When the young get an old person’s disease

It started with burn marks on a bedsheet. Claire Wanjiku’s roommate noticed many brown streaks with distinct marks of an iron box scattered all over her bedding.

“When I asked her about the marks, she mumbled something about always forgetting when she is ironing,” says Pauline Waithera, who was her roommate and classmate at Kenyatta University. The two would make light banter of Claire’s legendary “scatter brain” because focusing on the task at hand was a challenge.