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

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

Even if you're in charge of the grand story there's still memory. The other stories do not go away.

I am indebted to anyone who has ever written anything. I am indebted to the unknown carver of pictograms on a gallery of stone panels, which I encountered and stood in silence before on top of a distant odd-shaped hill in northern Kenya. For whatever reason the muses have most unexpectedly invited me to join this immense procession. I am humbled and delighted.

In my perfect imagination, with stern discipline I rise with the first bird, salute the dawn, have a healthy breakfast of fruits, wander over to my faux-oak desk, tap the On button on my Macbook Air, acknowledge the muse, and skip into the world where the story flows over the day and into the night.

Novel-writing is a settling, lovely space. I call it self-indulgent - I feel mildly guilty about it.

I don't think Kenya is the only country that tries to induce amnesia - it seems to be a global phenomenon. But offenses do not die. They do not disappear.