📚 Academic Appetite + 🥨 Love at First Bite

Hinga convinced himself that his taking a life didn’t influence his decision to settle miles from the crime scene. He liked to tell those who urged him to “see someone” that he was doing fine. Honestly, he’d rather not go back there at all. His parents had wandered back into each other’s beds, and he had a little sister on the way. His older brother was at the university studying Medicine, obviously also intent on burying the past. And Shosh, a fixture at the servant’s quarters of his childhood home, was now getting a brand-new farmhouse courtesy of some rich uncle with hazy business dealings. Life was looking up. He won a Culinary Arts scholarship via the American embassy.

It isn’t easy to love people from a distance, but Hinga could’ve never predicted that his parents’ affection would morph into scrutiny.

“How far are you from graduating?” ”Have you met a nice girl up there yet?” ”What was your Finals grade?” ”Send us photos of your dorm room. We want to see how you’re living.” “Do you really think anyone will hire an African chef anywhere in that discriminatory country?” “Medicine or law would’ve served you better.”

He wasn’t sure which he hated more: Their use of Gikuyu or their nagging. He did know that he had asked himself these questions long before they intervened. He could either succeed at what brought him to this distant place or hate himself forever. Shosh was always a sensible mediator, relaying their concerns while displaying complete confidence in him and how they had raised him. She continued to be the parent his parents couldn’t.

For her, Hinga knocked down his goals like pins in a clean bowling strike. He graduated top of his class from Cape Atlantic, a feat that surprised exactly no one; his being in school was always just a formality. He secured a waiter role at Crabbages, a mom-and-pop diner. While it was a relatively lowly position, he gratefully sat like a sponge at the chefs’ feet. Getting restless a year into it, he tried to leverage his established networks to reach out to managers at local first-class restaurants. Waiting was great, but he was itching to be in the eye of the storm: a kitchen.

That turned out to be another exercise in waiting. He met Stevie as he filled in for the head waiter one evening. Sparks flew despite them both already being spoken for. Remarkably, everyone involved was OK to share. Thus began a “but you’re my favorite one” whirlwind romance. Hinga and Stevie couldn’t be more dissimilar. She was Southern. He was Kenyan. She had grown up in a wealthy, loving home. He had killed a man just to return to ground zero. He lit up a room. She hated the lights. A furious love for the bottle, though, they shared and protected jealously.