I kept up with America through an app called Haystack News. You select channels, it builds a feed. CNN, PBS NewsHour, some local stations, whatever was running.
Watching American news from Kenya clarifies something that is hard to see from inside: American news is almost entirely about America. Not in an obvious, jingoistic way. In a structural way — the things that are treated as having importance are the things that affect the American political conversation. Tanzania's election did not appear on Haystack. Kenya's Gen Z protests appeared briefly in 2024, then disappeared. The BBC Blood Parliament documentary — not a word.
The American things I was watching from Nairobi did not include most of what was happening around me.
This is not a critique of the news apps. It is a field observation: the American information environment is designed for Americans inside America. From outside, you can see the edges of it. You can see what it does not point at.
Coming back, the bubble closed around me again. The app still does not show Tanzania. But now I know it doesn't.
Gabriel Mahia writes from the intersection of U.S. institutional infrastructure and East African operational reality. This essay is part of the Year in Kenya series — twelve months, April 2025 to April 2026.