This is Daniel Gachukia’s first book. In it he recounts a pivotal incident in his family’s history that triggered a chain of events with far reaching repercussions. When his aunt Wanjiku ran away from her Kiambaa home to Muisuni over a century ago, here single act of rebellious self-preservation would reverberate through the generations to come. Her arrival and subsequent settlement in Ukambani in the 1890s led to a chain reaction that gave rise to questions of identity and belonging. These questions carried over all the way into the 1940s, with devastating and unjust consequences for a family that was already grappling with the increasingly repressive reach of British colonial rule in Kenya. Gachukia’s story offers a rare glimpse of Kikuyu and Kamba life in a bygone era. He takes us on a journey from the past to the present narrating his family’s harrowing forced migrations at the hands of the colonial administration; his earnest adolescent quest for self identity, and his delight and pride in the emergence of a strong, determined, independent Kenya. He provides a keen insight into the new country’s burgeoning civil service, in which he worked as nation’s longest-serving Chief of Protocol and as a pioneering member of the diplomatic corps. He closes by recounting his journey to creating the Riara Group of Schools and the Riara University, including the issue that he holds dearest to his heart: education.