Inspiring Travel Writing from Binyavanga Wainaina
Binyavanga Wainaina is a full time freelance writer and food consultant. He specialises in African destinations, in writing about contemporary cultures and Lonely Planet destinations. He writes regularly for The Sunday Times, South Africa's largest paper. He also writes for, G21: the world's magazine. His fiction has been published by Adbusters, a Canadian Magazine, and various literary journals. He has also compiled one of the world's largest databases of African recipes.
Articles by Binyavanga Wainaina
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Before You Die: Spend a Year Doing Zen Minimalist Things in Japan
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Binyavanga Wainaina
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Japan
Train to be a Sushi Chef (for one-seventh of the time it takes). I make these inelegant sushi rolls with smoked salmon and soft white Ugali (a Kenyan Maize-meal dish) - it would be great to live and train in a place that is the opposite of...
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Before You Die: Take the Riverboat up the Congo
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Binyavanga Wainaina
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Italy
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Lombardy
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Erbusco
Somewhere bittersweet. I would love to visit this sad, mad and beautiful country again; and this let my ground shake a little more. Congo means a lot to me - it has produced the best (Patrice Lumumba) and the worst (Mobutu).
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The Hidden Treasure of Mathare
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Binyavanga Wainaina
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Kenya
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Nairobi Region
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Nairobi
My eyes hurt. I'm still not used to having the sun directly above me again. There is a truth in what you see in Kenya that is uncompromising - there is no soft focus here. The Serengeti migration has nothing on Eastlands at rush hour. Eastlands is...
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He's my Brother
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Binyavanga Wainaina
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Tanzania
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Coast
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Dar Es Salaam
I landed in Dar es Salaam so numb from grief that I felt detached from everything. Tanzanians amaze me - they have a languid self-assurance I have seen nowhere else. It really goads us Kenyans - we like to feel that we are a progressive people who...
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Riding a Harley in Cape Town
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Binyavanga Wainaina
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South Africa
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Cape Town and around
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Cape Town
My mind is in one of those reality warps, like cheese that smells of smelly socks, but being cheese, conspires - as soon as you realize that it is cheese - to smell delicious. I slept in my living room last night watching CNN, and woke up at midday...
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Before You Die: Spend a Mortifying Hour on Stage in a Comedy Club In London or Cape Town
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Binyavanga Wainaina
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United Kingdom
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Greater London
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London
Find out for sure whether I think I am funny because my friends laugh at my jokes when they are pissed. Binyavanga Wainaina
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Cape Town
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Binyavanga Wainaina
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South Africa
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Cape Town and around
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Cape Town
You may not notice it at first. At the airport, you will look at the mountains before you, and the strange plants around you and tell yourself this is ethereal: so soft, shadows arranging themselves to present subtle depths. It’s the light, you see...
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Visiting the Pokot People
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Binyavanga Wainaina
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Kenya
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Lake Naivasha
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Great Rift Valley
Everything around me is a memory of water. The dry riverbeds, the millions of dried petrified trees, the camels taunting us all. The hot dry wind, the water carved gullies, the large flat depressions that become marshland when it rains. The stone...