Dan Okwiri
#PenningMyJournal.
Wuod Baba is feeling peppered today, as my year closes. In lily rose am pepping to curtain the sunset of the 2025 in hale spirit. Nowadays I cherish good health more than any other pops of life.
Am tunneling my mind on my porch today with golden hay memories of pals migrated to foreign lands.
The 80s & 90s were the fizzy seasons of my being. We were young full of zing & ping, & it was our marital season. My ageset was knotting mate, every month I was suiting in wedding best man.
Forward the clock, how things switched. The Kenya of 90s ravaged an economic pimple, known as Goldenberg. Our economy sunk in turbid deep sea.
My circle of tight friends barfing from the economic difficulties which breads & butters domestic squabbles. Women don’t ice cream to financial melt. Many of my chums were under a lot of pressure to bolt to the western world for new life of liberty & prosperity. Fungible to wifey push for new beginnings, we began migrating to the western world. One by one trooped out to diaspora, bending to wifey pressure.
A chum, Okello was a military major in them days when a major was a real major. The army then wasn’t as large as it is now, & being a major, he was big fish.
Major Okello was an officer & a gentleman, he always made me smile in mile. Peeked me to the regimented world of the military. Red carpet, merry sessions in the DOD officer’s mess. Choice whisky give away price (a beer was kes 5). To enjoy the privilege of being there, all it cost me was to don suit & tie, & behave like gentleman, that wasn’t too much of an ask. You can’t dress casual in an officer’s mess.
Lady fortune perched his shoulder, & he was posted as a military attaché in London. The world at his feet in sweet. He moved wife & brood of three tots to UK.
Swimming in new money, shipped in a merc & bmw to Kenya duty free, it was part of his military diplomatic perks. Luos love glitzy peppered life. He was popping tall in tree, holidayed in Kenya every 6 months courtesy his employer, when took leave from work. Painting the town red, he would cruise me in his convertible BMW in ritzy Nairobi hotspots & mollycoddle me in treat.
There was a Luo ohangla joint in Athi River known as “baby touch me” that made his fizzy sprite. We would party in hearty to dawn in kingdom come. The club lived to its reputation, walking in every woman would keep pat you, to fish out your wallet delights. It was gross.
The military posted him to London for 8 years. In this life, there lots of good stories end in sad. It all came to end & he was back in Department of Defense, as just another dimmed spark plug in a huge engine.
His wifey refused to return to Kenya, opted to stay on in London, her fib in rib was it would affect the kids schooling. He didn’t buy that, but as a soldier he had orders to obey from seniors.
Two years down the wire frustration sunned, it would prompt him to early retire. He didn’t enjoy the same perks in Nairobi, as he was no longer a military attache. Okello was swimming wet in lonely, his family in foreign land. Passed on for promotion, what he claimed ethnic reasons, he threw in wet soaked towel and quit. Boxed all his belongings & relocated to London to join wifey.
Now no longer a military diplomat but a civilian, this time his carrot in London would be worlds apart from what he had cheesed.
Now a retired major, alumni of Sandhurst in the UK, a prestigious military academy. But now the only job he could clinch was a night guard in Tescos hypermarket. His paratrooper knowledge in detritus slop.
Working at night during the winter times particularly did him in. His wife had become his sore thumb, his kids became strange as fiction had adopted British mannerisms in diction. His home a war zone, machine gunned in belligerent friction. It was wifey & his brood in army against him in flee. Fighting with wifey & children is criminal in UK, & their constant spates in spade attracted the attention of children’s department.
Okello was kicked out of the house by his own brood, which he had diligently worked to pay mortgage. The British penal system on the brink of caging him behind bars. Things were thick, he had to flee.
Dejected, frazzled, the veteran soldier returned home to Kenya. Today in rust in his rural home in Alego, Siaya County a broken alcoholic. His aged sickly mother tended to his needs. Okello cursed why he ever moved his family to the United Kingdom. Today he draws his rice from his pension. He plaque a good letter of sterling service from the military. The village revere him as a paratrooper.
My other chum was a banker in Barclays, known as Opiyo. Never met a bright man as him. He jettisoned in the financial corporate forest, & before knew it plumped into a red carpet office. His wife one day told him she wanted to visit her sister in USA. He didn’t think much of it, & treated his sweet to a first-class plane ticket on BA. Little did he know it was a one way trip!
What was meant to be a month-long trip turned to decades, of no return. Opiyo never recovered from her deceit. Never bantered to me why she walked out, and drowning in introvert. Soaked in sad, his zest for excellence waned.
In time retrenched, burnt charcoal turned to recluse ash. He didn’t live too long after that, Opiyo was found dead, solitary in his one-bedroom pad, 2 years back in Pangani. The body decomposed, it’s said he died at least 4 days before the neighbors smelled to it. Buried him in Kano, Kisumu. Hardly anyone attended, I wondered if his ex wife was even in the know?
Then there was my other chum Ochieng. Of real Luo blood he had at least 2 wives that I knew, Nyar Abandu from Busia & Nyar Taita from Mwatate. Nyar Abandu migrated to UK & he followed her there, jobless his life in Kenya was grungy. The love of his though was Nyar Taita, a vegetable seller Mwebe Tayari market in Mombasa town.
London was an apple pie, mooned him an opportune to job as a bus driver.
Whilst in UK, Nyar Taita died in Mombasa. Her death frazzled his spirit in dispirite. He returned from the UK to bury her in his village in Imbo.
Melancholy drizzling, never was he the same, & would lamé thereafter. He had a stroke, & is ailing. The one great cheese is the UK has great healthcare, though paralyzed he soldiers own. Nyar Abandu, l must cheese, has done a great job of nursing him. Give it to Luhya women, they are always sure loyal.
Though have given stories that river in wet melancholy, there’s another bright yellow buttery side to life too. On the polar side of the coin, have chums whose best decision was to leave. Have focused on the lee side of the sun.
Many of the popping buildings you see in Migori belong to diaspora. The diaspora who do particularly well are those who leave one spouse back to invest the funds oiled in.
Now my brother, if wifey starts blabbing migrating…. take care. The financial benefits ain’t worth it at the tear of your family, unless you have given up with home, or if unemployed. Then by all means. People learn through experiences. The conclusion though is yours.
By the way “Baby Touch Me” nightclub long dimmed with the owner! Understand he joined the gods.
#OkwiriMyJournalMyThoughtsMyWalk
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Oof. This was a sour pill, but arresting in truth. I’ve heard similar fates befall others. Learn we must, from those past before us, and resist following trail. Interesting style of writing by the way.