When Baba Died: One Year Later
Originally published by The Elephant — Read the original article →
Last October, two weeks before Baba died, I was returning to Nairobi after a two-year hiatus. The last time I was home was during the first-year memorial of my sister, Nyangi, who was now the prominent character in my book.
Home had changed in many ways, yet it had not, in a kind of same old but different way. The vibe was familiar, the actors younger, the pace faster. Roads once familiar were now dwarfed by high-rise towers sprouting around the city like wild mushrooms. The expressway from the airport straddling the city dominated the cityscape, a marker of a city in a hurry to grow up.
I used to wonder whether I would change. Would I be like the other diaspora Kenyans I had seen who lost all sense of belonging after just a few miserable winters abroad, and began to look down on their own? Stepping away seemed to have had the opposite effect on me.
