I was born Gatimũ Kamau, in January of 3267 CE under the rising Kenyan sun in Afrika.  (Not Africa as it's spelled/pronounced in the language of the Americas.)  But I didn't stay there long.  My father, who blessed me with his name, decided early-on to move us to my mother's ancestral home; a small city-state between Tanzania and Sudan roughly south and west of Ethiopia.  The name of this place is inconsequential...it would be meaningless to those who have never called it home.

I grew up with plenty, but desired more.  I desired knowledge, experience and a sense of adventure.  And I found more than I bargained for.  

So many think that since the end of the third World War, that Earth has been a place of peace.  That's a "first world" belief held onto tightly in the Americas and Martians.  The reality of life is quite different in the Motherland.  I joined the Liberation Forces against my parents' wishes in my youth and was a part of the last skirmishes to finally remove the final remnants of the colonization of the 1900's from the south; fighting side-by-side with friends, neighbors and schoolmates with whom I'd once shared a normal life...people like Na'Kimuli; who I'd loved since we were children yet who I'd never found the courage to admit it to. In point-of-fact, we'd fought often together, she and I. And together, we'd almost died. I lost my left eye during the Battle of the Eastern Cape and she'd nearly found herself decapitated as we pushed through the final offensive of the war from King William's Town, through Berlin and all the way to New London where we pushed all those who did not fall before us into the ocean. After that, all fear had left me and I realized that death was ever ready to take from us what little time we're given. And it was there, as we lay bloodied and vulnerable, that I told her that if I were to die, I'd regret nothing if it were to be with her.

But I digress...

After I left the Liberation Forces, I married Na'Kimuli; the beautiful Yorùbá warrior-woman that she was. And once my cybernetic eye implant had taken hold and healed, and her voice box and neck and done the same thanks to the shard of shrapnel that found her neck in the fighting, we decided together that we'd tired of war.  We'd lost the taste for conflict.  So we gave it up and became independent explorers together.  After all, I'd been to University before I decided to "fight the good fight" and I had a solid background in the natural sciences.  She likewise had a natural gift for machines and was a born engineer. There was very little she couldn't do with a turn of the wrench. So, for the most part, it seemed a good enough fit.  I got my pilot's license, we bought our first ship; a Sidewinder and we ventured outwards into the unknown.  I sadly had to adapt the American moniker of S. H. Robinson (to make myself more appealing/serious to the minds of those in charge as an independent operator), as those who'd once tried to claim our homelands wee sadly the same ones who seemed to run all things extra-solar. But the shameful compromise allowed me to more easily slap a CMDR on my name and make the connections we needed once we left Afrika and the Earth behind.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough as no one told us until it was too late (long after we left Sol) that the Federation had restricted the system to all civilians in light of rising tensions and fears of Thargoid incursions.  No exceptions. Once you left, without military approval, there was no coming back. Three Earth years later we longed to see home again and we found ourselves champing at the bit for a way to return.  So, with a heavy heart and after much consideration and discussion, I pledged our ship and my service to Shadow President Winters and the Federal Navy.  Her policies on foreign aid, outreach, education and her overall liberal platform sat well with our personal views on what we'd like to see Earth become.  A proper counter-weight to President Hudson's far more...aggressive conservative stance.  

But it's not only home sickness that drove us.  It was the thought of what we were to one day return to.  We did these things to protect our Sol; to protect our Mother Afrika; to protect our home.  So that when we once again felt the Afrikan earth beneath our bare feet we could do so knowing that our friends and families would always be safe. That we would one day hear our unborn children playing soundly amongst the winds of our loving country unburdened by the insecurity we'd fought in our former life to secure in the war.