I read Ngugi wa Thiongo’s The Trial of Dedani Kimathi years back when I was still in lower secondary school. The character that sticks with me most since that time is the woman political activist who works to support the liberation movement. She smuggles a gun into the courtroom by storing it in a loaf of bread with its insides removed expertly for that purpose. She is an ordinary market woman but uses her agency as part of the formidable people’s liberation movement to unseat colonialism in Kenya.  No one has taught the woman the skill, just as no one taught Gorky’s Mother how to organise the underground movement that supported the masses during the Russian Revolution.