Dying away from home, away from the soil of your birth - and to do so unseen and unmourned - is a profound horror.

Dying away from home, away from the soil of your birth - and to do so unseen and unmourned - is a profound horror.

The truth, and nothing but the truth, is that dawn begins with a wrestling match with my soul and a systematic rejection of all the other useful possibilities a day offers. I make obeisance to the story, its characters, and the muse with burnt offerings.

I think every morning we wake up offers a new beginning, a new way of stepping into the day. I think every conversation could be a new chance.

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.

The young readers I have interacted with carry old concerns repackaged in the skin of a new generation: puzzlement over continuous national moral failings, contradictions with the elders, nostalgia for a nonexistent Kenyan past.