Okang'a Ooko

She is a hunter and he is a gatherer. She loves building enterprises. He is crazy about making money. But they have to be married because they both want one thing. Power. Kassela Obange is an intelligent and ambitious marketing pro covertly orchestrating her destiny to success in advertising in the bustling business community of Upperhill, Nairobi. The millionaire tender-preneur Rapudo Oremo wants to marry her. Her unwarrantable attraction to him presents her with the prospect for power and freedom her heart truly yearns for and she is thrown into the arena of absurdity. Rapudo has only one goal: to use politics for gain. He wants to expand his business and amass more millions. He is vicious and overtly ambitious. He's shrewd. He's flamboyant. He's ruthless. He's unscrupulous. He surrounds himself with shady deal makers, power brokers, ruthless lawyers and thugs from Katwikira in Kibira. Every political force in his path is turned into a surrogate for the motifs on the contemporary political scene. But this not any politics. This is Kenyan politics. It comes with furious vengeance and it is manned by greedy and corrupt players with cold-blooded underhand dealings. The game is played in a nefarious world. In a corrupted metropolis. In Nairobi City. The world of men. Kasela finds herself in a spot. She must be Rapudo's wife. He must marry her on her terms. Her evolution from an ordinary professional into a cold blooded political animal is not by chance or circumstance, she is from Dandora in Eastlands, and she was born to struggle and use every opportunity that comes in her path. She finds herself ensnared in It's chicken coming home to roost.

In 1975, as a man-boy, Otis Dinos makes a significant step into music when a guitar comes into his hands through quirky circumstances one sunny day in downtown Kisumu. He discovers he has talent for the guitar. In the '80s, he finishes schooling and tries to fit in and find his place. But he is more an archetype than flesh-and-blood youth. Performing with Nico Opija and KDF in Kondele gives him a beginning and a journey into music. As a guitar student hitting all the required notes, Otis is the haunted genius. And KDF in Kondele is a training orchestra for demonology. He is desperate to leave Kondele’s dingy clubs to reach for the future. He seems to realise he is not accomplished until he moves to Nairobi. But the cold, cold heart of Nairobi’s nefarious pop culture schools him into becoming a more spoiled artist. Returning to Kisumu with a new band, accompanied by queasy bandmates in the ranks of villainous ne'er-dowells, he spirals down into the heart of Kisumu’s darkness, encountering upsurging whirlpools of struggle, feuds, survival, greed, envy, infidelities, competition, and exploitation. How does he wind down the hysteria; somewhat, and make a fairly good case for extraordinary achievement backmasking in heavy benga music? That’s not the issue, the issue is that as famous as he is, Otis Dinos has more problems than a normal Kisumuan. Providing a catharsis through comedy, lancing the Kenyan lakeside city’s moral boil with satire, Bengaman tells the story of ordinary men and women trying to live the Kenyan African dream. It is a story of a humble beginning, awkward and misdirected fumbling and miraculous accomplishment.