from the fence and stuck them in their breast pockets. One old man
would not leave the dormitory because he could not find his
shikwarusi, and when I coaxed and badgered, he patted his hair and
said, “My God, do you want the priest from Uganda to think that I
look like this every day?”I arranged chairs beneath the avocado tree in
the front yard, and the old people sat down and practiced their smiles.
A few people who did not live at the home came too, like the woman
who hawked candy in the Stagecoach bus to Mathari North, and the
man whose one-roomed house was a kindergarten in the daytime and
a brothel in the evening, and the woman whose illicit brew had
blinded five people in January. Father Ignatius came riding on the
back of a bodaboda, and after everyone ha