Dust

by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

There is something unnamed and shameful about loneliness created out of rejection. Ajany takes refuge in stillness.

Nyipir had lost his Kenya on July 5, 1969, in Nairobi, when Tom Mboya was assassinated. The murder was the culmination of fears, swirling rumors, the meaning of clandestine oaths that made the rest of the country enemy territory to be owned. It was the purpose of the silences that had started before.

After Mboya, Kenya’s official languages: English, Kiswahili, and Silence. There was also memory.

How to say, We’ve been at war since before your birth, when the nature of this war has been its silence?