The yearning for home has never escaped my mind. Day after day for more than a decade it has endured as raw as it was when I first left Kenya.

The masses of people buzz through the streets as they go about their day's work, the laughter and loud chatter regaling the air even as you fight to breathe in the dust and humidity. Large craters on the road cause the traffic to weave in and out in a random serpentine fashion while the ubiquitous matatu mercilessly thrashes a path through the road and selfishly thrusts itself with total disregard for any traffic rules  and confident with impunity. Your empty stomach is constantly assailed by the ‘mahindi choma' dotting the streets as they pop away under the burning coals, tempting the passers-by to part with money for what may be their only meal of the day. This is Kenya.

More than these pleasant memories is the distance that separates one from their beloved family, a constant gnawing pain, demanding that it be shortened as soon as possible. This forlorn feeling is every now and then sharpened as family members succumb to the inevitability of death and disappear forever, leaving the misery of this world to those who survive them. Such great personal losses chalk up the years and serve as a reminder of the enormity of the gap between this land here and the home left behind. 

For too many the desire to relocate home for good remains only a faint dream,never to be realised. The reality of the undertaking grows more daunting every day and it is difficult to uproot oneself from a land, even a foreign land, where one has lived for so long, and to which one has grown so attached. In the end though, the call for Kenya is persistent and difficult as it may be, nyumbani ni nyumbani.

P.S: This reminds me of Khaminwa, Kwach and the Umira Kager clan.