Allow me, my beloved reader, to briefly tell you about me and Karis and how we became friends.
I first started learning piano in 1997 when I was nine at my hometown Catholic church. (That was the year Mother Teresa - the much adored nun who helped the poor in Calcutta, India - passed on at a good old age of 87.) I continued honing my skills on the instrument in the Catholic church over the next several years, for I had no access to a piano at home or at school.
In the year 2000, Karis joined me as part of the group of youngsters that were receiving piano lessons in the church. That's when we met and became friends. By then, I had already had about three years of experience in playing the piano, or to be more precise, an electric piano keyboard.
Karis and I grew to be close friends because we were pretty much on the same wavelength; we both valued discipline and academic excellence. It was our growing friendship that made me introduce him to Prof. Charles Nyamiti, a priest with a passion for music who was then stationed at Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) in Nairobi.
Sometime in 2002 when I was away at Starehe Boys' Centre for my high school education, Karis became a piano student of Prof. Nyamiti. During some of his piano lessons, Prof. Nyamiti taught Karis how to play Amazing Grace hymn on the piano.
In December 2004 when I was on a school holiday, Karis showed off to me how he could play Amazing Grace hymn as Prof. Nyamiti had taught him. I instantly loved its harmony and pleaded with him to teach me how to play it. He obliged.
As you can see from my story so far, I introduced Karis to Prof. Nyamiti in the year 2000 and he in turn taught me in December 2004 how to play Amazing Grace hymn on the piano as he had been taught by Prof. Nyamiti. That was a good exchange.
When I was in fourth form at Starehe Boys' Centre in 2005, I showed off the harmony of Amazing Grace that Karis had taught me to Mr. Matthew Brooks - a talented young man from England who was then volunteering as a music teacher in the school. After Mr. Brooks listened to it, I lied to him that I had come up with the harmony, to which he remarked, "That's a good harmony!"
Now, Amazing Grace is an old hymn. It was composed in 1779 by John Newton. A very old hymn indeed. Very old. Yet ever new. Let's look at its first verse which goes as follows:
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,I came to like that verse in 2008 when I was a young man of 20 years; I even quoted it in an essay I was asked to write by one of my teachers in the evangelism course I pursued at All Saints' Cathedral in Nairobi - an excellent church I joined after I left Starehe in 2007.
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.
But imagine I have lately been realizing how lost I became upon graduating from the evangelism course! I, for instance, went astray at the university in JKUAT where I ignominiously dropped out in 2008 and rebelled against my family when I was a first year student at the University of Nairobi in 2011.
Besides becoming rebellious, there are several other ways I have been lost and wretched as the Amazing Grace hymn puts it. Such ways as being timid on many occasions, hanging out with the wrong fellows and offering free services as if I didn't need money to meet my needs.
Realizing how lost I have been is why I have said Amazing Grace is ever new even though it's an old hymn. I beseech you to also examine your life. And don't feel guilty and ashamed if you become thunderstruck by how lost and wretched you have been. Chalk it up to experience!
