Kenya is an immense land with a capacity for healing.

One day, I was running to the river. Along the way there was the most exquisite butterfly, a tiny little thing, on the pavement. I kind of jumped over it. And then two days later I woke up in the middle of the night with a character running, jumping over butterflies on the streets of Nairobi. After that, I followed the story. The story wrote itself.

Even though we've written epic poems and made incredible films about love, I still don't think anyone can understand what it is, or why it means everything.

It may not seem that way, but I am an absolute optimist, an unrepentant optimist.

Even if we want to eradicate our ghosts, our dead, our murdered, even if you erase a name and the record of the existence of a person, somebody remembers.

Kenya is an immense land with a capacity for healing.

Every Kenyan writer has offered me something to hold onto, something to believe in.