Bidding a Friend Farewell

Who was your best childhood friend? Mine was a neighbour's kid named Stephen Kamau. He calls himself Steve Wanyee on Facebook, and that's his actual name which I didn't know back in the '90s when we bonded while grazing cattle on a piece of land my father bought some time in 1993. He was a true friend, in every sense of the word.

I recall most vividly and fondly two school holidays in the '90s when Steve Wanyee and I spent most of our daytime together on that piece of land. The first was the December of 1993.

Steve Wanyee came regularly during that 1993 holiday to join me as well as my brothers Paddy and Symo as we grazed cattle. Being the innovative kids that we were, we ventured into building dainty huts using the tall grass that sprouted and flourished on the piece of land. We built the huts perhaps to keep us from getting bored with staring at the cattle as they feasted on their favourite meal: grass!

Paddy, the eldest member of the gang, led us by instructing us on which type of grass blades to cut and how to fix them into a hut. And that must be where he acquired some of the leadership skills that compelled Dr. Geoffrey Griffin, the founding director of Starehe Boys' Centre, to appoint him a decade later as the captain of a dormitory in the school in those days when Starehe was one of the best high schools in Kenya.

By the way, it's like someone bewitched that piece of land that was the theatre of our fun back in 1993 because it is now overran with useless weeds, useless in the sense that no cow can eat them and live to see the next day. My brother Bob Njinju has been trying to galvanize us into reclaiming the land to profitable purposes but it's like everybody has his own business to attend to.

The other holiday I vividly and fondly recall bonding with Steve Wanyee was the April of 1997. Those of us who were alive and kicking back then remember that to be the year when the witty, beautiful and charismatic Princess Diana perished in a road accident somewhere in Europe.

Like in December of 1993, we also spent much of the daytime of that 1997 April holiday grazing cattle on our father's piece of land. But I can't recall Paddy ever being part of our gang; maybe he had realized he was too old to hang out with such little kids as Steve Wanyee, Symo and I.

One evening on that April 1997 holiday, I accompanied Steve Wanyee to his parents' home which is a stone's throw away from where we grazed cattle. When we reached their home, we happened to pass by a clothes line that had underwear hang on it. Steve Wanyee confided to me that the undies belonged to one of his elder sisters, and when he noted my eyes fixed on them, he cautioned me in Kikuyu, "Don't look at them for too long!"

That was vintage us back in the '90s. We are still friends with Steve Wanyee who occasionally likes my blog's stories when I share them on Facebook. But we no longer spend time together which I think is why the other day he slowed a sedan he was driving to a halt so as to greet me. He requested me to pay him a visit one of these fine days, then accelerated the sedan to wherever he was headed.

Yesterday evening as I was doing something productive and enjoyable in my room, which I once contemplated of christening "War Room" but now sounds silly and stupid, my mother called out my name and asked me in Kikuyu, "Thuita, do you know Muchene?"

"Yes, that's [Steve Wanyee's] dad." I replied, alarmed at what she might say next.

Then my mother blurted out what I expected, "He's dead."

"Doooodo!" I exclaimed, mindful not to use the Lord's name in vain.

And since yesterday, I have harboured a myriad of thoughts on death. All I can now say is that I have agreed with the great novelist Charles Dickens that life as a series of partings. Steve Wanyee's dad has parted us and I wonder who's next in my circle of friends.

For the time being, I will pay Steve Wanyee a visit some time this week, God willing and weather permitting, to give him solace as he prepares to bury his also fatherly father. Adieu!