The first place my father’s name should have appeared, it didn’t. On my birth certificate. My grandmother was never traditionally married to my grandfather. So, when my father was born, he carried the burden of that decision. In the family, there was always that whisper. That stain. That feeling that he didn’t entirely belong.

My father wanted a different life for me. Back in the village I sold chang’aa. I loved it. I was making good money by village standards; the cock of the walk. Enough to think I had figured life out.

“This isn’t your life,” my father told me, “Go to Nairobi. Find decent work.”

So I did.

That’s how I eventually found myself at Securex, two years now.

People call us guards. I always correct them. “I’m not a guard. I’m a security guy.” It sounds like a small difference. It isn’t. Words tell you how a man sees himself.

Today I’m a husband. A father. I have land where I’m planting sugarcane. I save. I invest. If I borrow money and tell you I’ll repay you on the second of the month, I’ll repay you on the second of the month. That’s what steady employment gives a man. A reputation.

A name can be left off a document. Character can’t.