There are two reasons to go to Embu. One, because it is Embu. Two…actually, I lied. There is no reason to go Embu. Driving to Embu is inconvenient enough. It is shy as a town and it really just wants to be a village. You get the sense that if you talked to three random people in Embu, they are probably related, or they share a fence, or a face, or a dog, one of those life-hardened Bosco canines who both belong to everyone and no one in particular. Embu is the archetypal Kenyan town, with nothing to its name other than its name. Honesty aside, Embu is a good town, if you don’t have to be in Embu. The only thing to do in Embu is drive to Meru.
But I am a dreamer and a traveller, and I was looking to doing nothing, and doing it well, so I thought we should try, give Embu, err, a right of reply (that’s a journalism joke). “We” is my friends and I. It was midnight when we got to that Kibaki Highway, no one in sight apart from wababa in their 4x4s with girls not necessarily my age, but definitely my type.
Heresy-filled, we started talking midnight things: the lack of marriageable partners, loneliness, how many cups of virgin blood Jennifer Lopez drinks daily to remain that young, how high the price of blunts has gotten lately (I know you saw what I did there). I remember when we used to be a real country.
At 1am we got vulnerable. People shared things they shouldn’t share with a writer—shame on them! As the deer panteth for the water so my soul longeth for gossip. But there is a reason gossip is described as “morsels”, and that’s because it is not satisfying. Which is apt because the things we were talking about, I couldn’t relate. I felt like a foreign correspondent out to dis-cover Africa—another journalism joke—minus the naked hungry child with the flies and the protruding stomach. We’ve been friends with these guys for a while, but lately, we’ve been going our separate ways, seeing other people, like the president and his deputy.
The Good Book says that there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother. Or put another way, men just sleep with women, but they are in love with each other. My friends have driven across the country to hug me because a woman I was doing bad things with did me bad things. I can see that time someone close to me got sick and I didn’t tell anyone but my friends found out and, despite my protests, accompanied me to visit them. But friends have also given me that old Judas’ kiss, like Adam and Eve when they both knew each other’s secret. Friends too have outgrown me, as I have outgrown them. Can one outgrow their friends?
These are the questions that eat at me in the car. I think of this when I listen to some of my friends speak – their thoughts on democracy, our learning model, the economy, who can beat who in a wrestling match between a mganga and a mchawi. I reckon it would end in a stalemate. Mchawi harms, mganga heals. Aura for aura.
I am not going to say the blunt has gotten sharper but it has. We talk about how man has always assumed he is more intelligent than Bosco the estate dog because man invented fire, ziplining, airplanes, Nairobi, cocktails, and so on—while all Bosco the estate dog had ever done was know where there was a sherehe or a matanga and go and eat meat there and have a good time. But methinks Bosco the estate dog has always believed they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.
I don’t know how to explain it. So many things you promise yourself you won’t get used to, and then you do. You miss old friends when you don’t see them, but you miss them more when you do, because you pine for a relationship that once was, but not what it is now. What do you say when there’s nothing to say? You don’t say anything. That’s when I turn to what I have deemed “The Last Supper.” Perhaps there is a bit of blasphemy here, but maybe Judas had outgrown his relationship with Jesus, whatever his reasons for betraying him. Isn’t the Last Supper really just a story of betrayal?
I am not one to slice through the epidermis and have emotionally raw conversations so I have taken the easy path of friendship impeachment, or ghosting, or silent treatment. It’s immature yes, but it’s also fail-proof. Friendships are fragile, and most aren’t built to last forever. Circumstances change, bonds weaken.
When you are in a romantic relationship, the rules are clearer. You move from partner to partner, until the relationship fizzles out, or one terminates the relationship to get on with the adult business of finding “the one.” The 16th-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne argued friendship should operate similarly, one companion at a time. For the “perfect friendship,” he wrote, “Each one gives himself so wholly to his friend that he has nothing left to distribute elsewhere.” Perhaps that’s why those who give marriage advice start with the cliché: marry your friend.
Friendship these days is more like polyamory. More is always better. But is it? Unlike in polyamory, sometimes your friends can’t—shouldn’t—mix. The atmosphere changes; a sense of duty creeps in. From light-hearted conversations to the razor-chewing territory of “catching up.” Eventually, social media becomes the drip that keeps the friendship on life support. Through Instagram, I am aware that John “Kichwa Kubwa” Kimani got married, has a few children here and there, and remains a passionate Manchester United fan (probably on suicide watch) and taker of selfies. I “like” the photo. But I will never be aware what it is like to be married nor have several children here and there—for I am not in that space, yet. We’ve met in person, but the truth is it’s not the same; we’d come apart. I sometimes long for the friendship that we once had, but don't miss the one it has become.
I don’t think my experience is unique. It’s all attrition: I lose more friends than I make. You have friends for the period that you have them for, and that period ends. When the friendship withers, the honourable thing is to let go. When I meet old friends, I no longer pull a two-minute presidential address full of empty promises of “Tutaftane.” “Nitakupigia” or “Umepotea. We should catch up. Coffee soon?”
Friendship, male friendship more so, I believe, is the most complicated relationship because the definition of the role of "friend" is different for each person involved in the relationship. I have suffered through this condition, as we all have, and have found neither a cure nor a prophylactic. When it’s dead, it’s dead. Kama mbaya, mbaya.
In Lurambi, Kakamega we say, kiendacho kwa mganga hakirudi. Make of that as you will. Have you ever ended a friendship because you felt outgrown? Tell me about it. Even if you are from Embu. Especially if you are from Embu.
