The market sellers are laying out their wares and shouting greetings to each other. Yvonne stops by a stall with printed T-shirts covered in stupid slogans and images of David Bowie Starman and the poo emoji. She pulls one from the rail and smiles. ‘Ah, my dream man.’

Kiama laughs at the sweatshirt. ‘Obama? Really?’

‘Of course.’

‘Surprised. I didn’t think black men would be your type.’

She puts it back and her cheeks go red, ‘Obama is everyone’s type.’

They walk on, through a small cluster of shipping containers. Most are already open and inside each sits a tailor, a welder or a mobile phone salesman. Eventually they come to a clearing where the buses are. The ‘bus station’ is completely chaotic, but they find a purple matatu with a cardboard sign in the window announcing 129 and climb on seconds before it pulls out.

Outside, a drizzle starts and the fields are lush and green in the way he remembers Kenya looking, which is nothing like the dry savannah images you always see on TV.

Kiama shows a man sitting in front the hand-drawn map and asks for directions. ‘It is soon,’ the man says before shouting something to the driver. ‘Here. Here.’ The matatu stops in front of a stall stacked with hundreds of tiny green bananas and they jump out.

‘Mzungu,’ the man shouts as the bus pulls away.

‘Why do they think it’s acceptable to do that?’ Yvonne asks. ‘I know I’m white. I don’t need it pointed out. Stop laughing.’

‘I’m not,’ Kiama says, unfolding the map. ‘This is my concentration face. Okay, I think it’s this way.’

‘You think?’

‘No, I’m ninety-six per cent sure it’s this way. I can’t believe I’m using a paper map. It’s like a puzzle.’ He puts it back in his pocket so it doesn’t get wet.

They walk up a slippery dirt road through thickening bushes, stepping to one side each time a car crawls up behind them. At one point a heavy truck nears and they both press into the bushes to avoid it.

‘Jesus,’ Kiama calls as he feels a blast of air from the vehicle.

Yvonne pulls him up onto the grassy verge, where their matching Converse get soaked straight through. They enter a small clearing with some shops and houses. In a butcher’s window a quarter of a cow with a cloud of flies around it hangs from a hook. An old man in a grey apron shouts, ‘Mzungu,’ from his doorway and Kiama bites his lip before calling back, ‘That’s inappropriate.’ The shopkeeper gives a toothless smile and waves.

‘Was your ex-husband black?’ Kiama asks, keen to distract Yvonne from the fact that his percentage of knowing where they’re going is now around the sixty per cent mark.

‘What kind of question is that?’

He shrugs. ‘Just wondering.’