When I think, I’m a ruminant; I have four stomachs. I will graze, send it down to the rumen, bring it back up, chew the cud and down again the thoughts go, through to the reticulum, omasum, abomasum, and then that lull of storms-coming at the rectum. Wait for it…epiphany! If the dung coming out round back is any good, soft and scented, it’ll be deftly spread onto the floor of some hut, with pride.

We have cement floors now, tiled, carpeted. We mop or vacuum those. My grandmother had to dung hers; often letting us walk the wet floor, leaving cute little footprints that dried into the dung in beautiful random patterns. Turns out she used them for bait; to trick guests into giving her a cue to go, “…oh, those are from the littlest of my second…smart one, naughty…my daughter, one that follows my sixth twice, the Daktari, says her third’s last…such a waste…my fourth’s only is getting her second twins; did you know they can know that now before…”

She’s since died but snuck out of that place over yonder, as all story weavers do, reincarnating into tens of hundreds of whisperers of tales – apparently the gods are just too smart for their own good, they’re wont to be baited to cue storytellers. Their loss. Our delight!

This week, for five days, the Storymoja Festival celebrates these stories; those of old, the contemporary and even those that coax the stars into bed, that in the passion of love-making they might gift us clairvoyance. But you already know this.

What I’ve been ruminating over is how to get the most of the five days. Like an extravagant buffet, I’m spoilt for choice. There’ll be meadows to graze, shrubbery to browse, there’ll be hay, Napier chopped up in a chaff cutter and troughs of that industrial grain-feed (dripping with molasses) zero-grazed Friesians get fat udders from.

But then, in this city, time’s on Eliud Kipchoge’s legs, and we’re on a chain smoker’s lungs – we never catch it. We make do.

So this is how I’ll be “making do” at this year’s Storymoja Festival.

I’ve recruited a gang of my nieces and nephews to do the weekday “office hours” events. I’m looking to be the coolest uncle south of Timbuktu. See, there’s a cool school’s program running Wednesday through Friday and it’s designed with different age groups and tastes considered.

They start out with a music, dance and yoga warm up before puppetry shows, poetry and storytelling, theatre performances, read along, cool science experiments, paint-art sessions and more go up in a confetti of excitement and learning. They’ll get to meet authors, have Improv drama, creative writing and blogging workshops, film screenings and even get taught safety skills necessary to protect themselves off/online.

“For me personally”, it’s how to get to those weekday afternoon Masterclasses I’m plotting. Maybe if I went to lunch and came back to work with a gut allegedly doing sprints, “they” might let me go home, to be close to the throne room. I mean, these classes are only 500KES, and there’s an Owaahh one, a Leadership one with Mandela Washington Fellow Adeniyi Adedayo and even a “safe space to talk sex” with Kanga Mganga.

Thursday evening think I’ll catch Too Early for Birds; I’m getting the advance ticket at 1000KES with the 500KES saved there going to the Owaahh Masterclass.

The weekend presents a unique opportunity. If you get a ticket to Sitawa Namwalie’s play Room of lost Names (Saturday) or popular Zimbabwean comedian’s Stand-Up Comedy show “Embrace the Madness” (Sunday) you get free entry to all weekend day events at the festival. That includes sitting in on the Spelling Bee, to be quietly embarrassed about how spell-check has ruined your ability to spell!

I don’t know, I’m still chewing this cud. Check out the full festival program here, to make your plan.