Scholar who walked out of a convent to study in the US

When Prof Agnes Wanjiku Kabira looks at you, her face betrays no emotion. She fits the Luo saying: ‘Jochame joyue dhogi joling’ ka matuo’ (literally: ‘those who ate it wiped their mouth and became calm and innocent like patients’). And yet she did something drastic sometime in 1979.

She currently chairs the University of Nairobi’s Department of Literature.