T he earliest memories of my life are from the Kakuma refugee camp . I remember walking through a marketplace, staying close to my mother’s side. It is hot, the Kenyan sun’s rays so fierce I can’t stop squinting.
At one point I turn to my left and see an incredibly thin man sitting on the floor. I stop and stare at him until my mum tells me off. I’m too scared to look back at him as we walk farther ahead, but I feel both drawn to him and terrified by his suffering.
I have another memory of asking my mum if we could get a drink, either a Fanta or a juice shake, during a warm evening. The heat doesn’t feel unpleasant. There are others in the living room of our shanty accommodation.
My mum is in a deep conversation, but it goes over my head. She agrees, but I am not sure if she takes me herself or someone else does. In the next memory, I have the drink in my hand and am looking up at warm washes of red, yellow and lights.
They remind me now of fairy lights. I spend the rest of the evening watching a film on a TV that we all crowd around. I have no idea what we watched, but my mum tells me that Bollywood films, dubbed into Somali, were a regular feature in the camp.
I remember how scared I used to be of going to the toilet, which was just two imprints of feet and a hole in the ground. At five, I was small enough to fall in. Kakuma is also the place where I contracted malaria and almost died.
I remember lying in a bed in what could have either been a room or a tent. In t.
