The abuse is so bad it sends the author to a streak of self-destructive tendencies and behaviour through alcoholism, indiscriminate sexual encounters – including same-sex liaison. A period of renewed rape in Tanzania results in a pregnancy by a side boyfriend from which a child is finally born. Despite a new sense to life, a return to the risky life by the narrator leads to depression and institutionalization.

The Footfalls of My Heart captures a Gusii bride’s yearning for a groom, Rimura, and the life they will share as husband and wife. Nyamwange’s The Footfalls of My Heart is a bride’s response to his earlier publication, The Girl of Red Beauty, which presented the groom’s dreams of an ideal wife.