives.
That desire took me down a rabbit hole, and after scrolling through social media for nostalgic content for hours, it finally hit me. While life was super different back then, a lot of the questions we were facing culturally are similar to those young people today are tasked with solving. The ‘70s saw Kenya in the wake of gaining independence, and with that newfound freedom, came the pressure of having to figure out who we were as a nation.
I started thinking about
independence and how it's
great in theory,
but much more complicated in practice. It’s easy to say you’re free, whether that’s from British oppression or your parents’ house, but being free isn’t easy. That’s what we aim to explore in this edition. We wanted to explore what self discovery and identity looks like after independence, and how that applies to our generation.
We had the opportunity to have some incredibly impactful conversations
with some talented folks in Nairobi who are fearlessly exploring their identity. The Endo sisters, whose minimalist art has captivated me, dropped some gems about womanhood and how to dominate as a female entrepreneur (a trend that sparked in the ‘70s). Wakadinali opened up about being adaptable rule breakers in the Kenyan Industry.
And our creative spotlights
(Brian Babu, Wendy Wangui, and Lady Mandy) luminated what carving out your own career path really looks like.
I learned a lot putting this edition together. First, the past and the present aren’t mutually exclusive. We can always learn something from the past, and more often than not,
the issues that we face today on a cultural and individual level are not that different from those tackled back in the day.
And last but not least, whenever you have an opportunity to trade in bucket hats for afros, skinny jeans for bell bottoms or muted tones for a little sparkle,
you go for it.
Happy Reading,
Muthoni