I remember him coming back home late in shags after driving through the treacherous roads of Narok, the headlights of his car bathing the walls of the living room as he parked his mud-covered car, and I’d marvel at how heroic he was to make that journey in pitch darkness. Lots of people attended, some who I knew, others who I didn’t, people laughing, the sounds of glasses tinkling and spoons scraping plates and music in the background and his voice rising above this hubbub, strong and reassuring. I remember him hosting parties, dinner parties in brightly lit hotels or carpeted restaurants or at home. He orders a coffee and a croissant and he leans back and says, “what do you want to know about my bipolar?” “That’s who I am when I’m manic.” It’s not the person seated before me. One morning I texted him, “hey, why don’t we meet for breakfast you tell me about your bipolar?” He came with his laptop to show me videos he’d taken of himself during his manic stages: of him frenzied, talking to camera, a dusty Lilly(his offroad bike) and him on top of Mount Suswa, the wind whistling in the recording, him in Kilifi causing a royal ruckus, him in a tuk-tuk (rickshaw) talking about some inane stuff, him wandering aimlessly by the roadside in a maasai shuka and sandals, him in a car following a bodaboda with a woman at the back carrying her dead 11-year girl, him on a passenger seat videoing his pal crying about the dead child, him in an SGR with a bunch of strangers who he’s making laugh hysterically, him in a mental institution showing what a padded room looks like, in all of these videos he is talking and talking and talking and laughing. I invited him back for a drink but he was busy with other things. In the following weeks he invited me for things that I couldn’t manage to go for because either they weren’t up my alley or I was out of town. He just dropped it casually in a conversation like you would say,”I think it’s gonna rain.” I don’t even think anybody took much notice, but I did.Īs curfew loomed and the deejay packed his songs in his big box of music, we exchanged numbers. Whereas most loud people expend all their energy in the moment, the calm ones store theirs, which adds to their layers of mystery. He respected the unseen pecking order of the table. He respected his drink and the act of drinking, never letting it get the better of him. So when George said, OK guys, off to meet some friends of mine at a local, this guy said he would not mind joining him.Īnd we didn’t mind having him. He must have fed this guy his spiel, and the spiel must have resonated deep within him, because just like George, he was going through the wringer of life, buoyed by George’s lyrical prowess. He normally tells me these things whenever we are having a whisky and I write them down on my Notes on my phone because they make me happy and because one day I know he will tell me his story when he’s done pontificating. George is the type who says stuff like, ‘there is no glory in sex and money, but there is glory in falling in love with yourself.” Or, “only choose a life in which you forgive yourself.” Or “you are a blue globe spinning, going nowhere, a rock hurtling through space.” “Your heart isn’t an honest heart if it refuses to admit its truth, so what’s your truth?” A mishmash of metaphors, allegories, and rich rhetoric that only reveal the turmoils of his past and sometimes his present.
I suspect George had roped him in with his glib talk, his classic gung-ho mantras of life, strung with beautiful turn of phrase. They had met earlier at this other local where George had gone to meet another friend of his for nyama. George is the life of the party, a barfly, snake oil salesman.