During the interview, Andrew Mwanyota Lewela, the self-styled barefoot CEO of KeNIC (Kenya Network Information Centre), will attempt to persuade me to remove my shoes, but will fail. It’s not that he’s starting a cult or flirting with some earth-aesthetic religion, though it’s a shame, for he could work a congregation. The man just loves walking barefoot.
He has dabbled with Buddhism, had a pas de deux with Jewish kippahs. How then do you define him? He rejects, in many ways, the very premise of the question. There is, he says, no way to pigeonhole him.