A True Friend

To paraphrase Henri Nouwen, a true friend is not someone who offers much advice, solutions or cures, but rather, one who has chosen to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. A person who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a true friend.

For me, I am lucky to have a true friend in David Mwakima. He is a kind, generous and understanding fellow, the sort of friend every human being needs and no successful person can do without.

I first met Mwakima in 2011 when I visited Starehe Boys' Centre, my Alma Mater. He was then serving as a deputy school captain of Starehe. When I introduced myself to him, he responded, "I have heard about you!" That's all I recall in the conversation we had in 2011.

When I went back to Starehe in 2012 to arrange when I could give a motivational talk to the boys, I again met Mwakima who had by then been promoted to be the Starehe Boys' school captain. I struck a conversation with him in the course of which I informed him that I was a political science student at the University of Nairobi.

Intrigued, he asked me whether I had read The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. Being the honest young man that I am, I admitted that I hadn't read the book and then told him the name 'Machiavelli' sounded vaguely familiar to me.

Thanks to that conversation I had with Mwakima, two or three weeks later, I read Michael White's biography of Machiavelli. The biography, which is titled A Man Misunderstood, made me know more about the famous Machiavelli.

One morning during that time I was going to Starehe to schedule my motivational talk, I found Mwakima revising for the SAT exams. He let me know that he was applying to MIT, Cornell and Stanford. Having applied to those top American colleges when I was in the institute division of Starehe in 2006, I advised him to "prepare for the worst but hope for the best".

It seems Mwakima listened to my advice because even though he was applying to three top American colleges, he didn't let an opportunity to enrol at Deerfield Academy slip by. (Deerfield Academy is one of the best college preparatory schools in the United States.)

As it happened, Mwakima was rejeced by the three American colleges he applied for admission in 2012. While I am not sure whether the rejections depressed him as much as they had done to me a few years earlier, I tried to lift his spirits by telling him via phone that he could still make into the top colleges by applying again when he enrolled at Deerfield Academy.

True to my prophecy, a year later, Mwakima was accepted at several top flight colleges in America. He chose to matriculate at Harvard. And I was happy for him that he had succeeded where I had failed.

The advice and moral support I gave Mwakima were not in vain since he, in turn, helped me as the years rolled by. In the year 2014 when I was applying for the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) - a program conceived by the Obama administration to mentor young Africans to be leaders in politics and in business - he proofread and fine-tuned my essays and recommendation letters. Unfortunately, I wasn't accepted into the program.

Then when I opened a blog for sharing my thoughts, experiences and learnings with the world, Mwakima was one of the few friends who gave me positive feedback. He was so impressed with the quality of writings in my blog that he requested we meet in Nairobi during his 2014 long holiday.

When we met, he gifted me a flower vase with the name "DEERFIELD" printed on it. On my part, I gave him a CD containing Charles Swindoll's David: A Man of Passion & Destiny, a delightful book about King David, the pioneering king of Isreal as narrated in the Bible.

And then in February 2017 when I was supposed to pay the web hosting fee for this blog, I requested several people to help me since I was penniless at that time. None of them assisted me. Worrying that my blog would be shut down, I approached Mwakima who settled my web hosting fee in time. Had he not come to my aid, I would have given up blogging, a hobby that has wonderfully enriched my life.

I would have loved to go on and on about the other ways Mwakima has helped me but I beg to stop there, for to say too much is worse than to say too little. All I can now do is reassert that Mwakima is a true friend of mine, the kind that sticks closer than a brother as the Bible puts it. May God bless him abundantly.

***********************
RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed the above story on a true friend, you might also enjoy another one on "A Model of Servant Leadership" which I wrote some time back. Just click on that link in blue to dive straight into the story.