Friends.

Celebrating friends is hard when you are the dullest knife in that drawer. It is twice as hard when their successes are the bright light that exposes your shortcomings. It is positively masochistic when even by the lax modern standards, you have amounted to pitifully little. It is, however, a joy to celebrate true friends because their successes are your successes, their triumphs are your triumphs, their victories are not a mirror to your defeats. It is the rare friendship that gives one a sense of self-worth and belonging. It even rarer to be replicated in different and differing relationships across genders, age-groups and social classes.

I am in the happily enviable position of having few true friends. There are the three who are fathers with whom I was admitted to the Bar. Their careers are flourishing as their families grown in size and number. There is the couple that smile when I see them. That has been the weirdest thing ever; who could be happy to see me, except my grandmother? There are the two loud ones, ironically from the same bit of the Rift Valley. Intelligent and belligerent in equal measure, they bring to mind a volcano that is simmering and one thing or another will bring it to a very loud, boisterous boil. Then there is she whose myriad stories I am having a hard time keeping track of but still valiantly trying to do so . She is like no one else I know. Which is odd because I thought that I had met every kind there was to meet. There are those I see only rarely because of what I'd like to think is a busy schedule but is probably a spectacular degree of sloth. There are others I'm in business with only because I like them. friends one and all that I hope will enjoy continued good fortune.

Then there are those I never thought I would ever befriend. Work colleagues whose sense of humour continues to be unrivalled, whose sense of duty is unparalleled and whose generosity continually takes my breath away. It is no surprise I found all of them incredibly beautiful and on one or two occasions of insanity allowed my mind to wander beyond the strict professional confines of my employer's business. Thank God, sanity is known to run especially hard in my family and the return of reason allowed these acquaintances and associations to become friendships that may defy the sands of time.

There is the lot for which a tut-tut is the only acceptable response to their latest escapade, while there are those three who will not react sniffily if the response is a swift kick in their backsides. There is that one that is always weeping into her beer; I have tried meeting her for coffee thinking that it was the inebriation that elevated her moodiness. That Java on Mama Ngina Street will not be seeing my custom for a while, I think.

What they will never understand (it hurts them that they do not know why), my friends, is why they are compartmentalised so neatly. There is work, home, upcountry, church, the pub and barber's. Each with its own set. Each with one picture of their friend. An incomplete picture, mind. Some will see anger, every now and then, while others will only see unbridled joy. Some will get to experience their friend's acerbic tongue, others only the charm. There are those who see a professional while others see the father of all sloths. It all depends on who is seen with their friend, where they are seen and why they were seen where they were seen. Life is not scripted and fate cannot be anticipated, but only small children can afford to be careless.