Even though modern African countries are on the surface rapidly developing, many clusters if families still live on in the past, vainly confronting swift-paced change with old mind-sets.

Kamau’s family and many of their neighbours heroically try to participate in modernity but their lot keeps getting worse. Within this context the emerging generations grow and learn to live in a swiftly-changing world that straddles the old and new.

Even as they make sense of it they also have to live with the elderly who are reluctant to involve them in handling change and uncertainties. Some contemplate, and even actually sell pieces of their land. Gender biases in patrilineal, rural settings are seriously indicted.

Hope can be invested in the educated elite transmitting valid interpretations of the old and new, but they too have their limitations to overcome.