For whatever reason, Maendeleo Chap Chap hadn’t materialized. My friend and fellow EPL football fanatic, Mwingi West MP Charles Ngana Ngusya (CNN), assured me that if I wanted a Wiper nomination for Nairobi West, he could get it for me. But with his party leader, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, being a bitter foe of my great friend Governor Alfred Mutua, Wiper was as attractive as keeping a viper as a house pet. I briefly considered the Muungano Party, whose chair was then Governor Kivutha Kibwana, a humble man and healthcare champion who had taught me jurisprudence at the Parklands Law Campus, University of Nairobi, at the turn of the millennium. But unable to reach him on his personal phone that week, I dropped that option.

Here is something you need to know: blessings are served in single shots, troubles come in doubles, and tragedy is a straight-up triple tot. I was not surprised at all, on the Sunday of Jamhuri Day, to be served with a notice to evict.Later on 20 December at the Karibuni Villas in Mambrui—a mere half-hour drive from the airport where I’d just landed—I was sitting beside an infinity pool seeking advice from the outgoing governor of Machakos and my good long-term friend, Dr. Alfred Mutua. A blue sky stretched above me, and a blue sea reached out into the distance.

One day she woke up in the middle of the night and sat alone under the flickering lights of a July moon. She didn’t want anyone around her. Ma brought her water first and she pushed it away with the anger of two paranoid men. Her curly hair sat lazily over her beautiful eyes and she shot eyes around warning anyone who wanted to draw close that they weren’t welcome. Then Bihija started talking in a muted voice, at first to herself then to some imaginary person only she could see. 

When she first saw Scratch, she didn’t have a name. She was just a mystery cat that had eyes burning with fury or sometimes swollen with sadness. She had coal-black fur and breathed like an old man. She had appeared first outside the window, clawing hard against the slippery pane, and made eye contact with a scared Tinsy. She was barely 30 and had been moved to night shift for the first time when Scratch visited. It was impossible to scare someone like Miss Tinsy whose previous jobs had been more dreading than facing a stray cat on a cold July night in a hospital ward.

Happy are those who are afflicted here on earth for they will find comfort in heaven. You smile despite the fact that you are always in the line of fire, casting out demon after demon. And you ask them their names before ordering them out of the body. That’s what happened to you the last day you tasted alcohol. Your father had pressed this same Bible on your head and watched you lose your balance. He had asked the demon tormenting you to identify himself. Not in the same way you were asked to identify yourself at OR Tambo when you visited South Africa to preach the word. A harsh, compelling way, like you are commanding a tree to move. And the demon said a name and fled your body. You don’t remember that, you were just told. Most of these things were told to you. But there are a lot you have seen yourself.

The three boats were anchored against a log at the shore. Nobody was supposed to touch anything left in them until the next morning. Nobody slept. The whole island was awake as the devil. Prayerful men prayed. Women mourned their missing. Your mother said your dad had been so secretive the last few days before his disappearance. He had been closing himself inside his hut. Perhaps he was worrying about the tough times. We had been attacked by a belt of hyacinth and fishing was almost impossible. The lake’s clear water was now buried under green twigs and it would be so for months. He had told me over beer that he was thinking of going east. I told him to spit those words out of his mouth. He did. He never mentioned that again.