You say that I resist all things American,

That I refuse to conform to the culture,

Well ruhee, here’s the truth:

It’s not something I work hard to do.

The blood that flows through my veins, courses in pulses that resonate with the very heartbeat of the Kenyan earth, and the thump of my own heart gets louder and more in sync with it – growing more urgent and more powerful the longer I stay away

I have dreams about the highway from my home into town, and try as I might, I cannot forget the taste of smog in the city or the smooth reassurance of mum’s chapoz making their way down my throat –

Sadly, neither can I get rid of the aftertaste of Kenya High School’s githeri and buns on those dreaded weekdays, or the hands of the little chokoras intertwined in mine on those nights we’d walk into Nakumatt to get a bite.

My accent seems to get more Kenyan by the day, my feet tapping to beats that sound remotely like what they’d play in matatus on my way to buy clothes in Toi market, or meet up with Soma to have over-processed burgers and carrot cake in Java –

Ruhee, it’s not like I TRY to not conform, but my body, heart, mind and soul hold very strongly to the pieces of home it remembers so vividly –

My shoes are worn out because my feet have walked along Moi Avenue over and over again in my mind, and I can count the number of steps it would take from pizza inn to the Koma stage, knowing it would be at least another two hours before a bus showed up.

Cultural appropriation and assimilation are like a bad allergic reaction to my person, and what you see are the symptoms of a bruised and battered me, regurgitating everything this international experience has handed me over the past six years.

Global citizen –

I’m not a global citizen. I just travel a lot. What I am is a Kenyan citizen having a global experience.

See a war in the US will never rock me as hard as one in Kenya, even if my family and friends packed their bags and made their way over here. I will not curl into a ball and weep my strength away for days ruhee –

Indeed, I will cry for those I love and have lost – but it’s not just about the people – it’s everything from the mud in Mukuru to the benches in Kwa Mathee to the nursery rhymes in Newlight, to the kanges in the mathrees, to the soft hills behind Kukhu’s house that my daddy built with his strong arms and steady heart.

Love and sweat mixed with stone hold up the four corners of that homestead – but no one will ever fully understand the pain and suffering he went through, no one will fully appreciate the sacrifices my papa made.

Ruhee, history etched the words Kenya in the flesh of my soul way before I was even born. And the memories I carry are not just mine – they are my sisters’, my mother’s, my father’s, my grandmothers’, my grandfathers’, they are my great grandfathers’, and their fathers’ and mothers’ before them…

I’m tied to this land, and like quick sand, the more I struggle against this reality, the faster I sink into it. Like invisible chains, the bruises and sores become more apparent and more painful the longer I fidget in an attempt to throw them off.

And that’s why, ruhee, I cannot conform. I willingly swirl in this sand and let it pull me under, because the truth is, there isn’t any other land on God’s not-so-green earth that I’d want to rest my aching back in when all of this is over.

And even if I gave myself to you, and to your people,

Ruhee even if I gave myself over to your sights, and your smells, and your food and your ways,

I could never fully be faithful to you and your own.

Because if and when I die, there is no other land on earth I’d let cater to my rotting bones. This ground knows me – this ground raised me.

And so I concede, willingly and eagerly, to this love affair with the Kenyan Soil.