Author: Troy Onyango

I The yellow light from the low-hanging bulb shines on the right side of his round face, making it seem like a half moon, and he smiles – a shy smile – at the audience; a few cheer and clap. He grips the microphone and welcomes the audience. A few words. His voice, when he speaks, is ordinary; that of a boy just coming out of puberty. He is in a fitting, white long sleeved t-shirt and a pair of dark-blue jeans that seem black in the light. His hair is cut close to his scalp and this makes his…

At dawn, she drags herself from the bed, leaving the sheets ruffled into a heap in the center, walks out of the small room and finds herself at the back of the house. She picks up the metal bucket and, using a small bowl, she fills it with water from a tank filled with rainwater from last night. The cold cuts her skin when she folds her leso up towards her waist, squats with her thighs spread apart and splashes the water with one hand, rubbing with the other. She closes her eyes. The pain is in her mind, she…

I Other people die and stay dead. Others leave and never come back. But not Farah, my younger brother, who left one day and only came back after he was dead. At first, I thought I was the only one who could see him. That was before Bibi, whose roaming eyes were the colour of old beads, saw him in the corner of our large but old tent and asked him, Ala! What are you doing there instead of coming to eat with the rest? He did not respond. My parents, who had been trying to tuck away the memories…

I want to tell him that my mother, she is happy. Or tries to be.

VIII Our paths cross just long enough for me to realise this is fate’s way of telling me, “This wasn’t meant to be.” It. Can’t. Happen. I turn my head – twisting the upper part of my body with it, like an amateur contortionist – just in time to see a silhouette fade on Kimathi Street. A slender man, of Somali descent, rushes past me and his scent is the blood boiling in my head beckoning to sit him down at the makeshift table in Kilimanjaro Restaurant and ask him what about Nairobi appeals to him. He is long gone;…