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Ben, you don’t have to fight to be a Maa warrior
Central to this ethical inquiry is Ben’s father, a Maasai warrior, who died protecting a film crew during a lion attack. Clay avoids mythologising him. His bravery is acknowledged, but so is its cost. He exists in the narrative as both presence and absence: a figure of pride, but also of unresolved expectation. In one of the novel’s most affecting moments, Ben studies a photograph of his father in traditional Maasai dress, framed in olive wood from his village. The image becomes a powerful symbol of inherited masculinity and imagined strength. For Ben, this photograph is both an anchor and a burden. It represents an ideal he feels unable to live up to—a warriorhood defined by physical courage and sacrifice. Clay excels here in illustrating how children internalise narratives long before they understand them. Ben’s fear of returning to Kenya is not framed as weakness, but as grief: a fear of exposure, of being measured against an identity he never chose yet feels bound to honour.
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As it had become the tradition of later days of postcolonial politics, funeral functions were harvest times for politicians. They attended funeral functions heavily loaded in the mouth to capitalise on silent funeral crowds, where they enthusiastically marketed their so-called ideologies to the masses. It was where they talked out their spirits and spilt beans of their competitors. No politician worth his salt missed funeral functions. Since the entry of the culture of materialism, the respect and solid attention given to the deceased and the family mourners had been left and forgotten in the forest of tradition.
Your mother is going to need your protection desperately when your father dies. Your useless Uncle Okelo has a dangerous design to inherit your mother at whatever cost. You know how much the Luo culture has been corrupted by materially oriented persons. Okelo is going to cause chaos because I know that only over your mother’s dead body would she accept being inherited by such a skunk.
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The “crazy” things our Gen Z do are no different from what we, our parents or grandparents did. My grandpa, for one, thought my father was an idiot for buying furniture instead of cattle. My father thought I was a numbskull for spending the equivalent of five months' pay on a music system instead of, wait for it, buying cattle! Mark you, clean-shaven I, who once pranced around with a bushy afro to my father’s chagrin, couldn’t stand the strings my son carried around on his head.
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In our final instalment of Betty Kilonzo's newly published Househelp Manual, we delve into the relationship between employer and househelp.
Every home functions best when there are clear expectations. House rules are not meant to control but to create harmony and clarity for both the employer and the househelp. They also prevent misunderstandings and protect both parties.
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Would the kithitu oath make Waruingi’s family surrender the land to the Macharias? All Macha knew was that he would never surrender; he would keep trying—not once or twice but many times.
