I keep on counting my friends. they are few. they are very few. And I've not bothered to find new friends. I've never bothered. I dont know why but I've always felt comfortable with a very small circle. I've always wanted to be away from people.
As a kid growing up, I wasn't the popular kid in my village. I call it a village because it is a village, a small village in a small town. And my home was small too. there was a black and white television, one which my father bought during his first marriage years, when his responsibilities were still fewer and he could spend a little sum on some worldly vanity. That's what my mother told me. Twenty four years now, the television is still there, bundled in a box and once in a while it is switched on to confirm it's still functioning. When it's on, it shows nothing except for the sound it makes and the specks of white and grey running on its screen. In the days of its glory, I was never fond of it. I was a kid though and as much as I could be distracted by moving pictures and people making sounds in a television, i wasnt into it.
When my family gathered to watch the popular KBC shows, I was either imagining what was beyond the skies, what was beyond people's faces and why people did things the way they did them. I couldn't understand why I couldn't be around my family when they were around. I couldn't understand why I felt peaceful all the moments I was alone. When neighbours visited, and they did frequently because we were living in a rental house, they couldn't stop commenting that I was weird and that I was already doomed from my childhood. my mother could laugh, just to shrug the comment away but her eyes hid a bitterness i noticed growing with time. It was like she knew something was off with me. And maybe she hoped, just like mothers hope for their children that someday I could be like her other children-- something she hasn't witnessed to date.
It's not a victory of some sort that I'm different from my siblings. It's something I wish I can run away from sometimes and be someone different, and live in a different way. But things don't go that way. I am how I am because that's how I am. And I take it as my existential burden. I learn to live with it every day.
I'm a loner. Thats the correct way to put it. I'm an introvert. That's another way to put it. I'm not a lonely loner though because there's always a difference between a loner and a lonely loner. I am my biggest company most times. It has always been that way and perhaps it'll always be that way.
My first great friend was my landlord's daughter. Her name was Lila. She liked to seat with me when other kids went to play. She was a talker and she talked much and when I was tired with her talking I could walk away and sit at another spot. And she could come and sit with me and talk nothing. And when she was tired with my silence, she could walk away and play with the other kids. She always knew where to find me. She knew my hiding place. There were banana plants behind her house and sewage from the rentals passed through there. I went there, always, to listen to the flowing dirty water. Sometimes I wanted it to be a river except that it wasn't. When she missed me at my place and after being told by my mother that she knew not where I was, she could come there and hang out with me. And when darkness came, she could go away and I could go home, silently. I lost Lila when we vacated her father's rental. Last year but one, I heard she was married. I've never seen her again. I don't know if she still remembers the little weird boy she was fond of.
At Kindergarten, my teacher was my friend. Mr. Kenga was his name. I don't know why he had an interest in me. He was old and funny, and he loved each of his student. He walked me home everyday and talked to my mother everytime. Sometimes he would carry me on his shoulders all the way home. Sometimes we went to lunch together. And sometimes when the schools were closed, he picked me from home and we went on strolls. He kept on telling me the same stories he always told me. He used to sing me songs, folksongs of which I couldn't understand. And since I didn't know how to dance, he made me clap to the songs he sang. I liked that and sometimes I murmured along to his songs.
At Kg 3, he advised my father to take me to KIbaoni Primary or St. Thomas primary. Those were the best primary schools around that time. They were public schools, and their prestige was found on the results and discipline they instilled in their pupils. Kibaoni primary was near home so I was taken there. but before i went, Mr. Kenga took me to lunch, our last lunch together like the last supper Christ had with his disciples. He bought me chapatis, two actually and beans. And he kept on telling me things about school, about campus, of which I had no idea what he was talking about. The biggest thing he told me; I've never met a personality like you and one day you'll just be a great person. I've never lost his voice saying those words to me. When we reached home that day, I stood at my door and he kept waving goodbye and I did the same with my little right hand. It was the first time i felt the pain of separation. It was like I knew that was the end of our friendship of which was true. I've never met Mr. Kenga again. I only receive his greatings from my father once in a while.
From class one to three, I didn't have a friend. I was just this kid who goes to school and wait for evening to go back home. I grew shy each day. I sank inward each day. and I simply couldn't talk with anyone. I had nothing special; like a bicycle, or a pretty face which other students could like me for, or money. At times I could gather a little attention from other students when exam results were announced. I was always at the top, followed by Santa Chengo and Elija Fondo. After three days, the attention died and everything went back to normal. I was always an outsider in my classroom till I reached class four.
I swallowed a shilling at class four and it kind of made me popular. It wasn't the thing which made me friends though; it was the thing which made my name spread beyond my classroom. Students who were interested in seeing me came and peep from the culvert windows and I assumed they were watching another person. And it was a story. It died though just like an uproar dies after sometime. But that time, a class seven boy called Sudi just kept coming and make stories with me. He began teaching me mathematics. He transfered though and it was over.
There's Simon and Yaa, friends I met in campus. And we are still friends. And maybe someday I'm gonna share their story. But at campus, the greatest friend I've ever had and have never had another such like is Roy Lemic.
The day he was done with campus, he came at my place, 10 am. We talked much; how Donald Trump was the worst American president, why humans love sex, why love is a fallacy, why the powerful man on earth is the man with no children and marriage, why life is difficult, and why the world is fucked up. We talked till 5 pm. And he was going to catch a bus to his home. So he told me; this is the last day we are meeting. I'm not sure if we'll talk again. I'm going to disappear. I won't be reach online and I'm going to change my contact. It's just been wonderful to have you as a friend. And he went away. I felt the same feeling I felt when bidding goodbye Mr. Kenga. I've never met Roy again and probably, I'll never meet him again in my lifetime.
The thing with making friends is they'll leave at some point and you remain with yourself and the memories of them. You are left with holes, holes which can't be filled, holes which will always be there. And though you might want to think it's a good idea to have a million friends, it always isn't a good idea. The good idea is to have friends; few friends who at least won't leave to and perhaps that can be yourself; befriend yourself.
I've learnt this the hard way; unless you find a great friend in yourself, everyone else will leave. And the holes they leave you with will keep on aching, forever.
Kabwere Musa
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