The world is moving on, and so is Irũngũ Houghton. In a few weeks, he will leave Amnesty International as its Executive Director, after eight years. What remains then? He is still a hoarder (or keeper, as he puts it), which makes it startling how he so easily lets go: of his books, of his children, of himself.
He’d have kept his dreadlocks, too, “But I didn’t want to spend too much time in maintenance,” he says. He is busy, got things to do, places to be. “See, I probably would not have lived to the age of 40,” he says. Ah, about that. He often goes back to the well of his youth to draw moments of rebellion. That time he organised a coup in campus. That other time he published some samizdat clandestine materials. The restlessness and recklessness of youth.
