The Java House Incident

Wanjiru Kamau had been in Nairobi for three years before she understood the city's first rule: everyone is running from something, and everyone is running toward something else. Most days, she couldn't tell which direction she was moving in.

She'd come from Nyeri with a diploma in journalism and a suitcase held together by her father's old belt. Her mother had cried at the bus station in a way that made Wanjiru feel like she was leaving for good, even though she promised to visit every December. Three Decembers had passed. She hadn't gone back once.

Nairobi had a way of swallowing time like that.

She lived in a bedsitter in Umoja, shared a matatu route with a hundred strangers every morning, and worked as a content writer for a digital marketing agency in Westlands that paid her just enough...