When Okayo woke up that morning, he felt his bones cracking and his head aching terribly. For the first time since he got married, he had slept with Otolo and his younger siblings in his deceased grandparent’s hut. The kids had woken up at the crack of dawn and left him still sleeping. He was not sure whether he had done the right thing, though he knew that going away from Nyarari had barred him from doing the most obnoxious – beating her up.
He sat up and strained his eyes around the hut. The bedding, now a large thin sheet made of crimped sisals and barkcloth, and the dry cow-dung falling from the walls filled him with nostalgia. He thought about his deceased grandmother and the beautiful tales she would narrate to them before going to bed. He thought: if only she was alive, then he would explain to her the challenges he was facing in life and, perhaps, find a consolation to his flaming soul. But she was long gone and the only
