Coka Mũciĩ is a collection of poems in Gikũyũ and English about my trip home to Kenya after being away for 24 years. The poems and reflections in these pages trace a journey across three timelines: ten years since I promised myself I would begin healing wounds I did not yet fully understand, twenty-five years since I first arrived in the United States, and sixty-two years since Kenya gained independence, the same year my father was born and a moment that I realized recently shaped the course of my family’s history. Above all, these pages honor the life I left behind, the stories that continued to unfold while I was away, and the quiet miracle of discovering the truth of my lineage, from the physical place, the traditional culture, and even the family conflicts that led to me being who I am today. In a moment when immigrants are often scapegoated for society’s struggles, I hope this book invites curiosity about the nuanced lives people lived before they arrived somewhere new. We must regard all parts, not in spite of their complexities, but precisely because these complexities are what make us deeply human and worthy of living, whether we stay home or migrate across the world.