Tom Mboya was 38 when he was shot in 1969. He had built the labor movement, negotiated independence, brought Obama Sr. to America, and was widely seen as Kenyatta's successor. His death was the hinge moment in Kenyan history. If Mboya had lived, there might have been no Moi presidency, no ethnic capture of the state, no descent into one-party rule. Or maybe the forces that killed him would have found another way. This trail is a counterfactual: what Kenya could have been if the brightest political mind of his generation had survived to lead it.