Free One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina

Our headmistress has raised much money together with parent volunteers to build a library, classrooms, a weather center; to maintain the pianos; for seedbeds, a home-­science workshop, a dining hall, and a workshop to study carpentry. We bought a tractor, new lawn mowers. We have a swimming pool fund. We bought two mini­buses for school trips to national parks and other places. Our school is always first or second in the district in national exams. There are the army kids, the kids from Egerton Agricultural College. Nakuru is an agricultural town. There are some farmers’ kids, kids whose parents work for the wheat board or are senior civil servants in the municipal council or the district and provincial administration. There are kids from railways, train drivers’ kids, and foremen’s kids. There are doctors’ kids, lawyers’ kids. Nurses’ kids. Engineers’ kids.
    Something has shifted. In the world.
    The Swedes made the first announcement that things are no longer the same. One day they come and set up right next to the flag, where no pupil is allowed to play. It is here that we gather every day for parade. The whole school stands on the grass watching. Mrs. Gichiri stands too, watching. There are two giant drums of cow shit standing next to our proud national flag; there are pipes and meters and things connecting to other things. The Swedes fiddle with the cow-shit machine earnestly. We hear some burping sounds, and behold, there is light. This is biogas, the Swedes tell us. A fecal martyr. It looks like shit—­it
is
shit—­but it has given up its gas for you. With this new fuel you can light your bulbs and cook your food. You will become balancedieted; if you are industrious perhaps you can run a small biogas-­powered food mill and engage in income-­generating activities.
    This way, they said kindly, eyes as blue as Jesus’s, looking at us through steel glasses, you can avoid malnutrition. This is called development, they said, and we are here to raise your awareness. Biogas rose up the pipes and gurgled happily. We went back to class very excited and making farting noises. Heretofore our teachers had threatened us with straightforward visions of failure. Boys would end up shining shoes; girls would end up pregnant.
    Now there was a worse thing to be: a user of biogas.
    …
    Even though Mum is complaining, Ciru and I are doing well. Sometimes she is first in school. Sometimes I am first in school. She is the youngest in the class, but her confidence gives me confidence. I do well enough in math, even though I pay no attention to it.
    To me every new thing is always splintering into many possibilities. These can still spin and spin around and leave me defeated. I stand and abandon my homework, retreat to the toilet and read a novel. Sometimes when I start to spin, I simply let myself be Ciru, and look on the page, and start to write and answers arrive, and after a while I realize I have followed a straight line, and I am done. I lied to one teacher that we are twins. I dream that we will always be together, like twins. I love to read books about twins, identical twins who can read each other’s minds. If she does something that is her own, if she won’t let me join in, I am okay only if at the end of it she pulls me in, so we can laugh at it together. If she looks away, shuts me out, I lash out, or hide away. She locks the door to her room a lot these days.
    Chiqy, now five and everybody’s darling, likes to knock on my door, and I often don’t open it. I watch her disappear to the Bishops Lodge, across the road, and return with a group of kids. She is the boss, and they follow.
    Whenever grown-­ups talk politics, we whisper. Baba plays golf every weekend this year. Come Sunday morning, we tear up roads up to make his tee-­off time. As usual, our plan is to launch ourselves into a frenzy of splashing and swinging and sliding with fellow golf children and lick tomato sauce and molten Cadbury chocolate