Dedication
To every daughter who has walked between two worlds; carrying the weight of tradition in one hand and the fire of love in the other. This is for you.
Author’s Note
Love is rarely as simple as fairy tales promise. For many, it is entangled in culture, family, duty, and survival. Complicated Love began as a story rooted in the Kikuyu traditions of Kenya, where marriage is not just a union of two people but of entire families, sealed by goats and celebrated by community. Yet, I wanted to explore a haunting question: what happens when those expectations collide with a different world—a world where love stands independent of dowry, councils, and tradition?
This book is not simply about romance; it is about the courage to choose love when that choice carries exile, shame, and sacrifice. Veronica’s journey, though fictional, reflects the realities faced by many who step between two worlds. Her story is one of reckoning—of honoring heritage while daring to forge a path beyond it, of balancing devotion to another with the fragile act of preserving herself.
In the end, Complicated Love is not just about two people bound together. It is about the weight of family, the whispers of community, and the relentless question of whether love can survive when it demands everything. I invite you to walk with Veronica, to feel the sting of judgment and the fire of defiance, and to ask yourself: What would you sacrifice, and what would you save, in the name of love?
Complicated Love
David Waithera
© 2025
The night before the visa arrived, the hills held their breath. From the veranda of their brick house on the shoulder of Chania ridge, Veronica watched the tea bushes turn to dark velvet and the red dirt road bleach into a silver thread in the moonlight. A chill wind combed through the grevillea trees and rattled the iron sheets above her head. Somewhere beyond the banana grove, a dog barked once, sharp and startled, then fell to listening like everyone else.
In the kitchen, her mother’s voice moved through the lamplight, low and steady, breaking into quick laughter when her aunt made a joke about America and the cold: “You will come back speaking through your nose,” Auntie Wanjiku said, her gold bangles chiming. “Remember us when you marry a professor and bring back a car with seats that heat your kidneys.”
“Let the girl finish school first,” Mama answered. But the words had an edge of ceremony, as though spoken on behalf of a committee that had already decided. The room smelled of millet porridge and the smoke that always lived in the rafters. On the table, the envelope lay like a small white dare.
Baba had carried it from the tea collection center that afternoon, with the careful solemnity of a man bearing a sacred object. He had removed his cap before handing it to Veronica. “From the Embassy,” he said, and cleared his throat to make room for a pride too big to swallow.
Now it waited, addressed in a pale, unsmudged hand that looked like snow had learned to write. Veronica had touched its edge with one finger; the paper responded coolly. She was not afraid of the paper. She was afraid of what would be said after it was opened. “Open it,” Mama called from the kitchen. “Before the ugali sets like a footstone.”
Veronica slid a nail under the flap and lifted carefully. Inside: a thin letter, a stiffer rectangle, the official seal embossed like a moon caught in daylight. Student. Approved. The words steadied themselves on her tongue, then fled. In their place came the image she had been pretending not to carry—Nairobi’s glass buildings like stacked ice, a plane pushing the sky back, snow she had never touched but already understood as a sentence: your life will change.
Her grandmother had once told her, “Gũthií mbere ní gutheria kíríti.” To move ahead is to clear the thick bushes. Veronica sensed the thick bush now, biting into the grain of the family’s plans, splitting them with clean intention.
“Read,” Baba said. She read. The lamplight seemed to sharpen the ink. Mama’s hand came to rest on Veronica’s shoulder. Baba nodded slowly, once, twice, as though counting the steps to a threshold. Auntie clapped softly. Outside, the wind shifted, carrying the river’s distant rush. It sounded like agreement.
When the congratulating ended, the talk loosed itself and ran in a familiar direction, gathering speed. There were courses and semesters and costs. There were cousins in New Jersey (“which is near New York, which is near snow,” said Auntie, who believed everything north of Mombasa was north enough to be America). There were prayers, practical and fervent. Beneath and around all of it, a different current moved—felt but not named—like a second river under the first.
“America is not a place for girls to become stubborn,” Auntie warned. “You will finish. You will come home. Do not be like those who start speaking English even when they dream.” “Wanjiku,” Mama said gently. “We trust our daughter.” Baba folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. “Veronica will carry our name with honor. Then she will return. Rũracio is not for the air.” Dowry is not for the air, not an idea to be loosened and lost. He said it like a...
