Life Is Short, Value It.

Life is all about now. Tomorrow, we are too often reminded, is not ours. Life (our), as we know it is actually a tiny (much less than a dot) irrelevant bit of the multi universes that exist. You are nothing. Unless you believe.

But am not writing this as God. Neither so I am in the category of the YOU. I write this as me, just me, another one of God’s own creation. With knowledge and a right to choose right or wrong. Where are you?

That said or asked, how long do you think you gonna live? How long have you planned your life? How long are you prepared to live and on, on, how long have you prepared yourself to live?

A friend of mine stormed into my living room the other day. No he was not mad or all that no. He just had a lot of stuff to get off his chest. So I say to this common fellow, “looki hia mister”! “There ain't no trouble a mile you can see… so make no trouble here mister coz there ain't no trouble needed neither..,seen?”

Well, tha fella, him being what them Englishmen call a gentleman come on and say “sorry..,” “sorry sir, eh.. I did not mean to cause any trouble at all”. What a hogwash…seen!!

Anyway, I say to him “get your tired butt a piece of seat to land". I say to him, "be cool at it coz what you looking at now is a cool group of friends, seen?”

There ain't no trouble in that now is there? No. Just what I thought. So I ask this qualified gentlemen what his argument was all about or what ever the amount of trouble was bothering him. “What is?” I say, “what is?”

“I ain't got no trouble man…and I got no trouble friends…. no trouble at all ladies either” he says and I look him hard in the eyes. I look him hard and know that this here man ain't talking the real shit! So I let him have it! “What shit man, what shit is cooking you up!!?” I vibrate!

“Hear dis” he says, “when I die, take me home back to Kenya and bury me there..” He adds “there ain't no talk about it, that there be my wish and ya better treat it right y’all!”

There is nothing wrong with that. But this. “Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the impulses of your heart and the desires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things. So, remove grief and anger from your heart and put away pain from your body, because childhood and the prime of life are fleeting.” Ecclesiastes 11. 

Think not of death whereat you still are young. Enjoy your life without the thought of death. The preoccupation with death is appropriate to those who have this life lived enough and tired. So plan not your death in fore-time less you be calling nigh your own end. Invite not death where need not be.

I and a few of my friends had a very cool evening the other day. What is now called chilling. Sitting back on the long sofa watching a movie till darkness fall and midnight call. Just chilling. Two couples liking the soft side of life without the indulgences made necessary by choice. I never had a problem there but we don’t often enough think about life without the additional spices that make it jolly. It was a nice movie too and we had to rewind it several times just to really hang on through the suspensions while breaking in here and there to tell some story out of memories provoked along.

After the movie, we decided that a Friday evening must not necessarily be wasted sober or without some music and dance. Luckily, one of us remembered the area pub which hosted some honky tonk blues, a disco and a karaoke craze. Well, that all besides the real intention of socialization.

The pub is just a walking distance away which was quite favourable to our lazy bodies, already yawning in the weekend. The start of which, crazy Kenyans have translated to Furahiday (Friday). Furahi, for the heathen in Swahili is enjoy; furahiday thus is for those crazy Kenyans enjoyment day or much much better, the day that we shall rejoice and be glad in.

A few meters away from our Friday evening cozy place, we met a very busy policeman searching madly in the bushes by the streets. Oddly, he was doing so with the help of the light from his mobile phone while wildly conversing through his walkie talkie. We didn’t give it much and I remember commenting that someone must have spotted a hedgehog; they frequent the environment when the weather turns momentarily tropical.

We stopped to watch the lawman at work wondering if we should offer our help but he was so busy that he didn’t even seem to notice us. Further down the street at a cross section, another cop emerged, this one with the come-in-handy torch. Him too, busy on the walkie talkie.

We then realised that this could not be a case of a displaced hedgehog as the policemen hurriedly combed the area and even stopped a lone man and questioned him. As we came out to the main road, police cars materialized with the blue lights on. Obviously, something had gone down or was taking scene.

We moved cautiously down the road to the pub, about three hundred meters down the road and we could see about two more police cars and an ambulance parked outside the pub.

Curiosity was now getting the better of us and our pace had unconsciously increased towards our intended destination. A crowd had formed at the entrance to the pub and the police were in the process of sealing off part of the road and the area around the pub.

Just outside the entrance, a policeman and a paramedic were applying first aid to a man who lay unconscious on the pavement. More police oozed about talking to people, searching and collecting probable evidence from what we had by now made out to be a crime scene. While all this was going on, mellow mood continued one floor above, at our intended destination.

Apparently, the man on the pavement had come to our intended destination in the company of a group of young friends. They then embarked on the furahiday theme in much shouting and laughing. Nothing out of the ordinary of a well earned stress release weekend. A lot of high fives and funny stories while beverages left the bottles they came in and made their way down the thirsty throats to settle at the bottom of the bellies of the generously happy youth.

No one could tell that the laughing and calls of brosan and compis disguised the face of the ever roaming devil out to once again try to outdo God.

But somewhere along the merry making an argument had started and the good friends entered into a bitter disagreement. Being young and naturally careless, word changed from friendly to hostile and vocabulary such as ‘din morsa’, ‘dom skalle’, ‘jävla apa’ and the like formed the sentences.

Friends turned enemies and as the fight turned physical, the bouncers quickly came to take control of the situation. The group was thrown out to solve their differences without bothering the other law abiding customers. When they stepped outside, two out of the group went all in, punching, kicking, and wrestling in a street fight without rules.

Suddenly, one of the two drew out a knife that he had nicely hidden under his jacket and stubbed his friend severally in the chest. He seemed to be in a daze as he wildly stubbed the knife in and out of his friend’s chest. Shocked, his friend weakly asked ‘what are you doing’ as he sagged down on his knees.

For a while they stared into each others eyes both of them unable to understand what had just happened. Then one fell all the way down unconscious and the other, overcome by what he had done, run away cowardly.

When the crowd came to, someone called 112 while others tried to save the now fading life of the young man. The police and the ambulance were quick to answer the call but they came too late. The young man died right there, outside the pub, on a Friday night, in front of the people who had left theirs homes to enjoy themselves.

It was hard to fathom, how fast it happened and the fact that these were friends. Who had come happily teasing and occasionally hugging each other without any ill intention on each other or anyone else for that matter. Though no one could understand why one carried a knife with him, no ill motive was available. He was arrested later on after he gave himself up, over come by guilt. And as his friend left for the morgue, he left for the jail.

So much for a furahiday, that is how fast it can go down. Maybe we should think about it a little bit more. Life, fragile, its preciousness and how short it is.

We should, value it.

Njoro.