Now that I am set on this path, there are a few more who should have known better than to befriend me. There's Linah. I always wondered about that name. She's mum now, and her sons look so much like her. I wonder if they have her smile. She smiled a lot. I thought it was unnatural for someone to be that happy. Until I met her future husband. Then it all fell into place. She owes me a Steers' burger. And a novel. In that order.
Is Sylvia still in Germany? I don't know. She travels widely. She is the singular most aggressively ambitious person I know. She is part-owner of a fine-dining establishment - she's want me to say that - and she knows more about the law than is healthy for someone with her unbridled ambition. She is honest to a fault and that worries me sometimes because honest, ambitious people who go to Germany are simply part of that horrendous brain drain that leaves us with morons in charge. I have a feeling she will one day run Kenya.
I wonder how the other Lilian - the one with the dreadlocks - finds public service. Sure it's the DPP's office, which many of us are envious about, but still the public service. I have a suspicion she is already in charge of her district; she won't admit it, of course, but she must be in charge. I used to think she was too thin. Then she wore that grey skirt-suit number and I am now fully on board with grey skirt-suits. I just hope the DPP doesn't assign her to one of those prosecutions that seem to end up with the prosecutor having to explain sudden lifestyle changes or having to dodge 7.62mm cartridges travelling at high velocity.
I haven't seen William who deftly handled 7.62mm cartridges once for quite a while. He got married on Valentine's Day some time ago. Cliche, you say? Not really. It seemed fitting. Especially when I remember his mysteriously slicked back hair and the missing eyeglasses. John, Hiram, Paul -I haven't told you about Paul yet - were all there. He's an IP genius nowadays. One day, perhaps, he'll let me in on what IP is.
Paul is my brother-in-arms. He's ODM. I'm ODM. At least that's what we pretend. I don't even know how that nickname came to be our nickname. No...I do. It was that wild-eyed lawyer when we were still in Law School who almost wept when we told her that Agwambo would win the election but would never be president and that the US would elect a Luo president before Kenya did. I think we must have hit a nerve because, I swear,, she must have shed a litre of tears that afternoon. Anyway, Paul is the one who seems to have to volumes: loud and loud cranked up to eleventeen. Sometimes I hide from him, because it is almost impossible to disagree with him without looking like a complete heel.
There's Salim about whom everything is a mystery. His present chubby-cheekedness is a mystery. He is a brilliant lawyer. He's a brilliant drummer. He is a remarkably reckless driver, that is, he seems to get to places in speeds that defy the laws of physics. And all in one piece and the car in working nick. Another mystery that will remain unsolved. He has these wonderful tall tales that have just enough kernels of truthiness to sound totally plausible. If he lived in Antarctica, he'd have the leading refrigeration business in the area. He's that good. And loyal too. And for a chubby fellow, quite the athlete too. I wonder if his SL500's wheels have fallen off yet. Knowing him, DT Dobie probably gave him a lifetime deal on replacements.
I only found out that her name is Rose the other day. That's not what we called her. She smiles entirely too much. Another happy, happy soul. How do I know so many happy people, anyway? She got married too, the other day. He smiles too. And he wants to steal my tree. And no! I'm not jealous. Or anything. I don' see her as much, these days. I tend to leave the house at unreasonably early hours these days. Those drafts won't write themselves. She always said "Hi" when I slunk past her gate at 9am looking like I had been hit by a sofa-sized Black Label ice-cube.
Maybe tomorrow I'll have more memories of the fond kind about the kind people who saw fit not to shrink in horror when they first met me. Not even my first landlord did. Instead he and his family had me over for lunch every Sunday. It's a funny old world, isn't it?
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