To every daughter who has walked between two worlds; carrying the weight of tradition in one hand and the fire of love in the other. This is for you.
Author’s Note
Love is rarely as simple as fairy tales promise. For many, it is entangled in culture, family, duty, and survival. Complicated Love began as a story rooted in the Kikuyu traditions of Kenya, where marriage is not just a union of two people but of entire families, sealed by goats and celebrated by community. Yet, I wanted to explore a haunting question: what happens when those expectations collide with a different world—a world where love stands independent of dowry, councils, and tradition?
This book is not simply about romance; it is about the courage to choose love when that choice carries exile, shame, and sacrifice. Veronica’s journey, though fictional, reflects the realities faced by many who step between two worlds. Her story is one of reckoning—of honoring heritage while daring to forge a path beyond it, of balancing devotion to another with the fragile act of preserving herself.
In the end, Complicated Love is not just about two people bound together. It is about the weight of family, the whispers of community, and the relentless question of whether love can survive when it demands everything. I invite you to walk with Veronica, to feel the sting of judgment and the fire of defiance, and to ask yourself: What would you sacrifice, and what would you save, in the name of love?
Complicated Love
David Waithera
© 2025
The night before the visa arrived, the hills held their breath. From the veranda of their brick house on the shoulder of Chania ridge, Veronica watched the tea bushes turn to dark velvet and the red dirt road bleach into a silver thread in the moonlight. A chill wind combed through the grevillea trees and rattled the iron sheets above her head. Somewhere beyond the banana grove, a dog barked once, sharp and startled, then fell to listening like everyone else.
In the kitchen, her mother’s voice moved through the lamplight, low and steady, breaking into quick laughter when her aunt made a joke about America and the cold: “You will come back speaking through your nose,” Auntie Wanjiku said, her gold bangles chiming. “Remember us when you marry a professor and bring back a car with seats that heat your kidneys.”
“Let the girl finish school first,” Mama answered. But the words had an edge of ceremony, as though spoken on behalf of a committee that had already decided. The room smelled of millet porridge and the smoke that always lived in the rafters. On the table, the envelope lay like a small white dare.
Baba had carried it from the tea collection center that afternoon, with the careful solemnity of a man bearing a sacred object. He had removed his cap before handing it to Veronica. “From the Embassy,” he said, and cleared his throat to make room for a pride too big to swallow.
Now it waited, addressed in a pale, unsmudged hand that looked like snow had learned to write. Veronica had touched its edge with one finger; the paper responded coolly. She was not afraid of the paper. She was afraid of what would be said after it was opened. “Open it,” Mama called from the kitchen. “Before the ugali sets like a footstone.”
Veronica slid a nail under the flap and lifted carefully. Inside: a thin letter, a stiffer rectangle, the official seal embossed like a moon caught in daylight. Student. Approved. The words steadied themselves on her tongue, then fled. In their place came the image she had been pretending not to carry—Nairobi’s glass buildings like stacked ice, a plane pushing the sky back, snow she had never touched but already understood as a sentence: your life will change.
Her grandmother had once told her, “Gũthií mbere ní gutheria kíríti.” To move ahead is to clear the thick bushes. Veronica sensed the thick bush now, biting into the grain of the family’s plans, splitting them with clean intention.
“Read,” Baba said. She read. The lamplight seemed to sharpen the ink. Mama’s hand came to rest on Veronica’s shoulder. Baba nodded slowly, once, twice, as though counting the steps to a threshold. Auntie clapped softly. Outside, the wind shifted, carrying the river’s distant rush. It sounded like agreement.
When the congratulating ended, the talk loosed itself and ran in a familiar direction, gathering speed. There were courses and semesters and costs. There were cousins in New Jersey (“which is near New York, which is near snow,” said Auntie, who believed everything north of Mombasa was north enough to be America). There were prayers, practical and fervent. Beneath and around all of it, a different current moved—felt but not named—like a second river under the first.
“America is not a place for girls to become stubborn,” Auntie warned. “You will finish. You will come home. Do not be like those who start speaking English even when they dream.” “Wanjiku,” Mama said gently. “We trust our daughter.” Baba folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. “Veronica will carry our name with honor. Then she will return. Rũracio is not for the air.” Dowry is not for the air, not an idea to be loosened and lost. He said it like a...
