Mourning Margaretta Gacheru, mzungu who loved Kenya

Margaretta wa Gacheru flanked by Wakanyote Njuguna an artist and Author during her book launch at alliance francaise in Nairobi on 17/09/2014. [File, Standard]

Last year, Zambian writer friends invited me to a literary event in Lusaka. One of them, a man verging on sixty, couldn't stop obsessing about a love affair he'd had with a Kenyan woman he met in Japan in the 2000s.

Kenya, he told me, had long been an oasis of refuge for those in Africa whose home countries' political environments was inimical to free artistic expression. Ngugi wa Thiong'o and John Kiriamiti were some of his favourite writers.