He missed the era when boys were sent into the bush to learn how to steal cows.

In Transmara East, that was how you became a man. You went away with the other boys. You learned to endure. To look after yourself. To raid. By the time his turn came, that world was already disappearing. Nobody was stealing cows anymore. The idea of manhood had changed.

So he herded his father’s cattle instead. Long days in the fields with other boys, watching the sun cross the sky while life moved at the pace of cows. School was something not everybody finished. His sisters were married soon after their Class Eight examinations, some before the results had even come out. That was the pace of that life.

Perhaps that is why the police appealed to him. The uniform. The gun. The authority. He tried to join. He didn’t get in.

So now he stands at a gate.

It is not quite the life he imagined as a boy, but there are similarities. He wears a uniform. He keeps watch. He checks the people coming into a construction site because, as he puts it, people can be crafty. And there is authority. He likes the job. More importantly, it feeds his wife and children.

Only the gun is missing. “I think it’s as close to being a policeman as it can get.”