Binamu ya Kijiji
"He returns to the ancestral village after twenty years. His thick cousin never left—unmarried, waiting, still sleeping in the room next to his. She's been waiting for him since they were teenagers. She's done waiting."
I left the village at eighteen.
Nairobi for university, then Europe for work. Twenty years of cities, of modern life, of forgetting where I came from. When my grandmother dies, I return for the funeral.
My cousin Aisha is waiting.
She's been waiting for twenty years.
We were inseparable as children.
Same age, same house—my mother and her mother were sisters, both widowed, both living in the family compound. Aisha and I shared everything: games, secrets, a future we whispered about in the dark.
Then I left.
She didn't.
Aisha is thirty-eight now.
Never married—"waiting for someone," she always told the village. Stayed in the compound, caring for our grandmother, maintaining the ancestral home. While I built a life elsewhere, she built a life around waiting.
She's also thick.
Village thick—years of good food and hard work. Heavy breasts straining her kanga, wide hips that move with purpose, a belly soft from patience. She's become the woman I always imagined, while I wasn't there to see it.
"You're here," she says when I arrive.
The funeral guests mill around us. I'm supposed to greet everyone. I can only see her.
"I'm here."
"Twenty years." Her eyes hold mine. "Twenty years of letters that stopped coming. Twenty years of waiting."
"Aisha, I'm sorry—"
"Don't be sorry yet." She takes my arm. "Be sorry later. Right now, I'm showing you your room."
The room is next to hers.
The same arrangement from childhood—thin walls, shared memories. I remember lying awake, listening to her breathe, imagining impossible things.
"Nothing has changed," she says.
"Everything has changed."
"Not this." She stands in my doorway. "Not how I feel. Not what I've been waiting for."
"What have you been waiting for?"
"You know." She moves closer. "You've always known. Why else did you stop writing? Why else did you stay away?"
"I was scared—"
"You were a coward." She's inches away now. "But you came back. Finally. And I'm not waiting anymore."
She kisses me.
Twenty years of wanting in that kiss. Twenty years of watching other women marry while she waited. Twenty years of sleeping alone, wondering, hoping.
"Aisha—"
"Don't talk." She's pulling at my clothes. "The funeral guests are eating. We have an hour. I've waited twenty years. I won't wait another minute."
She undresses in my childhood room.
Her body is everything the village made her—strong, substantial, built for the life I abandoned. She's not the slim girl I left behind. She's a woman who knows what she wants.
"This is what you missed," she says. "This is what you could have had. Every day. If you'd stayed."
"I couldn't stay—"
"You wouldn't stay." She climbs onto the narrow bed. "There's a difference. But you're here now. Make up for lost time."
I take my cousin in our grandmother's house.
While guests mourn downstairs, we reunite upstairs. Her thick body beneath mine, her legs wrapped around me, her voice crying out things we whispered as teenagers.
"I knew you'd come back—"
"I should have come sooner—"
"You're here now—that's what matters—don't stop—"
She comes with twenty years of force.
Shaking, crying, screaming into a pillow to muffle the sound. I keep moving—giving her everything I should have given years ago.
"Again—please—I've been empty for so long—"
I give her again.
And again.
Until the hour is up and guests start asking where we are.
"The funeral lasts three days," she says, dressing quickly.
"Three days."
"Three nights." She smooths her kanga, becomes respectable again. "You're sleeping in that room. I'm sleeping in mine. The walls are thin."
"What about the family—"
"The family has been waiting for us to happen since we were children." She smiles. "Why do you think they put us in adjacent rooms?"
The first night, she comes to me at midnight.
Slips through my door like a ghost, like she's been doing this in her imagination for decades.
"The village is sleeping."
"Even after a funeral?"
"Especially after a funeral." She climbs onto me. "Death makes people want to feel alive. And I've never felt more alive than this."
Three days of mourning.
Three nights of reclaiming.
During the day, we bury our grandmother. At night, we bury our past—all the years lost, all the waiting wasted. She takes me again and again, filling herself with what she's been missing.
"You're staying—"
"I have a life in Europe—"
"You have a cousin in the village." She rides me harder. "A cousin who loves you. Who's loved you for twenty years. That's more than any life in Europe."
On the fourth day, I'm supposed to leave.
My ticket is booked. My life is waiting. But Aisha is at the door of my room, wearing nothing but a morning kanga.
"Stay."
"I can't just—"
"Stay." She drops the kanga. "One month. Tell your work there's a family emergency. Stay with me. See if this is real."
"And if it is?"
"Then you stay forever." She pulls me back to bed. "The way you should have from the beginning."
I stay for a month.
Then two.
Then I stop counting.
My apartment in Amsterdam is sublet. My job is remote now—they don't care where I work. And Aisha is in my bed every night, making up for all the nights she wasn't.
"The village is talking," I tell her.
"The village has been talking for twenty years." She mounts me in our room—our room now, not just mine. "They're just happy the story finally has an ending."
"What's the ending?"
"This." She sinks onto me. "Us. Forever. The way it was always meant to be."
I've been back in the village for two years now.
Married Aisha—finally, properly, the way the family always wanted. We live in the ancestral compound, in the rooms we shared as children.
"Any regrets?" she asks one night.
"About what?"
"The twenty years. The running. The waiting."
I pull her close—my thick, patient, perfect cousin.
"Only that I made you wait. You deserved better."
"I have better now." She climbs on top of me. "I have you. Finally. That's all I ever wanted."
Twenty years was too long.
But the wait was worth it.
She was worth everything.