Before we go any further, there are some things you should know about me…

1. I’m obsessed with Paul Tergat. I love him more than is reasonable. I met him once and almost licked his face.

2. I love athletics, but this doesn’t mean I can or should run. I did once. I was sixteen, in Form Five, in a mixed boys and girls school. I was a last-minute inclusion in the 4X400 relay during sports day. I didn’t have my shorts, so I borrowed some from a (guy) friend. He was MUCH thinner than me. I grabbed the baton and my moment of glory. I was soaring. I believed. The wind was pushing me along. The wind was my friend; I felt it pushing my whole body. This was because the shorts had ripped from top to bottom, falling into two neat and very separate pieces, exposing my very red underwear. My last memory was of six-year-old boys screaming, falling, collapsing with laughter. When I came to I was in Form Six.

3. On my first day in New York City a dirty, toothless, homeless woman followed me for three blocks, shouting that I was the filthy whore who’d stolen her husband.

4. The first time I got my hair ‘relaxed.’ It took me months to convince my mother to let me, and another few months to convince my aunt to give me the Revlon Relaxer Kit she’d brought from London. I finally sat down, with my cousin, at the upscale salon where ‘everyone’ went. Then we waited for the relaxer to do its magic. Nothing happened. The hairdresser came to check. She sniffed the container. “Ah, I know why this thing isn’t working,” she yelled. “It’s rotten!”

5. So I cut my mangled hair. Then, determined to grow it, got some hair extensions and a fancy braided style. Went to Mombasa, swam as usual. Wondered why these bratty mzungu boys were following me in the pool. The next morning at breakfast, right there next to the cornflakes and milk, one of the brats marched up to me, holding a bunch of my cowrie-shell adorned braids in his sweaty little hand. “Here,” he announced, “you keep leaving these in the pool.” Then to his friend, confidentially, sorrowfully, “She does her hair so tight it falls off. She’ll be bald soon.”

6. My life can be described as a “History of Increasing Humiliation.”* See 2, 3, 4, and 5 above.

7. Then there are times when I feel no shame. I once stole a rock. I was in Standard One, six years old, and a girl had brought a shiny white stone to ‘show and tell’ or some such nonsense. I liked it, pretended it was mine - I even showed it to the teacher again, claiming credit - and took it home. I kept it till I was in high school. That’s right, a rock. Yeah, I’m bad.

8. People keep asking me what’s playing on my iPod. As if. I still have a Betamax. My niece thinks I’m cool and modern, but that’s because she thinks it’s a microwave.


*With thanks to Martin Amis, who understands.