Is today the day I become a Kenyan citizen?

Since my father first caught sight of Mombasa from his ship in late 1929, at least some of my family has lived continuously in east Africa until now. After Kenya’s independence in 1963, many Europeans opted to become citizens of the new country, but my parents did not. All my life, I never had any doubt where I wanted to be most of all and once, after too long overseas, I recall bursting into tears when the pilot announced that we had entered Kenyan airspace.

Still, I grew up grateful that I held a British passport. It allowed me to travel the world as a correspondent, probably more easily than if I had held any other nationality. I have been proud to be British, yet I was always envious of those who held a Kenyan passport. To me, it was one of the things I wanted most of all in the world. I have worked in several continents but I was born in Nairobi, married here, my children were also born in Kenya and my father and mother’s ashes were scattered off the beach in Malindi.

For most of my life, I was never going to be allowed to be Kenyan. But when the country adopted a new constitution about a decade back, the right of dual citizenship was extended to people like me. I filed my application on 26 April 2012. Nothing happened. In January 2015, I received a letter from the immigration department to say my case was ‘receiving attention’, and that further communication would be made in ‘due course’. I visited the citizenship offices on a regular basis and was told to wait because I would hear more in ‘due course’. Every few months I made the pilgrimage to Nairobi, changing out of dusty farm clothes to don my suit and drive six hours from the ranch to the immigration offices, where I would be politely told to wait a bit more.

Nine years passed.