Around the turn of the millennium, Dan occasionally visited my eldest brother Joe Kagigite to swap stories. I came to know him as a humble, talkative and humorous fellow.
My brother Bob Njinju once shared with me two jokes Dan cracked. One was him saying they had so many rats in their home that they had started giving them names.
In 2006 when I joined my hometown Catholic youth group of which Dan was a member, we became good friends. He was working for National Bank then, and I was an IT student at Starehe Institute.
As a friend, I gave him a copy of a software program I created for the 2006 World Cup fixtures because he was, and still is, a fan of soccer, and Liverpool FC in particular.
When I enrolled at JKUAT in May 2007 and became a member of All Saints' Cathedral Nairobi, we didn't see much of each other. But I reconnected with him by including him in my mailing list when I took up writing as a hobby in 2011.
He never wrote back till one day in 2013 when he forwarded me several rib-cracking emails. I laughed so much that I asked him, half in jest, to send me money to cater for the medical bill for treating my cracked ribs.
A few years later, in 2016 to be precise, I ran into him as I was taking a walk in our hometown of Kiserian. He was surprised to see how big I had grown, which spurred me to lose weight.
After that chance encounter, I started seeing him more often. I soon gathered he had left National Bank and was now running a shop in Kiserian where I sometimes dropped by to buy a few odds and ends.
Once when I went to the shop, he told me he appreciated the emails I used to send him, especially one I wrote on "Tactical Maneuvering". He is such a good friend for him to have mentioned that to me.
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RECOMMENDATION: If you've enjoyed this story, you might also enjoy "How to Win Friends".
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Dan: The Man Behind the Smile
A True Story
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