Anytime Kamaley my cousin takes a photo, he makes sure that it tells a different story from his prevailing situation. Which mostly involves drinking illegal hooch in squalid shebeens and riding on noisy bodas. One day, he’s dressed to kill in khakis, a checked shirt and safari boots, leaning casually on a flashy pick-up like he owns half the hardware stores in the county.
In the next photo shoot, he has an expensive drink in hand, toothpick dangling stylishly from his mouth, with a mountain of nyama choma beside him, looking like he’s just bought out a slaughterhouse. And the funniest part? This kinsman of mine affords nyama choma roughly twice a year. Nevertheless, those photos are splashed all over his socials to portray the image of a rich mubaba.
I can’t throw too many stones—I’ve been right there too! Sometimes, I stroll into a four-star hotel, order one lonely samosa and snap photos like a wannabe Murang’a millionaire. Immediately, I head back to my trusty kibadaski for a proper meal of njahi and chapati. On credit, of course. The samosa is purely for social media flexing-you know. I mean, we all have relatives back in the village who need to believe we’re swimming in money, don’t we?
The other day, Uncle was wagging an accusing finger at us, declaring that our whole generation is nothing but a bunch of photo-faking frauds. Aunty Jerusha, the only person who disagrees with Uncle and lives to tell the tale, went to the sitting room and fished out a sooty framed photo. There was Uncle, coolly leaning on a retro Ford coupe, sporting an Afro that could cause an eclipse. “Tell us,” she asked him, eyes twinkling, “have you ever owned a car?” Uncle didn’t say a word. Instead, he just grabbed his bakora and took off towards Wakulima Bar, fuming.
Which brings me to my point: photos lie. Sure, they capture a moment, but they don’t tell the whole story. At best, they oversimplify complicated realities or at worst, trap us in clichés. You know the drill—guys puffing out their tummies to look like they’re eating well. Or ladies sucking in their bellies to look like they’ve got the svelte shapes of Hollywood A-list actresses.
Sometimes when I was working in the then Al-Shabaab held part of Northern Kenya, I came home with photos. When my children saw them, they wished they were living in Northern Kenya. Why? One Cupid faced boy smiled at the camera, a red popsicle bursting from his mouth with sweetness. Another chubby girl with almond eyes sucked at a lollipop, her face gleaming with obvious happiness. They all seemed to be enjoying, having a ball of their life.
But me? I saw refugees. I saw displaced children who had fled war-torn Somalia, clinging to whatever little joy they could find in those rare moments of normalcy. What my kids saw as a dream was, for those children, a fleeting escape from an incredibly harsh reality. In short, the photograph deceived and concealed more than it revealed.
And that’s the thing about photos—they reveal just enough to deceive. They show what we want to see, but they hide what really matters. Life’s complicated, so are photos.
(This piece first appeared in ‘The Nairobian’ newspaper)
