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Before Wi‑Fi and TikTok: What Kenyan childhood really looked like
13th August, 2026 02:41 PM
Ask many Kenyan adults what they miss most about childhood, and they will rarely mention a gadget. Instead, they talk about dusty football fields, long walks to the shop with a 10-shilling coin, evening stories from grandparents, and the fear of hearing your mother call your full name from across the estate.
Before Wi‑Fi passwords and TikTok trends became part of everyday life, childhood in Kenya was built around people, play, and simple routines that filled entire days with excitement.
The outdoors was our entertainment
Children did not need expensive toys to stay busy. Estates, villages, and school compounds became playgrounds where imagination did most of the work.
Football was played with anything that could roll, including tightly wrapped plastic bags known as kadede.
Girls and boys spent hours playing kati, bladder, kalongolongo, cha mama, hide and seek, and other games that required little more than energy and friends.
Parents often had one rule: be home before dark. From morning until sunset, children moved from one game to another with barely any adult supervision.
Television had a timetable
Today, children can watch cartoons on demand. In the 1990s and early 2000s, television followed a schedule, and families adjusted their evenings around it.
Many homes had only one TV set. Siblings fought over the remote, and when electricity went off during a favourite programme, the whole neighbourhood complained together.
Cartoons were not available 24 hours a day. Missing a show often meant waiting an entire week for the next episode.
The first mobile phone was a family event
A mobile phone was once a luxury, not a personal item for every child. The famous kabambe phones were treasured because they had a strong battery, a bright torch, and could survive falls that would destroy many modern smartphones.
Children borrowed phones only when necessary, usually to call a relative or send a carefully dictated text message. Communication was often done face to face, through neighbours, relatives, or handwritten notes sent with trusted messengers.
Evenings belonged to stories
One of the biggest differences between then and now was the role of conversation.
After supper, families often sat together outside, around a jiko, or in the sitting room listening to stories from parents and grandparents. Folktales about clever hares, greedy hyenas, brave hunters, and mysterious spirits entertained children while quietly teaching lessons about honesty, respect, courage, and hard work.
Today, many homes are quieter, with each person focused on a separate screen.
