This is a First Person column by Robel Ng’ong’a, who lives in Edmonton. For more information about CBC’s First Person stories, see the FAQ.
My 18-year-old cousin and I had set off on foot to a local market deep within rural Kenya to buy greens and potatoes for our family meal that evening. It was during one of our annual visits to my parents’ childhood home to spend Christmas with my grandparents and extended family.
At that time, I was the head boy at a highly ranked international school in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya; in a few years, I would move