The courtyard at Polycom Girls smelled of wet earth, rosemary smoke, and something older than memory. Over two November days, more than 20 women and girls sat in a wide circle and did something our generation almost never does: they listened to each other across the years.
They called the gathering Nyayo Zetu – “Our Footprints.” And footprints were exactly what they followed.
Day One began the way every good African gathering should: with names. Not the short, modern ones we use on WhatsApp, but the long, singing names our mothers gave us at dawn. “Akinyi,” one girl said, “born in the morning when the cocks still argue with the light.” “Adhiambo,” smiled an elder, “the one who came after sunset, when the stars were already gossiping.”
Laughter rippled. Suddenly everyone was leaning forward, hungry for the next name and its story.
Then came the harder question: What do you love about your culture? What do you refuse to carry? Hands shot up. “I love how we celebrate life with drums and food and no one eats alone,” said a mentor. “I will never accept wife inheritance,” said another, voice steady. “Love should not be inherited like cattle.” No one shushed her. No one defended the practice. They simply nodded. That, too, was culture evolving in real time.
Cate from TICAD took the floor and turned the room into a living pharmacy. “Your kitchen,” she said, holding up a head of cabbage, “is older than any clinic in this city.” Fermented cabbage water left for two days can calm ulcers. Cooled coriander-leaf water eases menstrual cramps. Garlic (kitunguu saumu) is the quiet warrior against infections. The girls scribbled notes on their phones while elders smiled; they had never needed paper for this knowledge.
Then women opened their bags and the real magic spilled out: roots that looked like twisted fingers, leaves that smelled of rain and grandmothers’ hands. Each herb had a name, a story, a tribe, a song. Knowledge that had survived colonial schools, mission churches, and now TikTok was laid gently on the mat like fragile eggs.
On day 2, the girls rolled up their sleeves and got to work. They sat on the mat as it was in the beginning hungry for more knowledge while pots of mixed roots hissed and sang beneath them, the old detox steam curling up like ancestor breath. Coughs turned to laughter. Shoulders dropped. Someone started humming a Luo lullaby; a Kikuyu girl joined in on the second verse without missing a word.
Between the steaming and the stirring, stories rose like dough. A grandmother from Kisii showed how she was taught to sit (knees together, back straight, dignity folded neatly like a leso). “My mother said, ‘Sit like someone who knows kings will one day ask for your child in marriage.’ I laughed then. I sit like that now because I know the king is me.”
Another elder demonstrated how to make mafuta ya kupaka kwa mwili, oil infused with roots until it glowed amber. “This is what our mothers rubbed on us after birth,” she said, massaging it into a young girl’s wrist. “Protection. Prayer. Beauty that does not need a filter.”
By the end of the second day no one wanted to leave. The young feminists who had arrived fearing “culture” would cage them left clutching small bottles of oil and bigger bottles of traditional medicinal broth. The elders who worried “these children have forgotten” left with phone numbers glowing on cracked screens (granddaughters promising voice notes, recipes, visits).
One mentor, Lavender Akinyi Odhiambo, spoke for many when she said: “I came as a feminist thinking I would defend women from culture. I leave as a daughter who understands that culture, when we weed it together, becomes the strongest shield women ever made.”
As the sun sank behind Kibra’s corrugated roofs, the women stood in one long line. Elders placed their palms on young heads and blessed them in ten different mother tongues. The girls’ eyes shone (not with tears, but with light).
Because they had discovered something priceless: Our footprints do not end where ours begin. They are joined to the prints of those who walked before us, and they stretch forward into steps we have not yet taken.
Nyayo zetu. They are still warm. And now, because of two short days in November, many more feet know exactly where to place the next step.