In a shop today, a father was carrying his son, who was insisting on opening a pack of cookies they had just picked before paying for them. The father was pleading with his son to wait just a little longer—until they had paid. “Sumbua baba kabisa. Huyo sio, mom. Hawezi kuchapa. Ingekuwa mum ungekuwa umechapwa…

There are brothers, and then there is my brother, Mwangi. The difference in our age is one year, one month, and nine days. He is the ninth, and I am the tenth of my mother’s children. Perhaps the one thing he has repeated the most to me is that he did not suckle enough because…

There are orderly people in this world. Their school shirts were always tucked in, they did their homework on time, they always carried their handkerchiefs, and they combed their hair. They wore clean pairs of socks, rarely lost their pens or forgot to carry them to school, had their tie in the right place all…