Dressed in a powder blue caftan, Sieka Gatabaki meets me in his Nairobi’s Lavington driveway looking like the heir apparent to a wizened African traditional king. All that is missing is a Sankofa…and scissors for that hair. He is growing baby locks now, which makes him look less like a scion of a colonial chief and more like a deluxe prodigal son. “I am not my hair,” his hair says. “I am challenging conventions, I have earned my stripes, people can look past my hair,” he says.
Maybe. He is after all Programme Director for Mercy Corps AgriFin. He’s led a privileged life. But it would be simplistic to equate Sieka’s rise to his family—although it doesn’t hurt to come from pedigree. To be born into a rich family is to win the first prize in the lottery of life. Hold on. This is starting to sound like a “What my friends would say about me…” He grew up here, a few blocks from where he lives now. Here, where his childhood was erratic…or eclectic. Where his adulthood is now eccentric…or ecdysial. Where he chooses to be a part of, rather than apart from. Because sometimes even after we leave, we haven’t really found our way out.
